Who is the worst Australian Prime Minister of the 21st century?
It’s not an easy choice, we know. Since 2000, seven politicians have led this country - and all were regrettable in different ways.
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Australia’s worst prime minister of the 21st century. Goodness that’s a difficult, nigh impossible judgment call, isn’t it?
How to stratify 25 years of constant disappointment, and irritation, and frustration?
How to reconcile the two seemingly contradictory facts that our country is better governed than most, and yet host to such mediocrities in positions of leadership?
Sorry, I’m straying into opinion territory there. It is your opinion that matters.
To celebrate the launch of the new news.com.au app, we’re celebrating the people, places and events we’ll never forget from the first quarter of the 21st century by asking for Australia’s view. Our 25@25 series will finally put to bed the debates you’ve been having at the pub and around dinner tables for years – and some that are just too much fun not to include.
We have endured leaders with odd eyebrows, odd gaits, odd accents, odd personalities, and most importantly, odd policies.
Whatever your political slant, you will find there are multiple candidates for the unwanted crown. Four Liberal prime ministers, and three from Labor. All flawed in their own sometimes charming, sometimes maddening ways.
Thankfully, the taskmasters at news.com.au have asked me to lay out the most glaring weaknesses of these beglassed men (yes, Abbott and Turnbull did wear glasses at various times), plus Julia Gillard. An easier job, I think, than listing their strengths.
So, you may read the summaries below with the knowledge that your narrator is a cantankerous boor with a serial lack of respect for virtually all politicians. And then you may ignore every word he writes, and vote accordingly.
John Howard: 1996-2007
As someone who progressed through multiple years of high school-level cricket with the beamer as his accidental stock ball, I profess some respect for John Howard, and his unique interpretation of short-pitched bowling. No risk of a beamer there.
Is it good? No. Does it betray any latent talent? No. Will it provoke anger, rather than pity, from the umpire? Also no. This last part is its strongest feature.
Mr Howard is the longest-serving prime minister on this list, having won four elections, and it is fair to say he displayed the most political skill. There’s a reason Mr Howard is still wheeled out for every election campaign, almost 20 years into retirement.
Two indisputable achievements: the introduction of the GST, and the gun buyback scheme, implemented in the wake of the Port Arthur Massacre. Both ideas faced immense opposition. And Mr Howard’s determination to persist with them solidified his reputation as a politician of principle, rather than convenience.
There were also weaknesses. Mr Howard and his treasurer, Peter Costello, left Australia’s federal government with a structural deficit from which it is still struggling to recover. His closeness with American President George W. Bush got Australia mired in Iraq. And the prime minister’s staunch social conservatism sometimes left him out of step with the mainstream of Australian society.
For example, Mr Howard remained stubbornly resistant to the idea of apologising to the Stolen Generations – something his successor would do shortly after he left office, having lost his own seat.
Kevin Rudd: 2007-2010, 2013-a bit later in 2013
And here we have that successor.
Mr Rudd ran the triumphant Kevin07 election campaign, which convinced a critical mass of Australians, at least temporarily, that he was a fine and normal human being.
He then shepherded Australia through the Global Financial Crisis, and delivered a formal apology to the Stolen Generations in parliament.
His tenure ended aprubtly in 2010, for famously ill-defined reasons that hobbled his replacement, Julia Gillard, as she sought to assert her own authority over the office.
The heart of the matter was Mr Rudd’s toxic relationship with many of his colleagues, who resented what they described as controlling, micromanaging behaviour.
After years spent surreptitiously, or often quite blatantly, undermining Ms Gillard, whose unpopularity spurred Labor’s MPs to act, Mr Rudd returned to the prime ministership and presided over the government’s defeat to Tony Abbott.
Mr Rudd is still around. He’s currently serving as our ambassador to the United States, a job which requires him to navigate sensitive diplomacy with the Trump administration. It’s all the more awkward because he was, previously, a quite fierce critic of President Trump.
Julia Gillard: 2010-2013
Ms Gillard was forever haunted by the manner in which she became prime minister, and her struggle to justify it to the public.
In the hours after she displaced Mr Rudd – or knifed him, if you prefer emotive language – Ms Gillard described the government as a “good” one that had “lost its way”. It never quite managed to find its way again.
There are, however, achievements to her name, such as the introduction of the National Disability Insurance Scheme.
Ultimately, a single sentence uttered before the 2010 election severed Ms Gillard’s relationship with much of the public. Having promised explicitly that “there will be no carbon tax under a government I lead”, she then introduced one, having made a deal with the Greens to scrape into minority government.
The breach in trust fuelled then-opposition leader Tony Abbott, who proceeded to win power in 2013, after Ms Gillard had already been pushed aside by Mr Rudd.
Ms Gillard did contribute one of the most famous moments in recent Australian political history with her searing anti-misogyny speech on the floor of the House.
Tony Abbott: 2013-2015
Mr Abbott was, by all assessments, an extraordinarily effective opposition leader. His time as prime minister didn’t go nearly as well.
The root of Mr Abbott’s problems was his government’s first budget in 2014, which sought to make sweeping cuts to public spending, including some that violated his election promises.
Among the pledges he did honour was the most famous one: to “stop the boats”, and thus stop the stream of people risking their lives on boats to seek asylum in Australia.
There was a particularly awkward moment, in 2015, when Mr Abbott decided to award Prince Philip a knighthood, having revived Australia’s honours system. The move was widely seen as out of touch, and Mr Abbott himself later admitted it had been “an injudicious appointment”.
Malcolm Turnbull: 2015-2018
Mr Turnbull almost quit politics after his catastrophically unsuccessful stint as opposition leader during the Rudd government. But he lingered for long enough to serve as a minister in the Abbott government, and then as prime minister, having brought Mr Abbott down.
The chief accusation against Mr Turnbull is that he was a do-nothing prime minister, forever too cautious to propose significant reforms, and too constrained by his party’s right wing to implement his preferred agenda, particularly on the issue of climate change.
He would point to a policy like Snowy Hydro 2.0 as a counterweight to that argument.
Mr Turnbull ultimately left the job in particularly acrimonious circumstances after a week of high drama, which saw Peter Dutton challenge him for the leadership, only for Scott Morrison to skate through the middle and claim the prize.
Scott Morrison: 2018-2022
Mr Morrison was in charge during the most consequential crisis the world had faced since the GFC. He guided Australia through the Covid pandemic, working closely with the states.
Whether he struck the right balance, in that endeavour, is a matter of opinion.
Politically speaking, he secured the permanent adoration of Liberal supporters by winning an election against the odds in 2019.
But controversies eventually took their toll, particularly Mr Morrison’s decision to fly to Hawaii with his family while Australia was fighting horrendous bushfires. His glib remark in one interview, saying “I don’t hold a hose, mate,” quickly became infamous.
Anthony Albanese: 2022-present
The one prime minister on this list whose political career has yet to reach a painful end. Emphasis, there, on the “yet”.
The greatest failure, during Mr Albanese’s first term, was his unsuccessful campaign to establish an Indigenous Voice to Parliament, which was rejected by the Australian people at a referendum.
Now he is dealing with global turmoil, with wars in Ukraine and Gaza supplemented by a recalcitrant second Trump administration, which is determined to impose sanctions of varying severity upon the rest of the world.
How will it end? Not well, if the rest of this list is any guide.
Not just a political junkie? Vote in the other 25@25 polls below.
Originally published as Who is the worst Australian Prime Minister of the 21st century?
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