Factors Contributing to the Change of Prime Ministers in Australia in the Last Decade

Running head: POLITICS
Politics
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1POLITICS
Introduction
The purpose of this essay is to demonstrate the important factors that have led to the
change of the prime ministers in the last ten years. It is a very concerning factor that there have
been five prime ministers in Australia within the last five years. The matter of fact is there is no
fixed tenure for the Australian prime ministers. They are allowed to retain their jobs as prime
minister as long as they are the Member of Parliaments. Some social and political factors have
been the main reasons of this entire mess. This has impacted on the entire social structure very
badly indeed. Australia has been suffering from several social disorders because of the change of
the prime ministers in the last decade. However, the people in the country are confused about the
face that will represent their government. The contemporary Australian politics has been feeling
its impact though the policies of the government have remained almost the same. The common
public does not feel any way to show their concern over this matter. However, some ministers
have also argued about the policy changes of the government have been the main reason of the
continuous change of the prime ministers. The proper arguments would be put up in this essay
effectively.
Five prime ministers of Australia and factors contributing to the changes
In this context the names and their tenures will be discussed as it is very important to
know to take the discussion further. The first prime minister in this entire context was Kevin
Rudd who belonged to the Labor Party in Australia. He served as the prime minister of Australia
from December 2007 to June 2010 (Craig 2013). He had faced some controversial moments as
argued by the experts. The controversies that surrounded him were regarding the Aboriginal and
Torres Strait islanders. He had apologized to the children of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait

2POLITICS
islanders who had been taken away from the families by the Australian government agencies till
the 1970s. Rudd had also called off the Australian troops from Iraq and signed the climate pact
(Kefford 2013). The reasons for his defeat have been many as well. After winning the elections
very easily, his popularity began to go down as he had begun an emission-trading scheme that
was a part of his environmental strategy (Craig 2013) He had started the practice of earning high
taxes from the profits in the mining sector as well. These things went against him altogether and
he the Deputy Prime Minister of the country proved to be a challenge to him in terms of his
leadership of Australia. He had to step down from his post in 2010 after losing the support of
most Labor party leaders (Kefford 2013).
The second person in this context was Julia Gillard who also belonged to the Labor
Party as well. She had served in the top post of Australian democracy from June 2010 to June
2013. Some of her controversial moments were when she passed the laws on the trading scheme
and taxes on mining (Walsh 2013). She had given a speech on misogyny where she had
completely slammed the opposition party (Donaghue 2015). Thus she caught the attention of
most people. The critics had been very much active about the policy she had taken about the
processing the asylum seekers to offshore. The incident took place that a ship was carrying
almost 90 asylum seekers when it had crashed in Christian Island and around 50 people were
being killed. This incident had made the people and the leaders of Labor party go against her.
She was defeated by Kevin Rudd again the re-election.
Kevin Rudd had again served as the Prime Minister of Australia for a very short term of
three months from June 2013 to September 2013. Rudd had completely made an overhaul of the
climate pacts and the asylum policies implemented by the former prime minister (Craig 2013)
Another important step he took was to appoint 11 women as ministers in his cabinet out of 30.