Polls in Australia point to a change in government in elections set for May, with Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison risking being voted out after less than a year on the job — a short stay even in the self-styled coup capital of the democratic world.
Polls show Morrison’s Liberal Party is headed for its worst electoral defeat since 1983 and Australia getting a seventh change of prime minister in 10 years.
“The polling has really been consistently showing that the Labor Party are ahead by a significant margin,” said Glenn Kefford, a campaigns expert at Macquarie University. “The sentiment out there is that the Labor party are headed for victory, it’s just a question of what the size of that victory will be.”
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Three of Morrison’s Cabinet ministers have resigned before the campaign gets into full swing.
All three cited personal reasons for their departure, but the prospect of a contentious campaign followed by long periods languishing on the opposition benches undoubtedly made their decision easier.
Australian Minister for Women Kelly O’Dwyer described her motives for retiring as “complex,” but privately she is said to have complained that the coalition was seen as a bunch of “homophobic, anti-women, climate-change deniers.”
Liberal ministers sticking it out are increasingly facing difficult contests against a resurgent Labor and independent women furious at the government’s “blokeish” attitudes.
One commentator has dubbed it the revolt of the SPECS — socially progressive but economically conservative liberals.
This week, Australian Minister of Health Greg Hunt became the latest member of the Cabinet to see his political future thrown into doubt.
His former party colleague-turned-independent member of parliament Julia Banks announced that she would challenge him at the election, citing “unfinished business” with the party and saying the government had failed to tackle climate change.
The Liberal response oscillated between furious denunciations of unspeakable treachery and an insistence that she cannot possibly win.
Rather than propelling him along, some analysts believe the rise of the populism might have sown the seeds for Morrison’s downfall.
His short tenure has seen some clouds gathering in Australia’s long-glittering G20 economy, stirred by US President Donald Trump’s trade fight with China and jitters over Brexit.
Morrison has also been plagued by a debilitating battle between traditional small-government liberals and Trump-emboldened supporters.
The wounds from their successful ouster in August last year of former party leader and prime minister Malcolm Turnbull have festered.
“It was a catastrophic blunder,” said political pundit William Bowe, who runs a popular blog called The Poll Bludger, pointing to public disdain for the continued musical chairs in Canberra.
The party “got a rush of blood to the head and I think Brexit and Donald Trump fed into it,” Bowe said. “Trump and Brexit have shown that populist right-wing programs work if they are pursued aggressively and sold by an aggressive spokesperson.”
They sought to get rid of “this ‘milquetoast plutocrat’ Malcolm Turnbull and put in a tough political fighter, a bomb-thrower,” he said.
The polls and a recent shock byelection win for an independent woman in a Sydney seat that the party held for decades seemed to show the Liberals had badly misjudged the public mood.
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