Morrison first recent Australian leader to survive 3 years

20/5/2022 12:36

        In at least one sense, Scott Morrison has become the most successful Australian prime minister in years just by standing for reelection on Saturday. He is the first to survive in office from one election to the next since 2007. That year, the government of Australia’s second-longest-serving Prime Minister John Howard was voted out after a reign of almost 12 years. Between Howard and Morrison, there have been four prime ministers including Kevin Rudd who served twice during an extraordinary period of political instability in Australia. Rudd’s second stint ended when voters ousted his center-left Australian Labor Party government in the 2013 election. The other three prime ministers were toppled by their own parties, which panicked amid poor opinion polling. So too was Rudd during his first stint that set the revolving door to the prime minister’s office spinning. Morrison’s relative longevity can be explained in part by his conservative Liberal Party tightening the rules that enable th
        em to activate their leader’s ejector seat. But most put his survival for a full three-year term down to the credit Morrison is given for leading his coalition to a narrow victory in the last election in 2019 when Labor was favored to win. Some betting agencies had been so confident of a Labor victory that they had paid out the party’s backers before polling day. The 54-year-old former tourism marketer was labeled the “accidental prime minister” in 2018 when his government colleagues chose him to replace then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. It was yet another overthrow of a prime minister without involving voters for reasons not fully explained in a process that Australians increasingly loathe. Polls suggested Morrison would have one of the shortest tenures of any Australian prime minister with elections only months away. His critics argue that his success has been a triumph of style over substance. The satirical website Betoota Advocate labeled him “Scotty from Marketing” when
        he first came to power and the description has gained popularity since. Opposition leader Anthony Albanese has been nicknamed Albo since he was a child in keeping with a time-honored Australian tradition of abbreviating names and often adding “o” at the end.