In September 1993, The Chaser’s Charles Firth interviewed leading republican and lawyer Malcolm Turnbull. The piece, published in Sydney Grammar’s Tiger magazine, would perhaps have been more important were it not for what didn’t make the cut …

“I distinctly remember that Turnbull then went on to talk about how the Labor Party was the only viable agent of change. That only the Labor Party had the necessary progressiveness to carry the nation through such an important shift in our outlook as a nation.

“Of course, at the time, this stuff all seemed a bit boring. Who cares about Malcolm Turnbull’s love of the Labor Party?

“Last week, I contacted the archivist at Sydney Grammar (yes, they have an archivist, and yes I apologise unreservedly for going to a school that can afford an archivist) and asked her to send me a copy of the article.

“My hope was that some of Turnbull’s quotes about the Labor Party had made it into the final edit of the Tiger interview. Sure, it was 23 years late, but digging up actual published quotes about his love of the Labor Party could finally deliver me my first journalism scoop that I’d so longed for.

“As it turns out, those passages never made it into the final edit. There was, in my youthful judgment, no scoop there.”

Firth’s full piece, including a photocopy of the 1993 article, is on news.com.au.