Since 2010, Australia has changed its leader on five separate occasions: in 2010, twice in 2013, in 2015, and in 2018. Only one of these was at a general election, the rest were the handiwork of MPs and Senators. As a result, Canberra has earned the nickname ‘the coup capital of the western world’. While deep societal divisions and politically self-destructive behaviour have become depressing hallmarks of too many western democracies this century, the roots of Australia’s problems lie much higher up than elsewhere. Recent events there can only be explained by a remarkable combination of incompetence, factional powerplays, ideological warfare, and personal vengeance.
The cycle began in the centre-left Labor Party. Returning to office in 2007 after 11 and a half years in the wilderness, its newly-minted leader, Kevin Rudd, always enjoyed far greater popularity among voters than among his own party members. He lacked a powerbase in trade unions and Labor’s all-powerful factions. Complaints of micromanagement and bullying weakened a leadership that was never built on solid foundations. Once his poll numbers fell, and with an election looming—Australia has a three-year electoral cycle—his enemies panicked and toppled him in a night-time coup on 24 June 2010. As one Labor figure put it at the time: ‘This crypto-fascist [Rudd] made no effort to build a base in the party. Now that his only faction, Newspoll [the most widely-cited Australian polling agency], has deserted him he is gone.’
Julia Gillard, Rudd’s erstwhile deputy, was offered the Prime Ministership and seized it. To begin with, she had the problem of explaining why exactly she had taken over. Rudd’s support had fallen, but not catastrophically. Making matters worse, her election campaign, poorly managed to begin with, was sabotaged by damaging Cabinet leaks widely attributed to an embittered Kevin Rudd. Though Labor clung onto power—no first-term Australian federal government has lost office since 1931—it lost its majority and was forced to rely on independents and minor parties for support. In order to guarantee that support, one of the concessions demanded of her was the introduction of a carbon tax, which she explicitly had promised not to do during her election campaign. She steered it through Parliament, but her popularity never recovered. Under fierce attack from a ruthless opposition under Tony Abbott, and undermined from within by Kevin Rudd, the Government’s poll numbers deteriorated. Come 2013, the situation looked dire and there were predictions of a Labor wipe-out at the election due later that year. In a panic, Kevin Rudd, who still out-polled Gillard as preferred party leader, was reinstalled by the same factional leaders who deposed him. To no one’s surprise, Labor lost the 2013 election, though not by as great a margin as had been feared months earlier.
It is doubtful that anyone who observed Labor’s self-destruction imagined that the incoming Coalition Government—at the Federal level, the centre-right Liberal Party and rural-based National Party are always in coalition, even in opposition—would be foolish enough to emulate it. Somehow it managed to do so. Elected promising ‘no surprises’, Prime Minster Tony Abbott used his first budget in 2014 to propose, among other things, introducing a $7 ‘co-payment’ to see the GP and to completely deregulate university fees, neither of which had been flagged during the election campaign. His polling position weakened immediately. Though awarding a knighthood to Prince Phillip on Australia Day was perhaps his most embarrassing moment, continued poor judgment and a refusal to sack a chief of staff widely viewed as a bully by his MPs continued to erode his authority. In February 2015, several Liberal backbenches pushed for a leadership spill. Though no one directly challenged Abbott, nearly 40 per cent of his MPs and Senators voted in favour of the spill motion. Abbott was now on notice but failed to change his ways. Disappointing polls and mistakes continued. The end finally came in September of that year. Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull, whom Abbott had replaced as Liberal Leader in 2013, saw his chance. He challenged Abbott for the leadership and won. Like Rudd, Abbott did not take kindly to his removal, and spent the next three years publicly criticising government policy despite his pledge that ‘there will be no wrecking, no undermining, and no sniping’.
Assuming the Prime Ministership with great public expectations, Turnbull’s fortunes soon faded. Although unlike Julia Gillard, the reasons for his taking the leadership needed little public explanation given Abbott’s widespread unpopularity, he still had the problem of a bitter predecessor. Turnbull also never enjoyed the full support of many on the Liberal right. This caused two problems. First, in exchange for short-term support, the right forced Turnbull into policy compromises that undermined his credibility as they clearly went against his known beliefs. The requirement for a public vote before any same-sex marriage legislation is one example. More problematically, like Kevin Rudd, Turnbull was far more popular in the electorate than he was in his own party. The Liberal Party was, and remains, deeply split on ideological lines. The right, and much of the rank and file membership, is generally sceptical of man-made climate change and is socially conservative, while Tunbull is neither. Many in the Party and among the conservative commentariat viewed Turnbull as a closet Labor man who was turning their party to ‘Labor lite’. This meant that when his own popularity waned, the right grew restless. Turnbull blundered in his first few months by floating policy ideas and drifting. He compounded the situation by fighting a disappointing election campaign in 2016 that saw the Coalition reduced to a one-seat lower house majority. Though by the end of his prime ministership the government had stabilised in the opinion polls, his authority in the party never recovered from the 2016 debacle, and electoral defeat appeared likely.
All this culminated in the strange events of August 2018. For reasons that make little objective political sense, the right hatched a coup to overthrow Turnbull. While the immediate trigger was energy policy—Australia has not had a consistent energy policy for a decade—ideology and political delusion were the real driving factors. Attempting to catch his enemies unawares, Turnbull called a leadership contest. While Turnbull won, the narrow margin of victory only emboldened his enemies to force a second vote later that week. Although Turnbull was dispatched, the right botched the coup as their preferred candidate, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, was defeated by Scott Morrison, around whom the moderates rallied in a bid to keep Dutton out of the Prime Minister’s chair.
Since then, it has been all downhill for ‘ScoMo’. Fed up with the seemingly never-ending cycle of coups, support for the Coalition fell instantly. A disastrous by-election loss in Malcolm Turnbull’s old seat wiped out the Government’s majority in October 2018. Another MP defected to the crossbench the following month. Policy mistakes and ill-advised PR moves (like embarking on a bus tour of Queensland but being caught flying much of the way on a VIP jet) have reinforced the idea that the government is desperate and incompetent. While Labor’s turn to the left since 2013 could leave it vulnerable on some fronts, the governmentis too weak to capitalise on this, and it is unclear if the electorate is listening to it any longer. Morrison’s prognosis is bleak.
The saga briefly set out here offers many powerful lessons. Changing leaders may provide a short-term solution to flagging opinion polls, but risks creating longer-term problems. Destroying a leader in the name of ideological purity risks blowing up in the faces of the assassins. Further, in a parliamentary democracy, no leader, regardless of their mandate, can afford to alienate their party. Finally, deposed leaders set on revenge risk undermining their own legacies. Disappointingly, of the four ousted leaders, only Julia Gillard has conducted herself with a semblance of dignity since her political departure. Fortunately, there are signs that this dreadful cycle will soon come to an end, at least for the time being. The Labor Party, the likely victor at the upcoming election, is staffed with veterans of the Rudd/Gillard years who remember all too well the pain caused by continued instability. The chief protagonists of those years, Rudd and Gillard, are now gone. Labor’s leader since 2013, Bill Shorten, an experienced machine politician, is the first to serve a full parliamentary term since 2001. Moreover, both parties have now changed their internal rules to make it harder to remove a sitting Prime Minister. No doubt motivated by his own removal in 2010, and a desire to weaken the grip of the factions he held responsible, Rudd pushed through reforms during his brief restoration as PM. As a consequence, Labor’s caucus rules now require the support of 75 per cent of MPs and Senators to spill the leadership against a sitting Prime Minister. For the first time, it also gives ordinary Party members a say in choosing the leader—ALP leadership contests now give half the vote to members, and the other half to MPs and Senators. Following the backlash over Turnbull’s removal, Morrison’s Coalition belatedly followed suit in December 2018. The Coalition’s rule changes do not go as far as Labor’s—the election of leaders remains entirely the preserve of MPs and Senators—but still require a two-thirds majority of elected members to move a spill against an elected Prime Minister. While the Coalition’s problems run deeper than Labor’s—Labor’s divisions focused on personalities while the Coalition’s are in no small way ideological—even it is now likely to think twice before overthrowinganotherPrime Minister, particularly if it suffers a heavy electoral defeat. Perhaps, just perhaps, Australia will return to some measure of stability.