Finance Minister Mathias Cormann (plus Fifield & Cash) have flipped this morning.
Turnbull is toast.
The ALP have referred Dutton’s eligibility for parliament to the High Court under s44 on the grounds his blind Trust owns two child care centres and hence draws income from the Feds.
Turnbull is officially out - he’s been “spilled” by 45-40. He’ll be quitting Parliament entirely, he’s said.
There’ll be three standing to replace him: Peter Dutton, Scott Morrison, and Julie Bishop. The first is of the reactionary right, I don’t know anything about Scott, and Julie Bishop is of a more moderate mold.
ETA: Julie Bishop came in third on the first ballot, so she’s out.
WHOOOOO…Scott Morrison new PM of Aus.
Suck on THAT Dutton. ROFLMAO 
Well. I’m glad it’s not Dutton, but of the three I would have preferred Bishop.
Heh. Just heard on ABC, paraphrased: We have a winner, and it’s Bill Shorten. (Shorten is the leader of the Labor Party, the opposition)
Oh me too. Julie Bishop is a true statesperson and I would be proud to have her as PM (and I’m a card-carrying leftie). Can’t wait to see Dutton’s face as the crew emerge from the party-room.
I can’t wait for Alan Jones to bumble his way through an apology “I hope I wasn’t out of line with calling you the N-word, Mr Prime Minister …” :o
I’ll accept the point about something being rotten at the heart of Canberra.
But Our Jules is one of the most elegantly dressed and coiffured MPs going round. With serious substance to go with it.
Nothing mouldy about her at all. 
Dutton delivered the requested petition with 43 plus signatures on it.
43 votes in the party room would have put him in the Lodge, but only 40 voted for Dutton.
So a couple of MPs will get crossed off the Conservative Right’s Christmas card list.
Oh dear, how sad, never mind.
Julie has a fatal flaw, in terms of Liberal Party leadership. It’s not that she’s too liberal: she just doesn’t have the right number of Y chromosomes.
But at least they chose Scomo instead of that horrid racist Dutton.
Exactly. They’re fine with her being the deputy, and fetching coffee…
So. I’m not a native Aussie; can anyone tell me about Mr. Morrison?
Dutton’s a pretty obvious arse, but what’s wrong with Morrison?* I really know almost nothing about him, and such resources as Wiki, and even the ABC, aren’t turning up much.
*There must be something.
ScoMo was immigration minister at one point, and gleefully participated in the race to the moral bottom that tends to characterise that position.
As Treasurer he’s been plugging the usual “tax relief for the wealthy” line, but any Lib treasurer would doubtless do the same.
Aside from that I know nothing awful about him, but point one is a pretty huge one in my book.
He’s certainly not the unapologetic Racist Horses Arse that Dutton is, but that could be said of most people (thankfully)
I don’t know if he’ll do any better than Turnbull with the central issue facing any Lib PM at the moment -keeping the crossbench (minor party and independents) happy AND the Abbot wing of the Libs at the same time.
What Aspidistra said. He’s not so soullessly vile as Dutton, but that’s a pretty low bar. It’s like being not as homophobic as the Westboro Baptists.
Okay, so evil within normal parameters, then. Not unexpected.
Buzzfeed has a nice summary of the last decade or so’s worth of PMs. Funny, too.
I hate Scott Morrison. Being better than Dutton means nothing.
Which is perhaps why Barrie Cassidy quipped earlier on the ABC coverage that the winner today is Bill Shorten.
Hmm, that rings true. Good summary.
As disruptive as this is I’m jealous of how easy it is to replace a head of government in Australia.
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We’ve had a lot of practice at it. In my political memory:
[ul]
[li]1971 - McMahon replaced Gorton[/li][li]1991 - Keating replaced Hawke[/li][li]2010 - Gillard replaced Rudd[/li][li]2013 - Rudd replaced Gillard[/li][li]2015 - Turnbull replaced Abbott[/li][li]2018 - Morrison replaced Turnbull[/li][/ul]
So it’s become more common, and Labor and Liberals do it equally (3 cases in each party).
Certainly four in a decade is excessive, but it’s also a time of “unstable” parliaments, in terms of workable parliamentary majorities.
When any first term MP knows they can cost the government a vote in the House doesn’t make for party discipline and a back bench comfortable with the status quo based on a belief they have a reasonable chance of retaining their seat.
If you look back to the last time we had a sustained period of slim majorities the same shenanigans occurred.
In 1904 we had 3 prime ministers (Deakin, Watson, Reid) from three parties in the same year. Then another change from party room spills in 1905 and 1908.
Then;
Fisher 1915
Hughes 1923
Page 1939
Menzies 1941 (we had also 3 prime ministers in 1941 (Menzies, Fadden, Curtin)
Forde 1945
McEwen 1968
… all lost office via the party room, not an election.
As with Giles, the first half of my political memory was exceptionally stable.
The four longest serving PMs (Menzies, Howard, Hawke & Fraser) were all in office then.
Yes, it’s a laudable feature of the Westminister system which does tend to focus the political minds.