“Canberra is the coup capital of the Western world,” one commentator wrote, and Tony Abbott may be set for the chopping block.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott.
Stefan Postles / Getty Images
It's been 15 years since the American author Bill Bryson arrived in Australia to pen another of his famed travel memoirs, opening his account with the admission that he had lost track of who the prime minister was.
"I am forever doing this with the Australian prime minister—committing the name to memory, forgetting it (generally more or less instantly), then feeling terribly guilty," Bryson wrote in the first lines of In A Sunburned Country . "My thinking is that there ought to be one person outside Australia who knows."
Bryson shouldn't feel guilty. Keeping track of who holds Australia's top job has become increasingly more difficult in recent years, as the Great Southern Land lurches from one unpopular leader to the next. On Monday, current Prime Minister Tony Abbott may be unseated in an internal party revolt, with Australians preparing for their fifth leader in just eight years.
The knives are out for Abbott after a series of disastrous missteps on his behalf, capped off by his left-field decision last month to award a knighthood to Prince Philip. The decision, announced on the country's national holiday, to honor the often controversial husband of Queen Elizabeth above any number of others flabbergasted Australians, including many in Abbott's own conservative party. In terms of surprises from the monarchist leader, it perhaps ranked second only to his decision last year to resurrect the system of knighthoods and dameships to begin with.
The symbolism of Abbott's 'knightmare,' as the tabloids have since termed it, now stands as the tipping point in his tenure as prime minister, but would hardly have been fatal were it not for his already disastrously low poll numbers, according to Julia Baird, a presenter with the state-funded Australian Broadcasting Corporation and columnist for the New York Times. "Tony Abbott has always been an unpopular leader, and has failed to persuade the electorate of the merit of his reforms, or to create a convincing narrative about his core economic policies," Baird told BuzzFeed News.
"The budget last May was demonstrably skewed towards placing the burden of fiscal restraint on the more vulnerable: the sick, the young, the poor," Baird said. "There have also been too many 'surprises,' policies introduced after the election without forewarning, and backflips on 'signature' policies."
Abbott's Liberal Party was swept to power in September of 2013 after years of infighting in the center-left Labor Party that saw the then-government remove Kevin Rudd as prime minister in 2010 in favor of the country's first female leader, Julia Gillard, only to then oust her in 2013 and return Rudd to the top job. Despite never enjoying high personal popularity himself, Abbott's steadfast and dogged leadership while in opposition helped his party coast to victory. The Liberals represented stability, while Labor was all chaos. Or, at least, that's how it used to be.
Julia Gillard.
Lisa Maree Williams / Getty Images
SOURCE: BuzzFeed
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