I don't know how you felt on Monday night/ Tuesday morning morning when you discovered we had a new PM. Maybe it is a bit like this...
Or maybe like this...
Maybe you were a bit meh about it...
Or maybe you live overseas it was a bit confusing...
As for me...
Only kidding...well about the insect part anyway.
Every time there is political change or upheaval in this country, I find myself surprised...not because some people don't care or feel impacted by it as much as we political nerds do, that is completely par for the course. No, the surprise for me is the number of people who do show an interest in it, but then utter phrase like "but I didn't vote for [insert leader here]" after our now quite frequent leadership spills. Spills are becoming so frequent that it caused this awesome edit to the Australian sport wikipedia page on Monday night...
The question of who you voted for unfortunately does not come into play in a leadership spill. You voted for the person you felt it was best to be a voice for your electorate and after the votes were tallied whether that person got in or another candidate did your electorate had spoken. You may have voted based on the leader of a party but you did not vote for that leader (unless you live in his or her electorate), you voted for the particular member of their party who ran in your electorate. The person your electorate put into parliament then goes into their party room, and that party room drives the decisions of either the party in power or the opposition assuming your electorate elected an MP from a major party. The party room elects a leader, and leader of the party is the mouth piece for the party room, and therefore your voice via what your representative says in the party room is heard. This is how representative democracy works in Australia. This means that if there is an issue with the leader, such as the fact that they frequently ignore the opinions of the party room and make "captain calls" with the assistance of their chief of staff more than their parliamentary colleagues (yes I am describing our erstwhile PM), then the party room is well within its right to replace that leader because he/she is not longing representing the party room which means she/he is no longer representing the views of the elected representatives of the people.
Unfortunately for us, we have been fed spoonful after spoonful of watered down US politics from TV and film that we incorrectly apply it to our Australian context. In America, they do directly vote for their President. This leads to a cult of personality about the leader and also a leadership race to effectively eats up at least half of each presidential term. Their leaders can spend more time campaigning than they do governing. And before you think I'm cribbing this from The West Wing, I will point out that I did do one semester of politics with a US focus and two semesters of US history at University, and am a bit of a politics nerd, so yes I do know a little about it and when the President complains about the amount of campaigning involved in presidency on the The West Wing that is a completely legitimate concern. This is also why it is super hard for the US to drop a President mid term and is why shorter term presidencies were due to resignation, assassination, or death on the job not due to party changes.
Which is to say even if they are a bit too frequent in recent years and sometimes on shaking reasoning (not this last one- I think that reasoning was solid), I'm actually thankful to live in a land of leadership spills because it means that the politicians are actually looking out for concerns of the country and trying to make their voices as our representatives heard. Leadership spills are rarely about the cult of personality (though some are), as those rarely get the votes.
As to our particular brand of new leadership...well they aren't going to call on me to pick Liberal leaders (Liberal= right of centre, for those outside Australia...yes strange I know) since I'm very far left of their base being as I'm left of Labor, but this might to a solid choice. Malcolm Turnbull and Julie Bishop represent what the Liberal Party was designed to be i.e. right of centre, and the Party had in recent years, under Tony Abbott's leadership, veered so far to the right that it was deeply scary not only those of us on the left but also to those in the centre. Being as left as I am there are very few right wing politicians I have any time for but, aside from our Bachelor watching Premier, our new PM and continuing Deputy PM round out that very small list. Does this mean that they will be able to enact much change on a very conservative party room? Probably not, but it is at least a step in the right direction...no pun intended especially as this team will pull them left towards just right of the centre (not past it though, all you concerned Liberal voters out there). This may mean that meaningful discussions can finally be had around climate change and becoming a republic, and maybe even some loosening and changing of asylum seeker policy once the new cabinet is in place. Sure Liberal is still Liberal, and I don't want them winning next election but if we can actually have some good discussion and bipartisan work come out of the rest of this term then I'm happy for the leadership change as an interim step.
What else good comes of this leadership change... A while ago I blogged about the fact that the Abbott government was scaring the political centre and scattering it to the four winds. In just the last few days, I've seen hopeful signs of its return. Come back out of hiding, you centre types, because we need and miss you. I feel like we might be heading back to being a place where bipartisan discussion may actually be something that could again be meaningful. You doubt me? Let me give you a real life example... Today I had lunch with my Dad and our politics do not align in the remotest most of the time, so we engage in what we call healthy discussion/debate, or what my mother calls arguments, over politics all the time and have done for many a year. Today at lunch however, we had a chat about the leadership change, about who might be in the new cabinet, and about what policy changes this might bring without any disagreement because we were on the same page, I may not vote for the same party as he does but we could both agree on the fact that we thought the spill had a good result and that the new leadership was good for the Liberal party and might be able to make good changes for the country. When you can get someone who is centre right and someone who is far out left on the same page, you are demonstrating that you are actually leading a whole country of complex individuals- though time will tell when the new leadership honeymoon period is over.
If this does end poorly, my suggestion for the next spill...
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