Thread by @KillerMartinis

Happy to! Here is your primer on what the hell is happening in Australia, as retold by me, who is not an Australian!

First thing to know about #auspol (which is their national political hashtag) is that Aussies are just insanely backstabby, politically speaking.

https://twitter.com/joshevanslowell/status/1032632553172295681

Also these people hold grudges so strongly that any Appalachian would be impressed and a bit worried.

Australia has a multiparty parliamentary system with ranked voting, which means it’s nearly impossible for one party to hold power alone. They form coalitions with others.

Just at the moment, the people in charge are the Liberals, in coalition with right-wing parties like the Nationals and One Nation. Libs are basically Bush Republicans with a lot of Paul Ryan tossed in. Nats is sort of Tea Partyish and One Nation is racist and also fully bonkers.

So Malcolm Turnbull is the Prime Minister for at least the next twelve seconds, as the leader of the Liberal Party. But he’s a fucker and the far right wing is challenging him for not being enough of a fucker, so they spilled him. (A spill is an early leadership change.)

A couple days ago, a man called Peter Dutton (who is actually evil personified, like if you somehow forced the spirits of Dick Cheney and Jeffery Dahmer into a single Aussie politician) challenged Mal for leadership and lost narrowly. it was a collapse in confidence in Mal.

Since then, half the Cabinet has resigned and there’s another leadership vote coming which has new candidates as well, and in the chaos they’ve shut down Parliament rather than have the normally scheduled session. Which also means there’s no Question Time.

Question Time, btw, is a delightful bit of Parliaments where electeds can yell insulting questions at their opposing Cabinets. Shutting down a scheduled debate at the last minute would be the closest US comparison I can think of.

This is all made far more hilarious by the fact that the Liberals won in large part by promising governmental stability after Labor spilled their leaders once too often while they were in power.

And this isn’t the first spill the Libs have done since.