Another Upheaval Down Under Australia gets its third Liberal Prime Minister in four years.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/another-upheaval-down-under-1535151472
Australia’s ruling Liberal Party deposed another Prime Minister on Friday, its second internal coup in three years, and with an election approaching the hope is that new PM Scott Morrison is the charm. Malcolm Turnbull had led a coup against the admirable if rough-edged Tony Abbott in 2015, but Mr. Turnbull’s poll numbers have sagged even as he clashed with the party’s conservatives.
A former investment banker from the Sydney suburbs, Mr. Turnbull deserves credit for slowing the growth of spending and cutting individual income taxes. He had help from Mr. Morrison, a 50-year-old former tourism executive, who has been Treasurer in the Turnbull cabinet, the equivalent of U.S. Treasury Secretary.
But Mr. Turnbull contradicted his tax-cutting message with a large levy on banks. And he had the bad luck to contend with a record drought, a constitutional crisis over whether dual citizens could serve as legislators, and a scandal over Chinese political donations to Australian parliamentarians.
The trigger for Friday’s internal coup came over energy policy, which has bedeviled Australian politics for more than a decade. Australia has a wealth of coal, natural gas and uranium, but Australians pay some of the highest electricity prices in the world thanks to federal renewable energy mandates that force retailers to buy expensive wind and solar power.
Instead of cancelling these market distortions, Mr. Turnbull mulled curbing gas exports, begged coal producers not to shutter old plants and proclaimed his fealty to the Paris climate pact, though Australia’s contribution to global CO2 emissions is minimal. His proposal for a National Energy Guarantee was essentially a carbon-emission trading scheme that would have expanded wind and solar subsidies at the expense of cheaper fossil fuels and done nothing to lower energy costs.
Liberal MPs forced Mr. Turnbull to abandon the proposal earlier this week and on Friday they deposed him. Mr. Morrison, the new PM, is best known for standing up to the left’s views on climate, famously standing in Parliament last year with a piece of coal and declaring, “it won’t hurt you.”
Mr. Morrison also takes a harder line on immigration in a country where more than a quarter of the population is foreign born. The Australian electorate seems to be moving right on immigration, though foreign strivers have been crucial to the country’s long run of growth. The challenge for Mr. Morrison will be addressing populist concerns over immigration without indulging in nativism.
Mr. Morrison has vowed to unite the Liberal Party, and he’ll have to contend with a narrow parliamentary majority and splinter groups, such as the Australian Conservatives, who have gained support as Mr. Turnbull tilted the party left. Australians are getting tired of musical chairs for Prime Ministers, and the Labor Party is leading in the polls.
The Liberals’ fate will depend on whether Mr. Morrison can show the leadership to reunite the center-right into a governing coalition instead of self-interested factions.
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