Malcolm Turnbull has just become Australia’s 29th prime minister, ousting Tony Abbott in a leadership spill[1] on Monday. This marks the fourth leadership change for the nation in five years, in what has been a merry-go-round of intra-party contests and leadership challenges from both sides of the fence: Kevin Rudd (ALP) lost a leadership challenge to Julia Gillard (ALP), lost a leadership challenge to Rudd, lost an election to Tony Abbott (LNP), lost a leadership challenge to Malcolm Turnbull (LNP) having survived a spill in February.

To say it lightly, this trend of “revolving-door leadership” does little to foster a sense of stability in the nation’s political atmosphere. The constant churn is symptomatic of a kind of ministerial paranoia, as internal politics serve to destabilise both parties from the inside out.

An overreliance on opinion polls and approval ratings is partly fuelling this recent instability. Historically, a government deposing its party leader is not common practice in Australia. Before 2010, two prime ministers had been removed from office since 1901; three have since. Public polling, once the preserve of election seasons, is now part and parcel of political commentary year round. Media reports leading up to and following each of the three recent depositions frequently cited party leaders’ approval and disapproval ratings, bandying about terms such as “voter faith”. Prime ministerial popularity is polled with great regularity and the results often treated as a barometer of government success. 

Rudd, in the lead up to 2010’s leadership spill, saw a dramatic decline in approval ratings following his decisive 2007 electoral victory, after a series of unpopular policy decisions. The slump in the polls—a loss of “voter faith”—became an unofficial mandate for his ousting. In the week before Gillard was successfully challenged by her predecessor, The Australian published the headline, “Poll delivers another crushing blow for Julia Gillard” while a Sydney Morning Herald editorial titled “For the sake of the nation Ms Gillard should stand aside” argued ‘we cannot ignore the clear and consistent evidence of the opinion polls…’ Abbott bore relatively low approval ratings in the polls since taking office, the latest of which (published the day before the leadership spill) showed an approval rating of 39% and a disapproval rating of 54%. On this pattern, Turnbull’s leadership challenge is hardly surprising.

Public polling, intent on ensuring the governed are heard while holding those doing the governing to account, has counter-intuitively had the opposite effect, breeding instability and unaccountability. The heed given the polls by the media and in turn by politicians is serving to turn Australia into a kind of rolling plebiscitary democracy, where voter popularity becomes the rudder for government decision-making. It keeps governments fixated on short-term interests revolving around public approval and distracted from long-term political vision and policy shaping, activities which do not always reflect in immediate voter approval boosts.

What lessons might we take from the recent experience of political assassinations by opinion poll in Australia? Perhaps there is a need for political leaders to--dare we say it--judiciously ignore public opinion and to ‘get on with the job’ of governing, unshackled from a constant recourse to how doing so might impact on them at the next election. While voter polling has its place, a refocus on long-term principles of justice and governance might help to cure the political myopia.