Profile: Australian new "progressive, charismatic" PM Malcolm Turnbull

Australian new Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, the former Rhodes Scholar and high-profile banker and lawyer, seems to be the ideal candidate to lead Australia's conservative Liberal Party.

Yet while his blueblood heritage might be in tune with the nation's establishment party, Turnbull's progressive views have often put him at odds with his colleagues. sworn in at a Government House ceremony in Canberra on Tuesday afternoon after leading a swift and almost bloodless coup against the struggling incumbent Tony Abbott, Turnbull has long championed a series of "un-Liberal" causes.

In opposition, he backed the Labor government's carbon pollution reduction scheme, forerunner of Australia's carbon tax. He is also a long-time supporter of the republican movement, gay marriage, the apology to the stolen aboriginal generation and climate change.

None of those causes have endeared him to Liberal conservatives.

Yet, while he is viewed with some suspicion by some of his parliamentary peers (in contrast to Abbott who has always had a strong supporter base within the party despite being publicly unpopular), Turnbull's standing out in the broader Australian electorate has always been strong.

Indeed, he has always fared well in opinion polls, recording far better numbers than Abbott as preferred Liberal Party leader.

For all his privileged background, attending a private school in Sydney, completing a law degree at Sydney University and studying at Oxford as a Rhodes Scholar, Turnbull liked to portray himself as a man of the people.

For example, he preferred to eschew the trappings of high office such as chauffered cars by taking public transport whenever working in the nation's capital cities. Only last Friday when in Melbourne for a breakfast speaking engagement in suburban Hawthorn, Turnbull made a point of catching the No.70 tram for the 25-minute trip from his inner city hotel.

That common touch helped earn him the leadership of the party in 2009, when it was in opposition. But he was ousted from the job partly because of his call for action on climate change, and partly because his colleagues felt he was on a massive ego trip, rarely consulting them on any substantive policy issues.

So Turnbull, now aged 60, has spent much of the past 12 months trying to persuade the party's conservatives that he is a changed man that this time he will be less controversial, listen to his colleagues more and be better at consulting with them.

He has already made clear, for instance, that he will not move quickly to legalize gay marriage.

A former head of Australia's republican movement, Turnbull, first rose to international prominence in 1986 when, as a confident young lawyer, he represented Peter Wright, a former senior British intelligence operative with MI5, in the famous Spycatcher case. Turnbull succeeded in blocking the British government's attempts to prevent publication of Wright's memoirs, in a book called Spycatcher.

The following year, in partnership with former NSW Labor Premier Neville Wran and Nicholas Whitlam, he set up a merchant bank which quickly attracted establishment clients. In 1994, he helped develop the internet provider Ozemail which he later sold for a substantial profit. Indeed, he has always been open to political attack because of his unusual wealth. This week in the Sydney media for example, he was labelled "the $100 million man who would be PM".

Now, in the wake of Monday night's leadership spill, which he won by 55 votes to 45, Turnbull gets his chance at the job which he has always coveted and the chance to reshape Australia.

"We have to make a change for our country's sake, for the government's sake, for the party's sake," Turnbull said upon his election.

During his first Question Time as Prime Minister on Tuesday afternoon, Turnbull talked up Australia's economic outlook, and said he couldn't wait to get his teeth into his new job.

"Mr Speaker, we are living in the most exciting times to be an Australian. The opportunities and challenges of a rapidly globalizing economy are remarkable. The rate of economic and technological change is utterly without precedent. And so an Australia which succeeds in remaining a high wage, generous social welfare net economy, which should be our goal, must be agile, must be dynamic, it must be looking to the future," he said.

"The future is one of great opportunities and that requires confidence and leadership and it will be lost if we embrace the politics of fear and scaremongering, of which the Leader of the Opposition is so fond."

Turnbull made the point that, unlike Bill Shorten's Opposition which wanted to cloak Australia in the "darkness of fear" with its arguments about the dangers of the China-Australia free trade agreement, he was a strong supporter of the FTA.

His leadership should potentially give the ruling coalition a much-needed boost ahead of a crucial by-election in Western Australia on Saturday and then the federal election due to be held in 2016.

After a period of extraordinary unrest in Australian politics where four prime ministers have come and gone in little more than two years, the public is hoping that Turnbull can match his style with substance, and finally give Australians renewed faith in their politicians. Endi