Please note this is a bit of a satirical piece. If you happen to understand what happened today please let me know, because frankly I am still a bit confused.
So today Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd as PM of Australia. Ina and I were nto aware of an election, but found out during our wine tour, much to the delight of the Australians on the tour.
A quick google search (the australian google) brings a constant strem of updated websites. Check out the PM page before it gets updated, http://www.pm.gov.au/
Here is my understanding of Australian politics. Unfortunatly sarcasim does not come across in text very well.
Two and a half years ago Australia had some elections they elected the labor party, or at least a majority of the seats, to the cabinet. From the ruling party of the cabinet they pick a PM. If they feel the PM has done something wrong somebosy can be like "Yo I challenge you to a dual (replace dual with the PM seat)" If they get enough votes then they take over the PM. Rudd stepped down after Gillard got 70 of 112 votes. So if I were in the cabinet I could challenge Gillard (Welsh born btw) for the PM. Gillard is planning on holding elections after she throws a dart at a calender in her new office. Yup she gets to pick when to hold elections for the cabinet. So basicly every 4 years is just a guidline for electing people down here. With this power all politcal people either have to be constantly campaigning or go to the roulette wheel to decide when to start. The idea is that you call an audible ot start the campaign when the people you like are ready to go.
Make sense yet? I didn't think so. I got most of this information from Ina's aunt, who I believe knows what she is talking about.
During the tour we asked some people why the PM was so terrible. They just said the country was not doing as well as it could have been, but could not elaborate. We asked Ina's aunt why Rudd was so bad. Here is her response:
He promised to do a bunch of things in his campaign and then didn’t. He tried to (and maybe did) pass some legislation to tax mining companies (and other natural resource obtaining companies) where 40% of profits would go to the people, like a tax credit or something.
I got a little lost here, I doubt many Australians work for mining companies, much less own them, so why would they not support this.
Ina’s aunt, Michele, went on to tell us Rudd also got these rebates for people who owned homes built before like 2005 so that they could put insulation in and save the country energy.
What a fantastic idea have the government pay for you to have cheaper heating bills (no sarcasm here).
The only real problem was that soooo many people took advantage of this that contractors were overbooked and had to hire inexperienced labor. Some contractors forgot to put in shields between the insulation and electrical wires, like light outlets. A few fires started and the public got pissed at Rudd for not putting safety measures in or something.
Yup it is the PM’s job to make sure all contractors work up to code (sarcasm).
Lastly Rudd was elected (still not sure if he was elected to PM or if he won the cage match) on a platform (of the labor party) to get more people jobs. Apparently Australia has a very low unemployment rate thanks to some things Rudd did. He was scared that the recession would cripple Australia and so he made efforts to establish jobs and stave off the recession, which for the most part he did. So right now instead of Australia being very cheap for Ina and I, it has an exchange rate close to $1 for $1.
Also the war in Afghanistan is not popular here, and some soldiers were injured in the last few days. This might have a little to do with where everybody stands.
In the afternoon paper there was some random people on the street comments about the change. To sum it up:
“Girl Power, Yeah”
“Anybody would be better than Rudd”
“WTF is she going to do, seriously we have no clue where she stands on anything”
And that is Australian politics in a nut shell. Anybody want to take bets on a full election the second week in August?
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