After a nasty breakup at the beginning of his political career, Malcolm Turnbull attempted to woo his former sweetheart by writing letters to her cat.
One letter, which has been widely circulated in the past few decades, revealed his close relationship with the feline named Nessie, referring to the animal as ‘my little cat’.
Former Labor Senator Sam Dastyari told Kyle and Jackie O Nessie had belonged to a former long-term girlfriend of Turnbull’s, who had broken up with him in 1978.
The now-Prime Minister’s correspondence with the cat was an attempt to win its owner back, Dastyari claimed.
Former Labor Senator Sam Dastyari recounted a story of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s efforts to woo a former flame before his political career took off
In 1978, Turnbull penned a letter to Nessie, the cat of his ex-girlfriend who had broken up with him (pictured)
In 2009, Crikey reported Turnbull’s former girlfriend and Nessie’s owner, Linda Watson, had thought the PM had been behaving irrationally after she told him she wanted to break up.
The hand-written letter asked Nessie to tell Turnbull’s former girlfriend he still loved her, and that he was disappointed to be left cuddling the cat when he had come to see Ms Watson, and was signed off with ‘all my love’.
‘Dear Nessie,’ the note read.
‘Tell you [sic] miss that I love her very much, tell her that when I came to see her on Sunday and she wasn’t there I cuddled you up and it broke my heart that it wasn’t her.
‘Tell her I know a lot about her current boyfriends will tell her not to see me, they will stroke her back and tell her to forget me.
‘But, Nessie, we know she never will and you tell her, my little cat, how much we were in love.
‘All my love, Malcolm.’
In the hand-written letter, Turnbull told the feline to pass on messages about his love for Nessie’s ‘miss’, Linda Watson
Ms Watson had claimed her cat was strangled to death in 1978.
And while the Prime Minister’s correspondence with his beloved’s feline has been well covered, Dastyari said the story still gets under Turnbull’s skin.
‘There’s nothing Malcolm hates more than in Parliament when he gets up to speak, you’ll occasionally hear some of the Labor blokes and others start making cat “meow” sounds,’ he said.
Dastyari claimed Turnbull’s close relationship with the cat was still a point of contention, and opposition members would often ‘meow’ at the PM in Parliament