Ferocious Aussies

Nick Bryant, the BBC's Australia correspondent, has written an excellent piece summing up the political events of the last few months which led to the resignation of Prime Minster Kevin Rudd and his replacement by Julia Gillard. Australian politics is unlikely to be on the A-Level syllabus anytime soon, but he makes an interesting comparison between the ferocious behaviour of Australian politicians and events in the UK and the US. "By design and through necessity," he writes, " Barack Obama, David Cameron and Nick Clegg are fashioning a new politics that is more ecumenical, less clannish and genuinely bipartisan. Australian politics is in danger of looking like a throwback."

PS: The brief appearance of this sign by a Tea Party group, comparing President Obama to Lenin and Hitler suggests not everyone has yet signed up to these ideas of "new politics"...

Australia's New PM

In a rapid turn of events, Kevin Rudd, Labor Prime Minister of Australia since 2007, resigned last night when it became clear that he would not win a leadership ballot. He has been replaced by Julia Gillard, Australia's first ever female Prime Minister. She had previously been the Deputy Prime Minister and was unopposed when the ballot went ahead. Until recently Rudd had been very popular but ran into trouble over a planned super tax on mining and his decision to drop an emissions trading scheme, which led to him being branded as "gutless" by rival politicians. Here is the Sydney Morning Herald's perspective, including the judgement that Australia has "wasted a perfectly good PM".