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That was quick. been following the story all morning.

Tony Abbot, infamous for that budgie smuggler photograph, is no more

On a more serious note, I thought he would go after that recent revelation about Australia paying off people smugglers, but what do I know about Australian politics?

Anyway, thoughts. Reactions. Is anybody in Australia really bothered. If your politicians are as bad as ours, then I doubt anybody would notice, to be honest.

The party that claimed to better than the other mob 'cause at least they didn't backstab one another... just backstabbed one another.

Turnbull is a turncoat, and now we've lost a Prime Minister to one man's greed and ego.

That's 4 Prime Ministers in a little over 2 years. The Italian and Greek governments are more stable than that.

But to say a bit more, the sheer speed of the challenge was surprising. I don't think anybody considered that, from media speculation on a leadership change over the weekend, there'd be a new PM by the end of the next day.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
The party that claimed to better than the other mob 'cause at least they didn't backstab one another... just backstabbed one another.

Turnbull is a turncoat, and now we've lost a Prime Minister to one man's greed and ego.

Turnbull's trying to justify this by saying that the Australian economy isn't performing as well as it should. According to my reading, the Australian economy is one of the best around at the moment, so...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Turnbull is a turncoat, and now we've lost a Prime Minister to one man's greed and ego.

Abbott is no big loss. He's been the leader of our nation for just under two years, and in that entire time only once has said or done anything that merely makes him look like he's possibly an utter bastard rather than making that clear beyond question.

I'm not joking. For Tony Abbott, denying parents childcare payments is the nicest thing he's ever done, because it could have been a genuine effort to force them to vaccinate their children and help wipe out horrible diseases, and not just another excuse to cut somebody's welfare.

Belegur wrote:
That's 4 Prime Ministers in a little over 2 years. The Italian and Greek governments are more stable than that.

But to say a bit more, the sheer speed of the challenge was surprising. I don't think anybody considered that, from media speculation on a leadership change over the weekend, there'd be a new PM by the end of the next day.

On the plus side, you beat England at the cricket.


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And another thing, shouldn't this decision be for the Australian people to decide on who their PM is?

The country should have a snap election and not be subjected to the whims of party politics and backstabbing.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
And another thing, shouldn't this decision be for the Australian people to decide on who their PM is?

Not quite. Kinda. Maybe.

We don't vote for the leader. There's no presidential election for the PM's job, as it were. We vote for our local member, and the party votes for their leader, and the leader becomes PM if they get voted into government. So whilst people tend to vote for the leader, even if they're not actually voting for the leader, they technically only ever vote for their local member.

[EDIT]: Your English! Why am I explaining this to you? Ah well... I guess some Yank might wander by and want to know what's happening.

Well, this is my worst fear realised. Turnbull and Shorten factions in control of Australian politics. Two vile rats.

Seems like a fullterm prime minister is a thing of the past now too. The "progressive left" seems to have the numbers in both labour and liberal parties to dispose of anyone they dont like.

Abbott may have been useless but atleast he kept Shorten out of power. Labour still needs to rebuild after the Rudd Gillard circus and Shorten is merely the continuity of that.

The liberals should be taxed for emissions because they are now a carbon copy of the labour party.

Dropbear Victim wrote:
Well, this is my worst fear realised. Turnbull and Shorten factions in control of Australian politics. Two vile rats.

Tell me your best reason why I should think Malcolm Turnbull will be a bad PM. I'm honestly curious - I do not know enough about the man.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:


Your English] scottish! Why am I explaining this to you? Ah well... I guess some Yank might wander by and want to know what's happening.

Sorted that for you. Expect an angry Scotsman rebuttal...

Vote Early.

Vote Often.

Vote Quimby.

Hah, Goodbye Half-Term Tony, and good riddance. Most incompetent PM of my life time, and least deserving of the post.

Meanwhile, Malcolm has been generally competent, even though I still disagree with him on a number of things. I may even prefer him to Bill Shorten of the Labor Party, even though I generally tend towards labor in general, as he does have fairly progressive views, if his party will allow him to express himself.

For those outside the country, remember that Turnbull had been leader of the Liberal Party before his party tossed him for the far right-wing Abbott. Turnbull only lost the Liberal leadership originally (by a single vote), because of his stance on combating climate change, and he's pro-gay marriage. So at least there's a possibility that on those two fronts we may see some action for the first time in two years.

According to media reports, Turnbull will be Australia's 5th prime minister in the last 5 years.

That's banana republic territory. Didn't expect the Australians to go down that road.


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 Maddermax wrote:
Hah, Goodbye Half-Term Tony, and good riddance. Most incompetent PM of my life time, and least deserving of the post.

Meanwhile, Malcolm has been generally competent, even though I still disagree with him on a number of things. I may even prefer him to Bill Shorten of the Labor Party, even though I generally tend towards labor in general, as he does have fairly progressive views, if his party will allow him to express himself.

For those outside the country, remember that Turnbull had been leader of the Liberal Party before his party tossed him for the far right-wing Abbott. Turnbull only lost the Liberal leadership originally (by a single vote), because of his stance on combating climate change, and he's pro-gay marriage. So at least there's a possibility that on those two fronts we may see some action for the first time in two years.

How did Abbott survive that people smuggling scandal? I thought he would have walked a lot sooner than get pushed.


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 zedmeister wrote:

 H.B.M.C. wrote:


Your English] scottish! Why am I explaining this to you? Ah well... I guess some Yank might wander by and want to know what's happening.

Sorted that for you. Expect an angry Scotsman rebuttal...

Nah, it's all peace and love to my Australian brethren

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
According to media reports, Turnbull will be Australia's 5th prime minister in the last 5 years.

That's banana republic territory. Didn't expect the Australians to go down that road.

All depends on how you count it. As of yesterday, there had been 3 people (Rudd, Gillard and Abbott) who had been PM over 8 years - doesn't seem so bad when you count it like that. This is a highly unusual period of instability however.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

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 Maddermax wrote:
Hah, Goodbye Half-Term Tony, and good riddance. Most incompetent PM of my life time, and least deserving of the post.

Meanwhile, Malcolm has been generally competent, even though I still disagree with him on a number of things. I may even prefer him to Bill Shorten of the Labor Party, even though I generally tend towards labor in general, as he does have fairly progressive views, if his party will allow him to express himself.

For those outside the country, remember that Turnbull had been leader of the Liberal Party before his party tossed him for the far right-wing Abbott. Turnbull only lost the Liberal leadership originally (by a single vote), because of his stance on combating climate change, and he's pro-gay marriage. So at least there's a possibility that on those two fronts we may see some action for the first time in two years.

How did Abbott survive that people smuggling scandal? I thought he would have walked a lot sooner than get pushed.

People smuggling "scandal"? He made "Stopping the boats" the centerpiece of his political career! Sadly, every underhanded and awful thing done in service of that goal only made him more popular with a regrettably large portion of our population. What made me lose heart was the Labour party singing along with his tune on that front - Bill shorten supported most of it.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
According to media reports, Turnbull will be Australia's 5th prime minister in the last 5 years.

That's banana republic territory. Didn't expect the Australians to go down that road.

when he ultimately fails, and gets voted out, Australians should get very serious about their PM.


They should elect Paul Hogan (Crocodile Dundee)... Failing that, they should elect Nick 'Honey Badger' Cummins

 Maddermax wrote:

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
According to media reports, Turnbull will be Australia's 5th prime minister in the last 5 years.

That's banana republic territory. Didn't expect the Australians to go down that road.

All depends on how you count it. As of yesterday, there had been 3 people (Rudd, Gillard and Abbott) who had been PM over 8 years - doesn't seem so bad when you count it like that. This is a highly unusual period of instability however.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:

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 Maddermax wrote:
Hah, Goodbye Half-Term Tony, and good riddance. Most incompetent PM of my life time, and least deserving of the post.

Meanwhile, Malcolm has been generally competent, even though I still disagree with him on a number of things. I may even prefer him to Bill Shorten of the Labor Party, even though I generally tend towards labor in general, as he does have fairly progressive views, if his party will allow him to express himself.

For those outside the country, remember that Turnbull had been leader of the Liberal Party before his party tossed him for the far right-wing Abbott. Turnbull only lost the Liberal leadership originally (by a single vote), because of his stance on combating climate change, and he's pro-gay marriage. So at least there's a possibility that on those two fronts we may see some action for the first time in two years.

How did Abbott survive that people smuggling scandal? I thought he would have walked a lot sooner than get pushed.

People smuggling "scandal"? He made "Stopping the boats" the centerpiece of his political career! Sadly, every underhanded and awful thing done in service of that goal only made him more popular with a regrettably large portion of our population. What made me lose heart was the Labour party singing along with his tune on that front - Bill shorten supported most of it.

I was referring to reports that said Australian officials were paying the criminal gangs money to stop them from bringing more people to Australia.

When pressed on it at the time, Abbott didn't deny it...

You would think that somewhere, alarm bells would have started ringing at this misuse of taxpayers' money...

One of my roommates is Australian and hates Tony Abbott with a fiery passion. I've only heard positives about him being tossed out on his ass.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
We don't vote for the leader. There's no presidential election for the PM's job, as it were. We vote for our local member, and the party votes for their leader, and the leader becomes PM if they get voted into government. So whilst people tend to vote for the leader, even if they're not actually voting for the leader, they technically only ever vote for their local member.

This has been one of the things that has continually annoyed me about the media coverage of the various leadership spills. The media (and Tony himself) keeps trying to make an issue about the people not getting a say in a leadership spill... but we don't get a say anyway.

Frankly, I'm happy to have not been consulted on this one. Abbott had to go.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
You would think that somewhere, alarm bells would have started ringing at this misuse of taxpayers' money...

I think it's largely because the government has done such a good job of convincing the (largely rather racist and xenophobic*) Australian public that people smugglers are the greatest evil our country has ever faced, and must be stopped at all costs. So it simply didn't become as big a deal as it should have.


*We have this really weird thing going on in this country, where we're all accepting and multicultural, so long as you're either not too different to us, or have been here long enough for us to get used to you (unless you're aboriginal)... otherwise, you can jolly well take your foreign ways back where they came from. All of these refugees are something comparatively new, so we're still at the 'no sir, we don't like them' phase. So it's been fairly easy for the government to ride that wave of general dislike and garner support for their whole 'stop the boats' approach.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Turnbull is a turncoat, and now we've lost a Prime Minister to one man's greed and ego.

Which 'One Man'? Turnbull? Abbot? Or whichever Liberal party power-broker decided how this would go down?
Jokes aside; it is interesting that we see this narrative arising so soon after the spill, as I doubt Turnbull is the prime mover here, I mean, I didn't think he had the spine for it.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Turnbull's trying to justify this by saying that the Australian economy isn't performing as well as it should. According to my reading, the Australian economy is one of the best around at the moment, so...

Here's the rub: The Liberal/National Coalition (Often refereed to as the 'Conservative Coalition' by non-Aussie media), when in opposition, made their primary talking point the state of the economy & the size of the deficit, despite the face that things were not doing very badly, particularly by comparison (this required a lot of mis-information and scaremongering). They promised that they would fix the 'problem', and get the budget, not just 'back on track', but into surplus; a 'Steady hand on the economic tiler' and all that. Since they have been in government however the economy has deteriorated (not to disastrous levels, but it is worse than before), and the deficit has, actually, grown.

Given everything they said during the last election cycle; they cant now say; 'it's not that bad', not without a lot of cartwheels.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
The country should have a snap election and not be subjected to the whims of party politics and backstabbing.

In Australia; we don't need elections: we have 'The Polls'.

Belegur wrote:
That's 4 Prime Ministers in a little over 2 years. The Italian and Greek governments are more stable than that.

Syria is more stable than that, they've had the same guy for 15 years

But to say a bit more, the sheer speed of the challenge was surprising. I don't think anybody considered that, from media speculation on a leadership change over the weekend, there'd be a new PM by the end of the next day.

Yeah, in that sense it's very similar to Gillard replacing Rudd.

What's interesting, I think, is that in all other respects this seems quite different to Rudd. Simply because while Rudd was a turd who was hated by the people who knew him, a lot of the country hadn't figured him out yet. Whereas pretty much everyone figured out a long time ago that Abbott was a turd, probably even before he was elected, it's just that he was preferable to the Labor soap opera. It doesn't seem like there's too much concern out there that he's gone.


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 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
Turnbull's trying to justify this by saying that the Australian economy isn't performing as well as it should. According to my reading, the Australian economy is one of the best around at the moment, so...

It has performed well, and rode out the GFC quite nicely. But depressed worldwide demand is now catching up to Australia.


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Dropbear Victim wrote:
Abbott may have been useless but atleast he kept Shorten out of power.

Huh? Abbott beat Rudd, and you could argue he beat Gillard by default because he was hammering her in the polls so bad Labor swapped back to Rudd for the election. But the only time he's been against Shorten was since the election, and the numbers there have steadily improved in Shorten favour. So the only way he kept Shorten out of power was by not calling for an election that he was likely to lose.

And then, apart from the mess of failed and stupid policies, is probably the most damning thing about Abbott. He couldn't win a popularity contest against Shorten, a union stooge who is currently having his corrupt practice exposed in a Royal Commission.

The ALP will have to do the same though, there's no way Shorten leads the party to a win when we go to election is there? Not over Turnbull, surely. Then we'll have 2 people running who both ousted the leader of the party (and in both cases actually for the better of the party I feel), it'll be solid viewing haha.

 Do_I_Not_Like_That wrote:
According to media reports, Turnbull will be Australia's 5th prime minister in the last 5 years.

That's banana republic territory. Didn't expect the Australians to go down that road.

I like the jokes about political shambles, but in all seriousness while it's been five leaders, it's only been two governments. There hasn't been any actual instability.

How did Abbott survive that people smuggling scandal? I thought he would have walked a lot sooner than get pushed.

Abbott's policy on refugees was his strongest point with voters, even throughout that scandal. After almost 20 years of debate and countless policy changes that all seemed to end up with dead bodies and abused people, the country is just burned out on the issue. Paying the smugglers barely registered as an issue, because people just didn't want to hear about it any more.

 sebster wrote:
It doesn't seem like there's too much concern out there that he's gone.

There is some, but it mostly seems to be from diehard Liberal supporters who feel that the party has sullied themselves by following Labor's lead on leader-swapping.

And then, apart from the mess of failed and stupid policies, is probably the most damning thing about Abbott. He couldn't win a popularity contest against Shorten, a union stooge who is currently having his corrupt practice exposed in a Royal Commission.

Indeed. Add in the fact that Shorten doesn't appear to have any actual personality, or any policy, and it's a pretty sad picture overall.


Hell, I've always voted Labor or Green, and I'm still finding myself cautiously optimistic about what sort of job Turnbull will do.



Honestly, though, I think too much is being made of the whole swapping leaders thing. Ultimately, the Prime Minister is there to do a job. If they're not doing that job in any sort of adequate fashion (particularly after being given notice that they are not performing adequately), then why shouldn't they be replaced? Anyone else would be.

 insaniak wrote:
Honestly, though, I think too much is being made of the whole swapping leaders thing. Ultimately, the Prime Minister is there to do a job. If they're not doing that job in any sort of adequate fashion (particularly after being given notice that they are not performing adequately), then why shouldn't they be replaced? Anyone else would be.

I agree. Consistency might be desirable in a general sense, but not if it's "consistently awful".

 insaniak wrote:
There is some, but it mostly seems to be from diehard Liberal supporters who feel that the party has sullied themselves by following Labor's lead on leader-swapping.

You don't need to be a die-hard to see that...

 insaniak wrote:
Hell, I've always voted ... Green...

Then why vote at all?

Why?

Again, if someone is not doing their job satisfactorily, why shouldn't they be replaced?

Abbott was given 6 months to sort out his gak. He didn't.

 insaniak wrote:
There is some, but it mostly seems to be from diehard Liberal supporters who feel that the party has sullied themselves by following Labor's lead on leader-swapping.

Yep, and what are they going to do, vote Labor? PUP maybe, if they're hardline conservative and also very stupid...

Hell, I've always voted Labor or Green, and I'm still finding myself cautiously optimistic about what sort of job Turnbull will do.

He really messed up as opposition leader last time, but hopefully he's learned a lot since then. I'm optimistic.

Honestly, though, I think too much is being made of the whole swapping leaders thing. Ultimately, the Prime Minister is there to do a job. If they're not doing that job in any sort of adequate fashion (particularly after being given notice that they are not performing adequately), then why shouldn't they be replaced? Anyone else would be.

Yep. There is an issue that we've had several bad leaders in a row, but the act of dumping them once they've established themselves as bad leaders isn't an issue in itself.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
Then why vote at all?

Because, once upon a time, the Greens actualy mattered.

Not so much these days...

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
You don't need to be a die-hard to see that...

This thing that's snuck in to politics, where we now insist that a party cannot decide its own leader... this is a really unhealthy thing.

Then why vote at all?

Because otherwise they fine you.

 sebster wrote:

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Dropbear Victim wrote:
Abbott may have been useless but atleast he kept Shorten out of power.

Huh? Abbott beat Rudd, and you could argue he beat Gillard by default because he was hammering her in the polls so bad Labor swapped back to Rudd for the election. But the only time he's been against Shorten was since the election, and the numbers there have steadily improved in Shorten favour. So the only way he kept Shorten out of power was by not calling for an election that he was likely to lose.

And then, apart from the mess of failed and stupid policies, is probably the most damning thing about Abbott. He couldn't win a popularity contest against Shorten, a union stooge who is currently having his corrupt practice exposed in a Royal Commission.

Labour only went back to Rudd because of his popularity with the voters. I guarantee Shorten, being the survivor of the Gillard camp, would have challenged for leadership sometime after if Rudd had actually won, backed by almost the entire labour party who despised Rudd.

So in a roundabout way, it was always Abbott vs Shorten.