His journey from the poverty of a family of 13 living in a tent in northern NSW to the corridors of power in Canberra as ALP national president and adviser to five prime ministers is a remarkable one documented in his new book Warren Mundine In Black + White.

The former fitter and turner acknowledges the north shore is an unlikely place for an indigenous Labor leader to end up, saying he has only ever seen “about two” Aboriginal people in the area, apart from his own family.

“I laugh; I think it’s quite funny actually. Who would have ever thought I’d live on the north shore? I remember Richo (former ALP heavyweight Graham Richardson) raving on about how the Liberals love their leafy suburbs. But that’s what I like about it; it’s like being in the bush. You wouldn’t know you were in Sydney.”

His first experience of the area he now calls home — he has lived in Roseville Chase for four years and was at Willoughby for two years before that — came when he attended the Marist Brothers school at multicultural, working-class Auburn.

“We used to come here once or twice a year to play against these bloody private school prats. They beat us all the time but we used to love punching them out. I got sent off a couple of times,” he recalled.

“One year against Joeys (St Joseph’s in Hunters Hill) two of our players ended up in hospital and we got beaten 50-nil. So we lost the fight and lost the match. That was a bad year.

“We used to raid the northern beaches and try to pick up surfie chicks but they beat us at that, too.

“They were all these tall, good-looking, blond-haired surfie boys and we were ugly blokes from the western suburbs. I’ve infiltrated their culture now,” he laughs.

He remembers digging sewer lines in the 1970s at North Turramurra, Lovers Jump Creek, Baulkham Hills and the Hornsby pumping station.

“I became very familiar with the toiletry habits of north shore people, I can tell you,” he said. “I never thought I was going to live here.”

Looking back, he believes education, networking and volunteering are the keys to success in life, and cites a phone call from Frank Lowy to prove his point.

The Westfield and then Football Federation boss rang him one day to ask him to join the board of new A-League team Western Sydney Wanderers.

“I said, ‘Mr Lowy — it’s always Mr Lowy if you want to live — I’m a Sydney FC supporter’. He goes, ‘Warren, I want you to be on that board’. I’m a lot smarter these days so I said, ‘Sure, Mr Lowy, I’m happy to be on the board’.”

Mundine, now a regular at Wanderers games, prides himself on networking, saying: “It will help you for the rest of your life.”

His mobile phone is bulging with 5000 contacts, including prime ministers, opposition leaders, premiers, ministers, shadow ministers, CEOs and board chairmen.

He reels off the names of big bankers like Brian Hartzer, Gail Kelly, David Morgan and Ian Narev.

“They have all sat at this very table having meals,” he told the North Shore Times at his Roseville Chase home.

“If I need someone to chat with I just pick up the phone. When I got into the high levels of business I noticed they all knew each other because they used to play rugby against each other at school.

“I have never applied for a job,” he declared.

“My oldest boy goes to Hong Kong, Taiwan and The Philippines because he knows those kids working there from going to Joeys.”

Volunteering is also important, says the staunch Catholic who credits his faith with getting him through “a lot of stuff”.

“Always help someone. It helps make up for all my sins. I’m still trying to get into heaven.

“I’m looking forward to this idea that when I drop dead I can go fishing with Saint Peter.”

Two things in particular helped turn life around for him.

Lionel Rose won the world bantamweight boxing title in 1968, the national adulation opening his eyes to what an Aboriginal kid could achieve.

At the age of 24 he gave up the “sex, drugs, rock’n’roll phase” of his life and went to university in Adelaide, where he also enrolled in leadership courses that allowed him to get over his introverted nature and gave him the courage to talk publicly.

“Education is always the key,” he maintains, and his own kids are a case in point.

He has married three times, the latest in 2013 to Elizabeth Henderson, daughter of conservative Sydney Institute directors Anne and Gerard, a year after a promised Labor Senate seat was denied him and he decided not to renew his ALP membership.

He has 10 children ranging in age from 13 to 36. All have attended prestigious schools, either St Joseph’s, St Scholastica’s in Glebe or Loreto in Kirribilli.

As chairman of the board of the Australian indigenous Education Foundation, he is proud of the record of elite north shore schools in giving opportunities for Aboriginal kids.

Mundine on how to close the gap

St Joseph’s student population is always made up of at least five per cent indigenous children, he says.

The same applies at St Ignatius College, Riverview and St Aloysius is “getting into that as well”. Barker College has built an indigenous college on the central coast.

“Unbeknown to a lot of people, they do have enormous scholarship programs,” he said.

“They don’t run around waving a flag because they just want to do the right thing. Sometimes you’ve got to say that to the public.”

The foundation has raised $120 million since 2008, sponsoring 600 kids a year by paying fees for their whole high school journey at colleges around Australia, including Joeys, Riverview and St Scholastica’s.

They have a 95 per cent success rate in finishing Year 12, and 92 per cent in finishing university, and he is proud that girls now make up half of the program.

“There’s an old saying that if you educate men they run off to make money,” he said, “but if you educate women it changes the village.”

The relaxed village atmosphere is something he treasures about north shore life.

When he shops at Willoughby North or Castle Cove, “everyone knows you, everyone says g’day and the butcher knows more about what meat you eat than you do”.