Roll up, roll up for Australia’s incredible exploding prime ministers. Five in six years and, seemingly, soon to be six. How can this possibly be? Let’s begin by examining each case.
Kevin Rudd explodes in 2010: Fresh from the highs of being the most popular prime minister in modern history following the ousting of a vestigial John Howard and spectacular GFC stimulus, Kevin Rudd exploded in 2010 when he abandoned his (advertised) core belief of carbon mitigation in favour of no carbon policy and a “Big Australia”. He then made things much worse for himself when he launched the Resources Super Profits Tax which triggered a wild rent-seeker attack. Julia Gillard assassinated the PM even as he won the political battle on the latter.
Julia Gillard explodes in 2013: Fresh from her slaying of Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard found herself doing a good impersonation of Lady Macbeth in which she could never remove the blood stains. Dogged by illegitimacy she was vulnerable to a violent assault upon her integrity by Opposition leader Tony Abbott over the implementation of the carbon price, which was itself the result of a hung Parliament election victory following the killing of Rudd. Moreover, Gillard struggled to implement the carbon price as the Reserve Bank engineered a moderate house price correction which was designed to “make room” for a mining boom that was already going bust. She was slain herself by a vengeful Rudd after two years of carbon and house price pain.
