Australia is now less politically stable than Italy
AUSTRALIA has had six leadership challenges in the past eight years, with five different prime ministers and experts warn our sovereignty is now at risk.
National
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PETER Dutton is Australia’s own Donald Trump and our constant revolving door of prime ministers is hindering Australia’s reputation abroad, placing us behind countries like Italy for political stability, according to experts.
John Wanna, professor of politics at Australian National University, said in some respects Italy — who has had countless changes of government in the past 50 years — was doing better than Australia currently as the European nation was undergoing “a period of stability”.
“Italy in a sense has settled down somewhat recently over the past 20 years … Australia has fallen into that same pit that Italy was in during some of its worst times,” he said.
“For a country with compulsory voting and a two party system we really should have more stability than we do. Even in multi-party countries like Germany, where there should be much more instability, Angela Merkel has been in power for 10 years.”
Italy has just sworn in a new Prime Minister, Giuseppe Conte, in June but many of its leaders have remained in power for two or more years in recent times. Silvio Berlusconi served for two separate terms equalling eight years.
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The Australia Institute deputy director Ebony Bennett said Australia was facing a “real fork in the road” in regards to Peter Dutton’s challenge for Prime Minister and his platform was very similar to that of the US President.
“This could definitely be Australia’s Trump moment depending on how the party room votes over the coming weeks or days,” Ms Bennett said.
“Peter Dutton’s hard line on immigration and his populist message on energy is very similar to the Trump campaign in its early days.”
Ms Bennett said the constant instability in leadership within both major parties “does harm Australia’s reputation internationally”.
“In order to successfully do business and engage in international politics we need to be seen to stick to our word and anything that puts that at threat does hinder our reputation internationally.”
But Professor Wanna said the rise in populist politics had led to revolving doors of leadership for many nations.
“The broad trend is to remove leaders or to get them to resign when things are going wrong. We’re seeing a lot of leadership changes in Canada, leadership changes in Europe and even in Britain we have seen leaders resign or face instability,” he said.
“A lot of politicians are simply focused on winning and staying in office. They are professional politicians and they focus too much on the polls.”
Australia has had six leadership challenges in the past eight years, with five different prime ministers and Professor Wanna said Australia’s sovereignty was at risk as a result.
“It goes to trust in a government and consistent treatment from any one government and there is definitely increasing sovereign risk in relation to investments if there is continued change to leadership,” Professor Wanna said.
“People in the business community are getting more and more worried by political developments and lack of stability.”
Bligh Grant, political expert at the University of Technology Sydney, said he did not believe Australia’s reputation was being impinged by changes to leadership or that we were worse than other countries.
“The fact that you have a change in leadership at a prime ministerial level would not fundamentally impact the opinion of other world leaders about the robust nature of our democracy,” Dr Grant said.
“(World leaders) might see it as a point of interest but (leadership changes) in no way undermine the profound respect they have for our Westminster system of democracy.
“The idea that Australia is becoming a laughing stock due to its revolving door of leaders is just wrong and there are many other countries that are going through the same thing as Australia. It is the state of modern politics.”
Queensland MP, and former Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, yesterday challenged Malcolm Turnbull for the leadership of the Liberal Party after days of increased tension and speculation he wanted the top job.
The 47 year old, who has been in parliament for 17 years, received 35 votes in the party room in a snap poll called by the Prime Minister.
Malcolm Turnbull won the vote with 48 supporters.
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