Labor leader Bill Shorten is set to become the biggest winner from the Liberal Party’s leadership crisis, giving him to power to push ahead with tough greenhouse targets and unwind the offshore processing of asylum seekers.
Scott Morrison has emerged as Australia’s next prime minister, to become Australia’s fifth leader in just five years.
The 50-year-old Hillsong parishioner defeated Peter Dutton 45 votes to 40 in the run-off ballot, after the people’s choice in opinion polls Julie Bishop was knocked out in the first run of voting.
Malcolm Turnbull resigned as prime minister ahead of the noon ballot, was a more popular leader than Mr Shorten, with 54 per cent of respondents preferring him as PM, compared with 46 per cent for the Labor leader.
Labor leader Bill Shorten (pictured with his Chloe) is set to become the biggest winner from the Liberal Party’s leadership crisis in Canberra
The latest bout of leadership instability in the Liberal Party is a huge bonus for Labor, ahead of a federal election which must be held by May.
Against Mr Turnbull, Labor had already won 38 consecutive Newspolls.
While its margin after preferences has been a narrow 51 to 49 per cent, the Liberal Party’s knifing of two leaders in less than three years could help Labor win the biggest landslide since 1996, when John Howard’s Coalition swept to power with almost twice as many seats as Labor.
The third Liberal prime minister in less than three years, following the knifing of first-term PM Tony Abbott in September 2015, is unprecedented, with no party in government going through three living leaders in such a short time since Federation in 1901.
The Coalition is now resembling the New South Wales Labor government of 2009, which had three premiers in just 15 months, leading to the party losing the next election in a landslide March 2011.
A snap Roy Morgan poll shows Bill Shorten (right) would have a landslide advantage over Peter Dutton (left), beating him in the preferred prime minister stakes 62 to 38 per cent
Whoever takes over from Mr Turnbull this afternoon would be likely to also lose in a landslide next year, which would give Labor a mandate to implement higher emission reduction targets, which could push up electricity bills, and possibly wind back the offshore processing of asylum seekers.
While Mr Shorten, from Labor’s right faction, has vowed to continue sending asylum seekers to Nauru and Manus Island, he would face pressure from the party’s left faction to unwind the Pacific solution.
In government, Kevin Rudd gave in to pressure from the left, leading to the number of asylum seeker boats surging from 21 before he became prime minister to 4,597 by the time Julia Gillard knifed him as a first-term PM in 2010.
By 2012, during Labor’s last full year in office, the number of illegal boats had surged to 18,365, prompting Mr Rudd in 2013 – during his second, brief stint as PM – to declare asylum seekers arriving on boats would never settle in Australia.
Labor when it was last in government was able to soften asylum seeker laws despite lacking a Senate majority.