Have Australian politics stabilized or will we see more prime ministers with shortened terms?

By: opoudjis | Post date: May 9, 2017 | Comments: No Comments
Posted in categories: Australia

Polling for the major parties even and low at 37%.
Parties eroded both from their radical flanks (Labor by Greens, Liberals by host of right wing parties), and from centrist populists (Nick Xenophon).
Liberal Party split between moderates and conservatives, with conservatives openly sniping at Turnbull or breaking away, and several conservative pretenders waiting in the wings.
Only the embarrassment of having more leadership spills than Labor is holding the Lib conservatives back.
Rudd’s last hurrah as second-time PM was to change the rules for how the leader of the Labor party is voted in, to give the membership a vote, and prevent repetitions of rapid coups.
No obvious challengers within the Labor party to Shorten right now; Albanese and Plibersek to his left are being loyal.
Labor, after a lot of bloodletting, is currently stable, and have put structures in place to keep them stable; but that may well change again if they’re in government. The Libs are not looking like a happy family in government, and they’ve never had the discipline around factions that Labor did.
The fundamentals that toppled all those PMs in a row are still there: neck-to-neck polling, panicky parliamentarians, populace disengaged with the major parties, lack of ideological cohesion or direction in the major parties, personality-driven rather than caucus-driven politics.