At The Australian, Labor grey beard Gareth Evans offers his explanation for why Aussie PMs keep getting the boot:
What explains Australia’s bizarre leadership churn? No prime minister has served a full term since 2007, with five different faces becoming prime minister in the last five years: Julia Gillard, Kevin Rudd, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull — and now, in the latest party-room coup, Scott Morrison, whom most Australians, let alone international observers, would struggle to identify in a line-up.
All this is happening in a long-established, conflict-free, and above all prosperous parliamentary democracy, enjoying a record 27th year of uninterrupted economic growth.
Stop right there. Evans has already missed the point and condemned every other leader that repeats his view. “Uninterrupted growth” is not delivering for most Australians for whom living standards are falling in per capita terms. The headline growth rate only serves to disguise this for politicians. This is reinforced by our leading economic institutions that actually appear to believe that GDP is the best measure.
This is the disconnect that is killing PMs. Until living standards are raised on a per capita basis, or the plan to bring this about is laid out clearly, then headline numbers like GDP are only going to infuriate the polity because it disavows their lived experience every single day.
This is a kind of psychological abuse by the political system of the polity. It creates enormous anger. The result is that no PM can hold his polling support for long. That then opens the opportunity for the ambitious and ruthless to tear them down.
The fundamental problem is not the Parliament. It is the mismanagement of the economy for the few.
