1
00:00:05,330 --> 00:00:09,353
You want to talk about that? What has
happened in the last 10 years and
what is your view of that?

2
00:00:10,244 --> 00:00:11,641
Where you have minority governments,
you're talking about?

3
00:00:11,642 --> 00:00:12,587
Well, and the change over of prime
ministers.

4
00:00:14,280 --> 00:00:57,915
Yes. Yeah. Well, yeah there's been,
and one of them I think is a
consequence of the other, but and
that's the other thing, we don't vote
for a prime minister, we have no...
Our head of state is the Queen and
so, we don't get to vote for the
Queen. She is the head of state until
she dies and then their son or his
son or whoever will become the king.
And we have a titular head of state
in that's the Governor-General, but
the Governor-General is effectively a
representative of the Queen in the
country. We don't vote for that head
of state, that head of state has
other than effectively as a rubber
stamp for government business, they
have no effective control of anything
that goes on in the country.

5
00:00:57,916 --> 00:00:58,357
The Governor-General?

6
00:00:58,358 --> 00:00:59,370
The Governor-General.

7
00:00:59,371 --> 00:01:00,652
Except from the fact that they can
remove the prime minister.

8
00:01:00,653 --> 00:01:04,933
Yes, except that, as the head of
state, they can in fact remove the
prime minister or sack the
government.

9
00:01:04,934 --> 00:01:07,276
Which has only happened a handful
times, right?

10
00:01:07,399 --> 00:01:26,410
Once in our history. And so, the
prime minister, who is the head of
the country politically, we don't
vote for. They are voted for by the
party that ends up with the highest
number of seats.

11
00:01:26,620 --> 00:01:30,699
Well, they'll be voted for insofar as
they end up being in the party,
right?

12
00:01:30,760 --> 00:01:36,310
Yes, they have to be they an elected
member of the Lower House.

13
00:01:36,370 --> 00:01:40,989
So, but you will be only had a small
portion of Australia actually vote on
that seat where they were found.

14
00:01:41,440 --> 00:02:20,179
Where they actually are. So, you know
every person who goes into Parliament
in the lower house gets elected by
their local area and the party
themselves elects a leader from all
of their representatives in
parliament, and so Scott Morrison,
who is a current prime minister, has
been elected by the party to lead the
Liberal Party and the Liberal Party
being the senior party, that is the
one with more members in the
coalition, they've got more members
in Parliament than the national party
so, the leader of the Liberal Party
automatically becomes the prime
minister if the Liberal National
Party Coalition has more people in
parliament than anybody else.

15
00:02:20,200 --> 00:02:24,099
So, I guess in some sense you can
vote for the leader when there's an
election coming, you know who the
leader is.

16
00:02:24,100 --> 00:02:47,787
We know who they are. We know who
they are, and yes, we don't vote for
a party or we don't vote for a number
of people in it after the election
they all get together and choose a
leader. So, we know who that person
is going to be. But we don't vote
directly for them. And so it's that
weird position where we can vote for
whoever we want to vote for in our
little electorate, knowing full well
who the leader of that party is going
to be, knowing that if...

17
00:02:47,832 --> 00:02:48,832
At least hoping, at the time.

18
00:02:50,431 --> 00:03:19,879
Exactly, and knowing that they will
become the prime minister if they get
the most seats in parliament, but
then because they're actually not
voted for by us, they're voted for by
the caucus as they call, and that is
that the members of their own party
that are in in the Parliament, at any
time those members can choose to
unelect them and elect somebody else.
And so, over the last 15 years we've
had three or four changes of prime
minister.

19
00:03:20,620 --> 00:03:21,620
Can we run through that?

20
00:03:22,330 --> 00:03:23,330
You're going to stretch my memory
now.

21
00:03:24,400 --> 00:03:27,490
Well, yeah, I'll try. John Howard was
in place until the early 2000s,
right?

22
00:03:28,540 --> 00:03:32,102
If we go if we go before that we had
Bob Hawke in the 80s.

23
00:03:32,608 --> 00:03:33,608
This is when I was a baby.

24
00:03:34,840 --> 00:03:42,309
You weren't even a baby. This before
you were born. Bob Hawke who was the
leader of the Labour Party. He was
the prime minister.

25
00:03:43,264 --> 00:03:48,246
And to give you a quick, sorry to
interrupt you, give you a quick idea
of classes in Australia, he was
famous for what?

26
00:03:48,247 --> 00:04:03,111
He holds, I don't know if he still
holds, but at the time he held the
world record for sculling a yard
glass of beer. That wasn't a
requirement to get elected, but that
was one of his party tricks when he
was a university student.

27
00:04:03,520 --> 00:04:10,452
He would always skull like pints of
beer in front of people and on the TV
and everything live, and he was
famous for it, which is something you
would never see a British prime
minister do.

28
00:04:10,990 --> 00:04:15,510
I'm sure he still does it, he's in
his 80s, but... might even be in his
90s by.

29
00:04:15,580 --> 00:04:16,389
He's still around.

30
00:04:16,390 --> 00:04:59,941
He is still around. Yeah. I had the
very good fortune of meeting him
twice. But that's a completely
different story. So, he was prime
minister and then there was a change
over to his deputy who was the
treasurer of the country, Paul
Keating. And it was both Paul Keating
and Bob Hawke I'm sure have different
versions of this story, but it was
almost like a gentlemen's agreement
that at some stage Bob Hawke would
step down and Paul Keating would take
over, but that never quite happened.
But eventually the Labour Party just
said look sorry, Bob, your time's up.
We want Paul to be the prime
minister. So, he was and then he won
another election and so on. And then
John Howard, who beat Paul Keating in
an election in the 90s...

31
00:04:59,942 --> 00:05:00,551
Was the head of the Liberals.

32
00:05:01,934 --> 00:05:03,087
Was the head of Liberal Party.

33
00:05:03,088 --> 00:05:03,991
So, we had a switch from Labour to
Liberal.

34
00:05:04,119 --> 00:05:09,839
And he was our prime minister for a
long time, long time in Australian
politics, nearly 10 years.

35
00:05:09,870 --> 00:05:11,970
Was he really famous for the gun laws
that came through?

36
00:05:12,000 --> 00:05:18,066
Well, that's probably his most famous
sort of bilateral decision that
nobody really argued with. And
that...

37
00:05:18,240 --> 00:05:20,296
So, we had the Port Arthur Port
Arthur massacre...

38
00:05:20,297 --> 00:05:21,452
The Port Arthur massacre where 35
people were murdered.

39
00:05:21,753 --> 00:05:22,679
In Tasmania.

40
00:05:22,680 --> 00:05:24,665
In Tasmania in an hour.

41
00:05:25,944 --> 00:05:38,209
That was effectively the equivalent
of what's happened in New Zealand
recently, right? That was Australia's
version of that. It wasn't related to
religion, but we had a sudden mass
shooting of 35 people and within a
week or so changed the laws and said
no more guns.

42
00:05:38,270 --> 00:05:48,340
He came out and just said no, we're
going to restrict guns and in
addition to doing that, he had an
amnesty for people who wanted to give
up their guns.

43
00:05:48,570 --> 00:05:49,964
Who might have had ones that were
illegal.

44
00:05:50,230 --> 00:05:56,801
Oh yeah, they might have had that and
so there was that amnesty of hey, if
you've got an unregistered gun, you
can just give it up to the police and
the police will destroy them.

45
00:05:56,802 --> 00:05:57,537
Well many were brought back, right?

46
00:05:58,240 --> 00:06:27,870
And then if you add a had a
registered one the government would
buy them back and destroy them. And
so we had millions of weapons were
handed in over a period of about six
months for that amnesty. So, that was
a year that was probably what he is
most famous for internationally as
well. But then since he lost an
election we've had a number of people
who on both sides of Parliament. So,
when the Labour Party was in we had
two changes.

47
00:06:28,070 --> 00:06:45,879
So Kevin '07, right? 2007 we had
Kevin Rudd come in. Who...He's got a
massive head with glasses. He's the
Australian who speaks a little bit of
Chinese. You'd probably know he saw
him, but he got in and then so the
Labour Party got back in power.

48
00:06:45,990 --> 00:06:56,270
Yes. And so then two years into that,
less than two years in, the Labour
Party decided that they didn't want
him as the head so, they tossed him
out and elected Julia Gillard.

49
00:06:56,340 --> 00:07:03,850
Which was the example of the we voted
knowing that he was the head of the
Labour Party at the time. We wanted
him in in power.

50
00:07:04,000 --> 00:07:07,679
Yeah. And then there's less than two
years later we have another prime
minister.

51
00:07:07,710 --> 00:07:11,563
Who we didn't vote for, at least as
the leader. Obviously, people voted
for her to be in Parliament.

52
00:07:11,670 --> 00:07:13,823
She was a senior member of the party.
But she was not...

53
00:07:14,079 --> 00:07:18,891
This was Julia Gillard. Did you think
that was a good decision at the time?

54
00:07:19,400 --> 00:08:05,910
Well, look, it's a weird one. I don't
know the ins and outs of it,
obviously, and I don't follow the
sort of details of politics that
much, but it seemed to me that Kevin
it almost got a bit ahead of himself
and the Labour Party, ironically,
couldn't control him. And because he
just kept making decisions by himself
and the Labour Party is a much bigger
organisation, not just the elected
members, but the party across
Australia will have tens of thousands
of members and often they are the
ones who are making decisions about
policy direction and so on in broad
scale. That then gets bubbled up to
the people in parliament to vote on
and change legislation and those sort
of things.

55
00:08:06,430 --> 00:08:17,210
This is the kind of push and pull
that you have, right? The members of
the party who get voted in have to
keep the voters happy, but they also
have to keep their party happy who
are giving them money and supporting
them.

56
00:08:17,820 --> 00:09:00,046
Because if you wanted to... I can't,
as a non-member say the Labour Party,
I can't declare myself as an eligible
member for the next election and
declare myself as a member of the
Labour Party unless I actually am and
if I'm going to represent the Labour
Party, it's incumbent upon me to
represent their ideals and their
policies and effectively follow their
rules. So, I think there was a period
in there in sort of the middle period
of Kevin Rudd's prime ministership
where the Labour Party got a bit jack
of him trying to do things that they
didn't want to happen. Whether we
agreed with them or not and so they
effectively caused the ruckus in the
background and said look, we've got
to get rid of him. And then I put
Julia Gillard in.

57
00:09:00,090 --> 00:09:01,090
So how did they do that?

58
00:09:02,130 --> 00:09:15,475
Well, in the end, all that has to
happen is that the members of the
Labour Party who are in the
parliament just have to declare a...I
think it's called a vote of
non-support or something.

59
00:09:15,690 --> 00:09:16,690
Vote of non-confidence.

60
00:09:17,549 --> 00:09:24,850
Vote of non-confidence and therefore
they are declaring that, you know, we
don't think you're the right person.
We're going to hold another election.

61
00:09:25,293 --> 00:09:34,889
And this is where the uproar comes
from, all these people voted for
Labour knowing he was the head of it
and then all of a sudden you had
members within the party deciding
actually no, we're ditching him.

62
00:09:34,980 --> 00:09:35,980
Exactly.

63
00:09:35,981 --> 00:09:37,241
And we're going to put someone else
at the head of the boat.

64
00:09:37,242 --> 00:09:45,779
And then the irony is you know Julia
Gillard won the next election the
first Australian female prime
minister, first Australian female
prime minister to win an election,
blah, blah, blah.

65
00:09:45,780 --> 00:09:52,440
And she I came in everyone was pretty
pumped, right? She's going to do a
lot, she's worried about climate
change and a bunch of other things.

66
00:09:52,710 --> 00:10:04,320
And then within three years of her
being elected prime minister the
Labour Party decided that they didn't
want to because she wasn't doing
anything. In fact, the reason she
wasn't doing anything is because they
wouldn't let her.

67
00:10:04,860 --> 00:10:06,467
And she had a minority government,
right?

68
00:10:06,750 --> 00:10:07,848
She had a minority government.

69
00:10:07,849 --> 00:10:09,319
So, she couldn't just pass things
through, she had to make agreements.

70
00:10:09,811 --> 00:10:20,843
Yeah and in the case of a minority
government it means that you don't
have more than 50 per cent of the
members so, that you actually have to
get some of the smaller independent
parties and independent members to
vote with you.

71
00:10:21,150 --> 00:10:33,440
Because if you're a majority
government you just need to get your
party in line to vote with you and
you pass whatever you want. But if
you're a minority where you're say 40
percent and the rest is the Liberals
and everyone else making up the other
60 percent, you have to start making
deals.

72
00:10:33,480 --> 00:10:33,790
That's right.

73
00:10:33,791 --> 00:10:35,551
With other groups to get them on your
side.

74
00:10:35,750 --> 00:11:02,180
And look, the reality is that more
than 90 per cent of legislation that
goes through the Parliament is
bilaterally supported. There's never
an argument about it and therefore we
never hear about it. It's only when
the opposition disagree with the
government that we hear about it and
so, yes. So, the Labour Party
apparently decided that she wasn't
doing enough and so, they ditched her
and guess who they put back in? Kevin
Rudd, who they'd dicthed before
because they couldn't control him!
And then ironically he lost the next
election.

75
00:11:02,280 --> 00:11:03,089
To Tony Abbott.

76
00:11:03,090 --> 00:11:08,190
To Tony Abbott and then Tony Abbott
who's fairly conservative right wing.

77
00:11:08,610 --> 00:11:10,036
Yes. So, he was head of the Liberal
Party, right?

78
00:11:10,320 --> 00:11:12,598
He was he was the leader of the
opposition, head of the Liberal
party.

79
00:11:13,400 --> 00:11:16,776
He was wery Christian. He was
anti-gay marriage, he was very
conservative.

80
00:11:16,830 --> 00:11:19,960
Very right wing in comparison with
the rest of Australian politics.

81
00:11:20,420 --> 00:11:26,460
And a big reason for him, a big part
of his campaign was like look at
Labour, they're out of control. They
don't know who their leader is.

82
00:11:26,520 --> 00:11:27,520
That's right.

83
00:11:27,550 --> 00:11:34,309
They they just don't know what's
happening from one day to the next.
They support us where we've got
everyone in line, we're working
really well, and what happened to
him?

84
00:11:34,500 --> 00:11:47,106
Guess what happened to him? He got
tossed out and the Liberal Party
elected Malcolm Turnbull, who
ironically is much further left
within the the right wing of
Australian politics, he's very
centre.

85
00:11:47,350 --> 00:11:54,393
Well, prior to him becoming prime
minister a lot of, I think, you know,
you, me and other members of our
family were thinking if he was a
Labour...

86
00:11:55,110 --> 00:11:59,716
He'd be the perfect Labour prime
minister. Yeah. So, yeah he then came
in, he won an election.

87
00:12:00,700 --> 00:12:02,064
And did nothing, effectively.

88
00:12:02,250 --> 00:12:03,905
Did nothing and guess what happened?

89
00:12:04,110 --> 00:12:05,250
He got axed.

90
00:12:05,830 --> 00:12:07,592
He got axed and so, we now have
another...

91
00:12:07,980 --> 00:12:08,819
Scott Morrison.

92
00:12:08,820 --> 00:12:14,309
And so, he's been in for, what? Nine
months or something now and now we're
going into an election.

93
00:12:14,394 --> 00:12:20,590
But there was a period there I can't
remember what it was, but it was
something like six prime ministers in
ten years or something ridiculous,
right? Or in 3 elections.

94
00:12:21,270 --> 00:12:23,369
And only two of them had actually
been elected.

95
00:12:23,490 --> 00:12:42,150
Yeah and so it was it was always
humorous for me seeing how much, I
remember especially Tony Abbott when
he was making his bid with the
Liberals just how much they bagged
labour for changing and having the
stabbing in the back and so dodgy,
all this stuff and then it happens
exactly the same on their side.

96
00:12:42,180 --> 00:12:42,610
Exactly.