Impact of Change in Prime Ministers in Australia

This paper discusses the frequent change of Prime Ministers in Australia and its impact on the country and public policies. It explores the reasons behind the changes and the consequences they have on Australia's reputation and governance.

Running head: IMPACT OF CHANGE IN PRIME MINISTERS IN AUSTRALIA
IMPACT OF CHANGE IN PRIME MINISTERS IN AUSTRALIA
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1IMPACT OF CHANGE IN PRIME MINISTERS IN AUSTRALIA
The Prime Minister of Australia is the head of the government of Australia and the
nation. Since 2007, the Prime Minister is the member of the House of Representatives who
escorts the parliamentary party with the help of the larger part of the members in the house.
The Prime Minister is chosen by the votes of the members belonging to the government. The
Prime Minister does not have a fixed tenure in Australia unlike other countries. The current
Prime Minister of Australia is Scott Morrison. He is the 30th Prime Minister of Australia and
the leader of the Liberal party since 2018. This paper talks about the reason of the frequent
change of Prime Ministers in Australia and its influence on Australia and the public policies.
The members of the government vote the Prime Minister of Australia by casting
votes. When a political party tastes victory and has won the government, then the members of
the winning party chooses an internal member of their party to serve as the Prime Minister.
This nature of the parliamentary system is the major reason for the consistent change in the
Prime Ministers in Australia. Australia has seen six prime ministers in the matter of only ten
years. Australia follows the old British system that when a caucus member wants to
unappoint a person they can do it whenever they want and can appoint according to their
preference whenever they want. The process of replacing is very easy as making majority of
the lawmakers of the party signing a petition that later triggers the leadership ballot. Australia
has garnered international attention because of the odd habit of the government of banishing
prime ministers and appointing new ones that has affected the major and prominent parties
the right liberals and the Labor Party that are centrists.
The instability of the leadership of the Labor party shows its paucity moral cores. The
tendency of consistent coups started in June 2010. The last Labor Prime Ministers Julia
Gillard and Kevin Rudd had similar outlooks on policies. The feud between Julia Gillard and
Kevin Rudd for three years was not about creating a completely different party nor was it
about a different vision that they had for the betterment of Australia. Julia Gillard had

2IMPACT OF CHANGE IN PRIME MINISTERS IN AUSTRALIA
challenged Kevin Rudd to a leadership ballot as his immense popularity plunged due to the
missteps of series of programs and policies imposed by him. Rudd declines to contest for the
ballot. During this time, the Labor party becomes unsuccessful in winning the majority. Later
Gillard becomes unsuccessful due to making schemes for pollution levy. Gillard previously
during her elections had pledged that there would be no tax imposed during her tenure that
caused backlash and protests around Australia. She had contradicted to whatever she had
promised before the election. She introduced mining tax that generated very less revenue
(Curtin, 2015). The urge of maintaining a majority made Gillard associate with MP’s who
had faced sexual harassment and other back lashes, she also attacked the foreign workers who
were temporary with her policies. A poll documented that Gillard would lose the national
election and the Labor party had chances of winning only if Rudd was back in his position
paving way for Rudd to be the Prime Minister once again after three years (Wilson, 2014).
Rudd abandoned the emission of carbon trading scheme (Crowley, 2017). His style of
leadership became his enemies. If the negotiating position of the Labor party over their work
of legislation is to be looked, it was impossible to understand the position of Gillard and
Rudd on it.
Tony Abbott became the prime minister of Australia after Kevin Rudd. He served as
the Prime Minister from 2013 to 2015. Abbott elected as a Liberal leader lead the coalition to
win at the elections in 2013. The Liberals had different ideologies. They had a clear idea and
program in their mind. They want to build Australia in a different way according to how they
perceive and have an image in mind. Abbott established legislation into the parliament to
nullify the carbon tax and started Operation Sovereign Border the policy of the Coalition to
stop illegitimate maritime arrivals. South Korea, China, Japan signed free trade agreements
with Australia under the leadership of Abbott (Robertson, 2017). The Australian federal
budget introduced by the government under Abbott’s leadership. He faced backlash from his

3IMPACT OF CHANGE IN PRIME MINISTERS IN AUSTRALIA
opposition. He was called cruel, inexplicable, and unfair and a huge number of budget
savings procedure were blocked by in the Senate. People started noticing that the slogans he
used to preach does not stand for anything that he does for the government. He set up
programs that imprisoned refugees in unsound prison camps, dollars in billions were cut from
education and health, and he also put paramilitary forces into the streets of Melbourne to
check immigration papers of the pedestrians that came as a shock to the people of Australia
(Savva, 2016). People of Australia reacted to Abbott with horror. People later then responded
to Abbott by mobilisation and the determination to remove his from his post due to these
reasons that were not favourable for the common people residing in Australia. After
removing Abbott came in as the new Prime Minister of Australia was Malcolm Turnbull.
Malcolm Turnbull served the country as a Prime Minister from the year 2015 to 2018.
The Australia Turnbull wanted to build, as a government was not any different from the
vision of any other Liberal vision. The programs crafted by him and the vote to pass them
every time confirms this. Turnbull made budgets that were made to oppress the poor and to
reward and be beneficial for the rich people, put refugees in prison camps, to make the public
end spending on anything that was not a road for any private cars or some mine for private
coal benefits and profits and many more. Malcolm had made many symbolic changes in the
government to make sure the people realised that it was worth the shift and he was worth it.
He postponed the polices that were put forth by the government by Abbott in abolishing
public healthcare and put up new policies that introduced Medicare co-payment. Malcolm
had allowed casting a conscience vote on marriage of the same sex (Dreher, 2017). Malcolm
paved way for empowering legislature through the Parliament. Malcolm did many things that
empowered the country and were a change from the government run by Abbott, which was a
breath of fresh air for people in Australia. He did things like got kids out of detention (Firth,
2016). He signed the China free trade agreement, he secured a dispensation from tariff

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inflation for finished Australian steel, exporting in the United States. For hi-technology
innovations, Malcolm had introduced high profile programs. Malcolm had managed to
maintain positive and healthy relationship with the volatile president of the United States
Donald Trump (McIlroy, 2017). The economy of Australia was going very well as for the last
decade there was no recession in the country and Turnbull had maintained that very well. He
performed pretty well during his tenure as a leader, internationally in regional, bilateral and in
global forums and meetings. However, Malcolm had made blunders during his tenure as well.
He was appointed as the Prime Minister as a replacement of the cruel Prime Minister then
Tony Abbott. People expected Malcolm to bury the political programs and policies that were
put forth by Abbott. Malcolm confirmed that he would follow Abbott’s policies and programs
that were concerning global warming and the refugees. Somehow, Malcolm’s government
did not stop threatening the poor and they wanted to keep education from the rest of the
people just like the government by Abbott. Malcolm failed to provide a comprehensive
reform of the tax system in Australia. Despite of many positive changes in the government
Malcolm somehow could not communicate and set a concrete narrative for his own
government. It has been seen that Turnbull had not performed as decisively he had been
expected to. The events during his time as Prime Minister disappointed people when people
came to know that the events were mostly driven by his ego rather than an effective policy.
Thus, Turnbull’s attempt in leading the party did not go well. This situation made way for the
current Prime Minister of Australia Scott Morrison.
Scott Morrison is currently serving as the 30th Prime Minister of Australia. He was
elected in 2018 defeating Malcolm Turnbull. Scott Morrison has not been elected for a very
long time but during his first week of tenure, he made a overseas trip to Jakarta the capital of
Indonesia (Laksmana, 2018). He went to Indonesia for the Australia-Indonesia Business
Forum and declared a deal of free trade between the nations that was negotiated under the

5IMPACT OF CHANGE IN PRIME MINISTERS IN AUSTRALIA
foregoing Turnbull Government (Abdullah, 2017). Morrison also raised an issue of Xinjiang
re-education camps and the abuses against Uyghur Muslim minority in a private meeting in
Singapore with Chinese politician and premiere Li Keqiang (McCarthy and Song, 2018).
There is not much to discuss about the current Prime Minister of Australia as it has just been
one year of his term in office. People have to await to see the changes he makes in the
government for the development of the country or when suddenly someone new due to some
arising political situations might replace him.
The government has paid an irrecoverable price because of the change. The frequent
change in Prime Ministers has created a madness among polls that shows a significant
collapse in their main votes. The government is already in shortage of funds to finance and
conduct the next elections and the events that are occurring are not going to gain generosity.
It has been seen that Turnbull had donated a huge amount for their elections (Gunn and
Mintrom, 2017). These leadership scrimmages have reduced the long-term focus on the
government. Due to new leaders coming all the time, the focus has shifted on short term
goals. Policy challenges are not being addressed properly or have been solved, they have just
been demolished. Due to the situations good governance and effective policy development
and implementation has been eschewed mostly. The lack in one particular leader sustaining
for a long time has damaged the reputation of Australia and labelled Australia as a politically
instable country. The short-term political effectiveness of the public policy across Australia
and the drifting away from good governance questions the national standing of the country
(Fraenkel, 2017). Certain issues like energy policy and climate change, housing affordability,
high cost of living in a country of depressed wages, poor productivity of the nation has not
been addressed and recognised properly (Brennan and Lo, 2017). These have reflected in the
poor social, economic and the environmental performance of the country. This has paved way
for people to think Australia as an unstable country despite of all the positives and various

6IMPACT OF CHANGE IN PRIME MINISTERS IN AUSTRALIA
achievements (Dowding, 2017). More than the government the people have suffered, as they
had to adopt different policies all over again in a limited given time. Different leaders came
with different political agenda that had to be followed by the people of Australia (Melleuish,
2018). The country’s frequent change in Prime Ministers over the last ten years and the
consistent change in the government and the bureaucratic personnel had left many people in
Australia bewildered and perplexed.
The frequent change of Prime Ministers in Australia has had a huge impact on the
reputation of the country on a global forum. This has raised the question of political
instability of Australia. This has affected the people the most as emphasis has not been put on
the long-term development of the country. The parliamentary system has played a vital role
in this situation as the system has the power to change and elect Prime Ministers whenever
and whomever they want. People have been neglected due to the ongoing political situations
among the parties and the government. Many countries have experienced political instability
in different forms and the power play of the politicians, inadequate focus on the policies and
failure to cope up with the government’s own policy challenged. However, Australia should
be admired for avoiding the worst outcomes that could have aroused in this political situation.

7IMPACT OF CHANGE IN PRIME MINISTERS IN AUSTRALIA
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