Now it’s our turn to pull a coup

There it was yesterday. The Wall Street Journal’s cheeky headline: “Australia to pick its new leader — with an election.”

We know, we know. Two governors-general have been required to swear in six prime ministers in a tick under nine years in the space of just three federal elections with the fourth announced yesterday by a PM who is yet another beneficiary of bloody political feuds.

The WSJ confirmed Australian politics has become an international joke where we are routinely mocked for a revolving door leadership and a penchant for spectacular party room coups that would make most sub-Saharan African nations blush.

But we are not worse than Italy as some of the lampooning would suggest. Rather, Australian political leadership has been turning over at a smooth Italianate pace (there have been precisely the same number of Italian prime ministers as we’ve had since 2010).

Count them out and put Kevin Rudd in twice as he was both popularly elected in 2007, got rolled in 2010 and made his way back to save the furniture in 2013. Then comes Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison.

Only Rudd and Abbott were first anointed by popular vote.

The others made their way into the Lodge by the dark business of political assassination. In August 2018, Scott Morrison pulled off a Stephen Bradbury — the last man or woman standing in his party room, or at least that is what he would have you believe — and moved his kit into the Lodge.

Given this, it is perhaps sensible that we don’t lean to US traditions of putting photographic portraits of our political leaders on the walls of post offices and other government buildings. The gyprock probably wouldn’t stand the constant hammering of tiny tacks and pretty soon the plasterers would have to be called in.

And sure, the avenue of prime ministers in Ballarat’s Botanical Gardens has become a boulevard of broken dreams in recent times with the bronze noggins of PMs chicaning crazily around the neatly trimmed lawns. Any more unrest and counting of numbers in party rooms may result in the busts of future PMs being floated out on pontoons on Lake Wendouree.

Yes, we are a global joke but I argue the laughs are with us and not on us. We like our politics both brutally unforgiving and constantly dynamic. Leadership spills are, as former Western Australia Labor leader, Eric Ripper, once opined, “crack cocaine for journalists.” And we should know.

But the general population is in it, too, for the overall amusement with a bit of schadenfreude thrown in. I mean who doesn’t like watching politicians come and go, those briefly ascendant grinning triumphantly and looking cautiously over their shoulders while those discarded go the blub in front of the nation?

It’s a breath of fresh air for our democracy. Nature’s makeover.

For those who haughtily assume that longevity in political leadership is desirable, I would counter by pointing at the longest serving non-monarchic leader in the world, Equatorial Guinea’s one and only, Teodoro Obiang Mbasango.

Obiang got the job in somewhat different Bradburian circumstances, after murdering all of his family, which coincided as the country’s ethno-political elite. His predecessor, also his uncle, Francisco Macías Nguema, is often referred to as “The Pol Pot of Africa” who had people killed for a long list of indiscretions, including wearing glasses.

Obiang had Macías superannuated by firing squad in 1979, and his unending reign began.

Obiang was elected unopposed in 1982 and again in 1989. In 1996, after opposition parties were permitted to run in elections, he won a thumping mandate from 98 per cent of eligible voters. In one district he recorded an impressive 103 per cent of the vote.

State run media continue to exalt Obiang as a living god and a man who can commit murder by his own hand or by decree without consequence either on Earth or on any other plane. He has an estimated net worth of US$600 million, making him one of the world’s wealthiest political leaders.

Under Obiang’s long, unbroken rule almost one sixth of Equatorial Guinea’s population have been killed or have disappeared, one third has fled ethnic and political persecution with the remaining 600,000 citizens sleeping fitfully at night, dreading a sudden knock on the door in the wee hours.

It is probably true that Obiang would have been dispatched in the back of a Nissan Navarra for some small calibre therapy by now, but happily for him and his ruling Democratic Party of Equatorial Guinea, oil and gas was discovered off shore in 1996 and subsequently the western world has taken to looking the other way.

In 2016, Obiang won his sixth term as president with 93.7 per cent of the vote.

It’s a fair bet to assume there have been no party room shenanigans in Equatorial Guinea, let alone dark murmurings from political colleagues that Obiang had “lost the base”.

I fully accept the catchcry, “We are better than Equatorial Guinea” is a modest boast and not one we might see rendered on T-shirts, knocked out in department stores on Australia Day. But we are, we really are better than Equatorial Guinea and not least of all because our political leadership is on high rotation.

Our vibrant, constantly refreshed political environment is smelling of roses, fertilised by the politically dead. And what’s more, in just 36 sleeps we get to do what the Labor and Liberal parties have become masters at over the last six years.

Tedious political commentators will be right along to admonish us that the people don’t elect prime ministers, their parties do. This is true to a point, which makes their finger-wagging doubly annoying. Ignore them, trust me, and they will go away.

It’s our turn to decide who gets the chocolates and who is sent packing. As The Wall Street Journal points out, it’s unusual, even controversial, but I think we owe it to ourselves to give it a red hot go.

This article was first published in The Australian on 12 April 2019