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AUSTRALIA-POLITICS
Australia conservatives move to stop revolving door of PMs
SYDNEY, Dec 3, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – Australia’s prime minister on Monday moved
to end a series of rolling leadership coups that have battered his party’s
reputation and left it hobbled ahead of next year’s election.
Hastily announced by PM Scott Morrison at a occasionally boisterous late-
night press conference, the new Liberal Party rule makes it much harder to
oust a sitting leader.
“This has been the great anguish for the Australian people as they’ve seen
this happen in both the Labor Party and the Liberal Party,” Morrison told
reporters in Canberra of the revolving door of prime ministers.
“They’re sick of it and we’re sick of it and it has to stop, and that’s
why we’ve put this rule in place.”
The new rule, decided at a snap Liberals meeting in the capital, will
apply to a Liberal leader after he or she has won an election.
It raises the bar for any ousting, with the agreement of two-thirds of
Liberal Party members from both houses of parliament now required for a
Liberal prime minister to be removed.
It means that if Morrison wins national elections expected to be called by
mid-May, it would be much harder to dislodge him from power.
Former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull was ousted in August in a simple
party majority, with Morrison replacing him after seeing off another
challenger for the top job, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton.
Turnbull’s removal in August was the sixth change of national leader in
the last decade in a turbulent period for Australian politics.
Turnbull himself toppled his predecessor, Tony Abbott, in another coup in
September 2015.
The main opposition Labor party also played musical chairs with their PMs
when they were in power, with Julia Gillard replacing Kevin Rudd in 2010 as
leader before he kicked her out and returned to power ahead of the 2013
election.
Labor has already moved to stop leadership spills. At least 60 percent of
its caucus must vote in favour of deposing an opposition leader, while 75
percent is required for a sitting PM.
The new Liberal threshold does not apply in opposition, but can only be
changed with a two-thirds party vote.
Morrison’s embattled minority government is already hanging by a thread
and struggling in voter opinion polls.
His conservative Liberal-National coalition lost its one-seat
parliamentary majority in October after losing Turnbull’s vacated seat in a
by-election to an independent.
Its hold on power was further eroded when one of Turnbull’s supporters,
Liberal MP Julia Banks, said last week she was quitting the party to become
an independent.
BSS/AFP/RY/1842 hrs