Election Time

It’s election time down under.

“Wait,” you say – “didn’t you just get a new prime minister?”
Why yes – yes we did. Now it’s time for another one.

In order to understand the last regime change, it is critical to understand that in Australia, the person who is the head of the majority party is the prime minister.

So when the party leaders freak out because poll numbers slip a little bit and decide to oust the current Head of the party and put a new person in place, there’s nothing stopping them. And that’s exactly what the Australian Labor Party did. Almost overnight, they executed their ‘bloodless coup,’ as the papers called it. When Australia woke up on 24 June, rather than talking about Australia’s win over Serbia in the World Cup, everyone was saying “What the hell?!?” K-Rudd got the boot, and Julia Gillard became our new leader. First female prime minister.

And that was all done in preparation for the next regime change – the federal elections.

Elections have to be held every 3 years, but the prime minister can decide to hold them earlier. So shortly after Gillard took office, she announced that elections would be held 21 Aug – a mere matter of weeks away. So Australia has been a flurry of election activity. Everyone is whinging about the never-ending campaining. Seriously?? 5 weeks?? That’s NOTHIN’!!

But here’s what cracks me up. Watching the campaign ads, you’d think it was all about which prime minister – a lot like presidential campaigning in the US. But Aussies don’t vote for the prime minister. They don’t even vote for the party they want for prime minister. There is nothing on the ballot related to the prime minister. In fact, there is nothing about the prime minister even written into the constitution. You just vote for Senate and House representatives. The prime minister comes from the party that wins the majority of the seats in the House (turns out the Senate doesn’t really matter). And yet there are lots of furious people saying "I didn't vote for Gillard, I voted for Rudd!!" Well, no, you didn't.