Ex-prime minister Malcolm Turnbull is selling government procurement software for a small American company

Malcolm Turnbull became prime minister by selling a product to Australians and his Liberal colleagues that had huge potential: himself. When reality caught up with expectations, he was fired.

Now, as a private businessman, Mr Turnbull is selling a product closely linked to his personal history, through his central role in one of the bigger budget blowouts in contemporary Australian history.

Last week the 71-year-old was hired by a small American company, Rohirrim, to help sell computer software used by governments to buy things. Worth about $20 trillion a year, the global procurement industry may be the planet’s biggest.

Rohirrim, which rents offices about 25 minutes from the Pentagon in Washington, wants to break into the lucrative sub-sector of military contracting. Mr Turnbull claims its artificial intelligence software can cut the time taken to purchase complicated projects or equipment from “years into months”.

Given military contracts are notoriously difficult to finalise, Rohirrim’s “acquisition platform” might draw interest in the company’s target markets of Australia, Britain, Canada and the US.

Mr Turnbull, now chair of the company’s “advisory board”, told Bloomberg he is “certainly happy to assist” open doors, and cited an official assessment that the Defence Department’s biggest projects are running two years late, on average.

“And part of the problem is in order to comply with the acquisition processes, legally and equitably and so forth, it takes a lot of time,” he said.

Budget blowout

When prime minister, Mr Turnbull did not procrastinate while planning what he called Snowy 2.0, an electricity-generating system based on pumping water between two dams in NSW’s Kosciuszko National Park.

In 2023 the Albanese government estimated the project would cost $12 billion, six times the amount promised by Mr Turnbull six years earlier when he ordered work to begin. That cost does not include power lines, which energy expert Bruce Mountain has estimated will take the total amount to $20 billion, or 10 times the amount the former prime minister suggested it would.

Large civic projects are normally proposed by engineers and other experts, which is one of the reasons they usually take a long time to be approved. Mr Turnbull, who never studied engineering, geology or hydrology, decided on Snowy 2.0 one weekend while looking at maps of the national park and similar terrain in Tasmania.

“As I pored over the maps of the two schemes over the summer, it had seemed to me there must be the potential to link some existing dams at different elevations to produce the circular pumped hydro system we needed,” he wrote in his autobiography, A Bigger Picture.

The project was meant to have been finished four years ago. The latest start estimate is 2027. Professor Mountain, the director of the Victoria Energy Policy Centre, wrote last month it had become “an embarrassing laughing stock” in the global energy industry.

Power to the president

Even if true, the stigma appears to have had little effect on Mr Turnbull’s work. Two years ago he was elected president of the International Hydropower Association, a lobby group that pushes for electricity generation from water sources, including pumped-hydro projects similar to Snowy 2.0.

The job allows Mr Turnbull to travel the world holding meetings with government and international bodies. In September, in Paris, he helped negotiate a vague endorsement by 55 countries of the technology. The meeting’s official report referred to him as “former president of Australia”, a title some people who know him believe the republican politician may have aspired to.

Mr Turnbull will get to bring his global role to his home town in April, 2027, when the World Hydropower Congress convenes in Sydney. Mr Turnbull said pumped-hydro technology will be a focus of the trade show, which is expected to attract 700 industry participants from around the world. There’s even a chance Snowy 2.0 might be working by then.

As for Rohirrim, the company’s publicist did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The business is a professional step down for Mr Turnbull, whose previous job was an adviser to KKR, a large US private equity fund, alongside some of the giants of international business. KKR and Mr Turnbull ended the arrangement after he called President Donald Trump chaotic, rude and abusive in March.

Eight days after Mr Turnbull’s appointment was revealed, Mr Turnbull has still not been added to the company’s website, which lists someone else in his job. You might have thought Rohirrim’s AI technology would have worked that out.