The revolving-door Australian prime ministership

Sydney: Malcolm Turnbull, the new Australian Prime Minister, already looks like a winner after his new cabinet began its first session after taking oath on Monday morning.

He has also achieved favourable poll results within days in office, a feat that his predecessor — who was eventually dumped in a party room ballot last Monday — could not pull off in months.

Turnbull is getting the nod from present and past Liberal leaders like former federal treasurer Peter Costello who called the dumping of Tony Abbott, the former Prime Minister, “a big execution” and Australian media has quoted him describing “most certainly” the correct decision for the Liberal Party.

The pressure is now on Bill Shorten, the leader of the opposition, and analysts believe the Labor Party may also change its leader if Turnbull keeps surging in opinion polls.

A nationwide poll taken a day after the leadership change showed voters were swamping back to the ruling coalition after Turnbull took charge, putting him ahead of Shorten as the preferred prime minister with a lead of 61.9 per cent to 38.1 per cent.

The government under Tony Abbott, the ousted Prime Minister, was trailing in all opinion polls in the past seven months and the best it could do was 48-52, and much lower otherwise. A total of 30 successive News polls during Abbott’s government were favouring Labor to win the next elections, which are less than a year away.

The opinion polls play an important role in changing the fortunes of an Australian leader and according to John Howard, the second longest serving Liberal Prime Minister, Tony Abbott could have survived if the polls were not so damning for the Liberal Party.

“Politics is relentlessly driven by the laws of arithmetic and I do think, if the polls had been different, even to a modest but measurable degree, there may not have been a change.” Howard was quoted as saying in the Australian media.

The assessment of the outgoing Prime Minister stands in contrast to Howard and Abbott believes that reliance on polls is destabilising the political system.

“Poll-driven panic has produced a revolving-door prime ministership which can’t be good for our country. And a febrile media culture has developed that rewards treachery,” Abbott had said in his statement the morning after he was deposed.

Turnbull is the 29th Prime Minister in Australia’s 114-year parliamentary history and the 5th in the past five years averaging one every year in these recent years.

A political observer who saw this drama unfold in the parliament’s corridors calls it a political circus.

But he draws a positive conclusion from this “revolving-door” tradition.

“It’s the beauty of Australian democracy that a leader is closely watched within his or her own party and people don’t have to wait for elections to see the change in leadership if a prime minister has low ratings,” says Professor Mohammad Ali, President of the Canberra-based think tank Australia Forum.

The Australian media has also published the results of the Roy Morgan SMS poll that shows the new PM’s polling boost came from both ALP and Greens supporters, who backed Turnbull over Shorten, the Labor leader.

Turnbull was once in the Labor Party and was the face of the republican movement but according to Pervaiz Buttar, a leading Sydney lawyer and analyst, the ideological lines in Australian politics have become too thin.

“He [Turnbull] may be described by some as the cupboard Labor but he will be a true Liberal in spirit. The Labor Party in Australia is right wing too. He [Turnbull] is more preferred by Labor voters in the polls so he will try and make them as an audience,” Buttar said.

Some commentators also believe a moderate Turnbull will be able to unify Australia.

“Malcolm Turnbull’s prime ministership is a chance to unify Australia by leading from the centre, something that Tony Abbott never be able to achieve,” wrote Peter Hartcher in Sydney Morning Herald.

But the new prime minister has to unify his own Liberal Party first. The Liberal Party’s conservative flank is cautiously monitoring his political approach while not hiding its distaste for a republican Turnbull, who has allayed some fears by making ideological adjustments and moving away from his own stand on climate change and gay marriage.

The strength of Turnbull is his economic management skills and he will be more directed towards damage control of what the outgoing government has left behind in this area.

“He is pitching to the business end of town, since that is his forte as an experienced banker and investor,” Buttar said.

Turnbull has been described in the Australian media as the pro-business PM after his election and the business community is “overwhelmingly positive” to his rise as prime minister. He is expected to bring intellect and business acumen to the government.

— The writer is a journalist based in Sydney