Talk Elections

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leadership_spill

Horrendous system.

The constant revolving door of leaders on the federal and state level is a joke!

Horrendous system. Use a delegated convention.

Without it Abbott would never have gotten momentum, so HS.

Any member being able to start a spill is a little extreme, but FS on the whole.

I'll modify what I said earlier. To have the leader elected solely by caucus under normal circumstances is a bad idea. Membership should get a say too. But caucus should definitely have a right to replace the leader if they feel it necessary, hence why the idea of spills is a good one. But use them sparingly. Replacing Hawke with Keating and Turnbull with Abbott were good ideas and absolutely necessary. What the Liberals did in the '80s and Lab in the past decade were horrible ideas. Is there a credible reason? Is there a credible challenger? Is the challenger a proven quantity who can outperform the incumbent? Only if all those conditions are fulfilled do you pull the trigger.

Not very democratic, to say the least. But you'd have a revolving door leader situation no matter what system, because that's what Australian political culture is like.

Not a very good system to say the least.

But I guess that's a chicken and egg thing. Is the culture like that because it's so easy to get rid of the leader?

Yes, plus everyone is so focused on opinion polls down under.

I've noticed from my cursory knowledge of Australian politics that most Australian party leaders seem to fall in leadership challenges, whereas this virtually never happens in Canadian politics (the only case I can think of where this happened was when Stockwell Day defeated Preston Manning for the leadership of the CA).

It's only ever really happened to Heath and Thatcher in the UK as well (in a direct, open challenge).

Objectively hilarious.

This too, of course.

PC 1983? Alliance 2002?

Ah yes I remember the Alliance in '02. But it's not really the same in 1983, as Clark himself called the election, rather being forced into one like say in Britain in 1990 with Thatcher.

Not ideal, but dynamism is important, and it has managed to keep the Presidentialisation of Australian politics vaguely in check...vaguely...

Evidently spills wouldn't be called as often if they weren't as likely to succeed even if the rules were what they are. In Germany party leaders have to be reelected every year (at a convention - this silly confusion of party and caucus leadership in English-tradition parliaments is hard to wrap your mind around) and how often are they actually challenged? Not often. Instead, we read the tealeaves on their reelection with only 83% Yes votes.