Malcolm Turnbull is Australia’s new Prime Minister
New era of leadership and new style of government starts with Prime Minister Designate Malcolm Turnbull who won leadership challenge defeating Tony Abbott by 54 to 44 votes yesterday on September 14, 2014.
He will be sworn in as the 29th Prime Minister of Australia today.
Julie Bishop was favoured as the deputy leader and she won the challenge from Kevin Andrews by 70 votes to his 30.
Malcolm Turnbull mounted the challenge saying that people had lost faith in Abbott’s leadership when he said, “Ours will be a government not of slogans but advocacy, more consultative and more open”
He said in his speech as he mounted the challenge, “It is clear enough that the Government is not successful in providing the economic leadership that we need. It is not the fault of individual ministers. Ultimately, the Prime Minister has not been capable of providing the economic leadership our nation needs.
He has not been capable of providing the economic confidence that business needs. Now we are living as Australians in the most exciting time. The big economic changes that we’re living through here and around the world offer enormous challenges and enormous opportunities.
And we need a different style of leadership. We need a style of leadership that explains those challenges and opportunities, explains the challenges and how to seize the opportunities. A style of leadership that respects the people’s intelligence, that explains these complex issues and then sets out the course of action we believe we should take and makes a case for it. We need advocacy, not slogans.
We need to respect the intelligence of the Australian people.
Now if we continue with Mr Abbott as Prime Minister, it is clear enough what will happen. He will cease to be Prime Minister and he’ll be succeeded by Mr Shorten. You only have to see the catastrophically reckless approach of Mr Shorten to the China-Australia free trade agreement.
We also need a new style of leadership in the way we deal with others whether it is our fellow members of Parliament, whether it is the Australian people. We need to restore traditional Cabinet government. There must be an end to policy on the run and captain’s calls. We need to be truly consultative with colleagues, members of Parliament, senators and the wider public.
We need an open government, an open government that recognises that there is an enormous sum of wisdom both within our colleagues in this building and, of course, further afield.”
Coming weekend’s Canning by elections predicted as showing 8 to 10 per cent swing to Labor is what precipitated leadership challenge as well as the governments poor show in opinion polls all the way since it came into power two years ago.
With Julie Bishop on his side Malcolm Turnbull will have best performing ministers such as Scott Morrisson and Andrew Robb to help lift governments’ image for the elections next year slated in the month of September.
In the mean time Mr Turnbull has to turn things around to a more positive, inclusive and more open style of governance as he promises a government of more substance than style.
Short URL: https://indiandownunder.com.au/?p=5545