I’m being chastised by commenter TattooSydney for not having a thread about the elections in Australia. In my defense, I didn’t know they held elections in penal colonies.
At any rate, apparently the PM is quite a character.
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Annamal
Errr not really elections…
flukebucket
I just love starting a day off with a huge guffaw.
Thanks. I can tell it is going to be a great day.
Michael D.
Not only do they hold elections in Australia, but voting is compulsory. If you don’t vote, you can be fined.
And all Australians are characters. We’ve hosted several at our home and they are unfailingly friendly and always smiling.
JayR
What election? It was a coup. Fairly bloodless, though. The streets of Canberra are pretty quiet as we speak…
NobodySpecial
Can we trade Palin and a future GOP draft pick for the new PM?
JayR
Also, the United States was also a penal colony.
mclaren
Of course they hold elections in penal colonies. How do you think Schwarzeneggar became governor?
Matt
Can someone explain the politics of this person? Is this a good thing?
geg6
@Matt:
I know nothing of the politics of Australia, but what I read yesterday was that the coup was from the more progressive part of the Labour Party there.
But isn’t there an actual election coming up pretty quickly and isn’t Labour in deep shit in the polls?
Tattoosydney
She’s a foreign-born, lefty, female, unmarried, child-free woman with ginger hair who’s dating a hairdresser.
She made her way up through the hierarchy of our Labor Party, which means she’s as tough as boots, and she’s from the left wing of the party, which means she’s an expert with placing a stiletto quietly in a back. I have great hopes for her.
You can read an interview with her, conducted just after she became PM, here.
For the relationship between Australia and the US, it means business as usual, but then, it’s always business as usual.
Andrew
Reader’s Digest summary of new Australian PM Julia Gillard:
Very focused & competent politician with a sense of humour but also a ruthless streak. On policy substance she’s not actually all that different from the chap she’s just knifed (she replaced Rudd in the same way Gordon Brown replaced Blair, by party room vote rather than a popular election); basically the party made the switch because Rudd had done so many policy backflips that no-one was listening to him any more either inside or outside the party, so they’ve hit the reset button. There’s a summary up at 538 which has some inaccuracies but still is probably a fairly decent brief history for an outsider to read.
On the plus side, the opposition leader is a misogynist straight from about 1950 with a long record of being completely at sea when trying to debate women, so things could get entertaining as she takes him on.
And the reason you didn’t know this was on is that no-one did. From conception of the coup to execution took less than 24 hours. The whole country has a bit of a wtf look on its face.
Tattoosydney
@geg6:
Depends on how you read the polls. Labor’s primary vote is down allegedly to 35%, but most of the defecting Labor voters seem to have defected to the left and to the greens, not to the right.
I suspect there is a larger and more enduring supply of goodwill for Julia, who is a good bog lower class lefty (which has worked before), than their was for Kevin, who was a bureaucrat with the soul of a dentist.
Our election will be sometime this year. We have this odd system where our elections last for a few weeks, rather than taking over the entire country for eighteen months.
Jack Bauer
Good article, with her address as leader.
Slightly more progressive than Rudd, seems serious about the environment but we’ll see about that. My initial impressions are positive.
Tattoosydney
Thanks to Mr Cole for the thread, btw.
At least some Americans might know a little about politics in Austria now.
JayR
At least some Americans might know a little about politics in Austria now.
Nope. I’m still pretty clueless about what’s going on in Vienna.
(Sorry, couldn’t resist…)
Jeffro
@Tattoosydney:
Hey…what’re you trying to say there?
AxelFoley
Pwn’d.
AxelFoley
@NobodySpecial:
We’ll give ’em Condoleeza Rice, too, but we keep Tiger Woods and Eminem.
Redshirt
I’m disturbed by all this.
1. Why? Just a short while ago, Rudd was the toast of the country! I was there for the 08 Election, and he was great. What happened?
2. The leader of a nation can be deposed by the internal machinations of a political party. I know that’s how Parlimentary systems work, but… wow. Seems ripe for abuse.
3. I could not find anything about this in the US news. What the hell? I’d consider Australia a major country, major ally, and this seems to be big news. What the hell?!
MattF
Sorta interesting in a broader sense– every now and then someone raises the question of parliamentary-vs.-presidential political systems. But there isn’t much discussion of this ‘assassins-at-play’ aspect of parliamentary systems– that a government can just change overnight, and that’s just the way it is. Does this happen much in Austeralia?
JayR
@Redshirt:
It’s still by and large a mystery here in Australia, as Andrew pointed out in 11. It was about 10 pm in the US when it was a done deal so I’d wait another news cycle for it to be picked up.
toujoursdan
She may be more left wing, but she dumped the proposed tax on mining (which I think made complete sense) quickly enough. Reuters: Australia unveils tax on mining projects
@Redshirt:
It’s not really all that disturbing. In Westminster parliamentary systems you vote for a party, not the leader of it. I think it’s genius because it puts more focus on the manifesto of the party rather than the charisma of a person. Lots of people voted for G.W. Bush because they wanted to have dinner with him, which I thought is a huge flaw in the U.S. system.
Even with the Ottawa earthquake, there was a top story about it on the CBC News in Canada last night. Many of us wish the same thing would happen to Stephen Harper.
geg6
@JayR:
Yeah, I only heard about it because Sully posted about it.
someguy
@toujoursdan:
Plus it’d be pretty cool to wake up to a new President every so often. Things aren’t working out, and BAM! New President. The possibilities for radical change would be better, for sure.
NonyNony
The state of Georgia has elections quite frequently, you know.
Redshirt
@someguy: I’d say just the opposite: That would be a terror. Can you imagine what the Joe Lieberman’s of America would do if they could toss out the President on an internal party vote?
Hello President Huckleberry!
Maude
@Redshirt: \
Ah, President Palin
toujoursdan
The American system is very individualistic but the Westminister system tends to be more collectivist.
I’m more familiar with the Canadian system where you run as a party candidate and then are expected to vote the party line (except during designated “conscience votes”). If you don’t vote the party line you can be tossed out and then the party may run someone against you. The Prime Minister is merely the head of the party in power and can be replaced any time (s) he loses confidence of the party. (S)he will still remain in parliament unless they chose to resign, triggering a by-election. Of course the only people who vote for Prime Minister are people in the Prime Ministers Riding (district). Otherwise you vote solely for your Riding’s candidate.
In the States it appears to more of a popularity contest. Everyone votes for President and everyone votes for your congressperson and senator. Once elected, there is no expectation that they vote the party line and no discipline by the party if they chose not to. Every vote in Congress is a “conscience vote”.
They are just different. I like the collectivist orientation of the Parliamentary system more than the U.S. because to a great degree the focus is more on the manifesto of the party, it encourages stronger party identity and you know what you’re getting. But there are advantages of the U.S. system too.
El Cid
Look, the competition that matters right now in Australia is the pressure test between Jonathan and Jo, after the stellar performance by Marian and Callum. Jo now has to face “the Terminator”. (No spoilers, please.)
LD50
@JayR:
Generally our liberal media doesn’t pay much attention to events in foreign countries, unless it’s some country we want to bomb (or Israel).
PeakVT
We have this odd system where our elections last for a few weeks, rather than taking over the entire country for eighteen months.
Sounds like heaven.
licensed to kill time
When we saw this news yesterday on the teevee, my spousal unit said “Oh look, they’ve made Jodie Foster Prime Minister of Australia!”
;-)
ErinSiobhan
While these things can happen in parliamentary systems, they aren’t common. And they generally indicate a high level of dysfunction within the party when they do. The results are generally not good for the party when the knives come out.
The Liberal party in Canada is still recovering from the Martin-Chretien civil war and the Labour party in Britain is having their own problems after Gordon Brown’s ousting of Blair.
I’m kind of bummed that Rudd mismanaged things so badly that it came to this. And hoping Gillard can hold it all together for the election.
JayR
@ErinSiobhan:
Actually, I’m more than half convinced that the instigator for this was the unfortunate performance by the Socceroos, triggering a deep-seated need for national catharsis.
Johnny Pez
@toujoursdan:
Yeah, you say that now, but when you wake up to find that Doris is your new PM, you’ll sing a different tune.
RJ
@geg6:
Yes there are elections coming up, and no Labor is not in deep shit. The national poll on Tuesday had them 52-48 ahead.
Personally, I think Labor made a mistake in dumping boring but dependable in favour of new(ish) and flashy. Being the safe candidate wins elections, particularly when the opposition is lead by a religious zealot.
RJ
@LD50: Is Australia really that major an ally? Henry Kissinger once commented that he didn’t htink about Australia when he was shaving in the morning. It’s a country of some 23 million people on the other side of the world. Its size and geography make it pretty unimportant, though it routinely likes to boast of its skill in diplomatic fora. Perhaps it became viewed as a major ally when former PM John Howard gave everything W wanted and more.
RJ
@toujoursdan: She didn’t dump the proposed mining tax – she dumped the govt’s advertising campaign promoting it (in return for the mining companies dumping their own ads). The tax is still on the table.