cya tony

But will he *actually* turn bull?

As long as I get NBN im happy.

Turnbull was dubbed "Mr Broadband" during the birth of the Liberal FTTN scheme. Even if Labor get in at the next election I'm not sure that they'd be able to make meaningful changes to the current rollout plan - it depends on how many resources have already been bought and how tightly their schedule is locked in by the city councils.

I dont know half of what u just said.

So is this guy better then?

I really don't understand Aussie politics.

He's better, inasmuch as it's bloody hard to get worse than Tony Abbott. Also, he's generally popular because he's a Conservative politician with liberal social values on certain issues. And he's the only politician in Australia to actually have sacrificed his ambition for the sake of what he believed was right, when he lost the leadership of his party in opposition because he supported an emissions trading scheme.

That said, he's done other shitty things along the way, so he's not as wonderful and sparkly as he might have been.

Importantly Turnbull comes across well in interviews, press briefings and is just generally a lot more likable. I don't know how Abbot ever got to be the leader of a political party without those. Those are surely the most important traits for the job - you can still be an influential minister without the big job, but Abbot was just never the right person to be the figurehead.

e: Not that I want people to like the Liberal party.

I don't understand why your Liberals are Conservative and your Labour Party is Conservative...what the hell is your Conservative Party?

We don't have a conservative party.

Liberals are conservative. Labor... aren't much of anything right now (but definitely not liberal!). We also have a Green party who are a bunch of hippy fags. I honestly can't tell who I want running the country at this point.

Jordan, do you not understand the system? As far as elections and the parties go it's very similar to the UK I think. I know we vote for local candidates in a different way though. Single Transferable Vote ftw.

If you mean that you don't understand the chopping and changing of PMs, it's because Australian politics is a media pleasing pissfest of naming, shaming and covering your own ass. Nobody's happy with anybody in charge, and parties are strategically cycling leaders to win themselves popularity before elections, by trying to polish their turds with a shiny new face.

Abbott was undeniably good at being an opposition leader. The problem is that once his party won, he wasn't able to stop being opposition leader and start being PM.

It's the reason why I'm still so sad that Shorten got voted in as the head of the Labor Party instead of Albo. They clearly tried to find an attack dog leader rather than someone with gravitas.

In addition to what Phylum said...

The Labor Party doesn't really believe in anything any more except that the Liberals shouldn't win elections. Rather than being a politically meaningful force these days, they've shifted to the centre and then to the right on a whole lot of issues in order to be populist. The problem is that the Liberals are a hell of a lot better at playing rightist politics, so it's not won Labor all that much support. And the left-wing electorate have evacuated the party and are now mostly supporting the Greens. So Labor doesn't really believe in all that much and no-one can explain why they should still exist.

And yet in the media's eyes they still deserve more attention than the Greens and PUP combined.

Just put the fucking sex party in power and be done with all of this.

PUP

the fucking PUP party.

Everyone gets a doge.

It stands for Palmer United Party. Clive Palmer, the party leader, is a big wig mining billionaire - naturally exactly the kind of person we want running the country. I don't actually think his party has enough people to win the seats required to put him in power, but he has an alarming amount of popularity. He's certainly a character though.

For more details I cross to my Australian Correspondent Shaun Micallef.

Clive Palmer is Australia's Donald Trump. You don't need to know anything more.

Palmer's a cool guy, all this Oculus Rift and stuff.