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Scott Morrison, a Pragmatic Conservative, Is Set to Be Australia’s New Leader

A relative moderate in Australia’s conservative party and an ally of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is poised to succeed him after a vote Friday that capped days of chaos in the capital and underscored just how turbulent Australian politics have become.

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By
ISABELLA KWAI
and
DAMIEN CAVE, New York Times

A relative moderate in Australia’s conservative party and an ally of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull is poised to succeed him after a vote Friday that capped days of chaos in the capital and underscored just how turbulent Australian politics have become.

Scott Morrison, who has been serving as the country’s treasurer, is set to become the sixth prime minister in 11 years after defeating Peter Dutton, a former home affairs minister, and Julie Bishop, the country’s foreign minister.

His deputy will be Josh Frydenberg, who had been energy minister under Turnbull.

The vote was the second challenge this week to the leadership of Turnbull — who himself assumed office by leading a party revolt in 2015.

But Morrison, 50, did not initiate the challenge. Rather, he backed Turnbull earlier in the week, then emerged as a more unifying alternative to Dutton, known for his hard-line stance on immigration.

Dutton mounted the earlier, unsuccessful leadership challenge on Tuesday. After a week of turbulence that he ignited, he sought Friday to bolster the now-damaged Liberal Party as it moves closer to a general election expected in the coming months.

“My course from here is to provide absolute loyalty to Scott Morrison to make sure we win the election,” he said.

For Turnbull, the end came quickly. After months of negotiations, a rift within the party escalated last weekend over an energy proposal from the prime minister, which was meant to reduce electricity prices and address climate change by cutting emissions.

Dutton rallied the party’s conservative wing against him, only to fail when the votes were counted.

“Australians will be just dumbstruck and so appalled by the conduct of the past week,” Turnbull said at a news conference following the vote, adding that the campaign mounted by Dutton was a “deliberate insurgency.”

“Disunity is death in Australian politics,” Turnbull said, warning in a parting shot that politicians need to put country ahead of party or personal desires. “That’s why this week has been so dispiriting. It’s been vengeance, personal ambition and factional feuding.”

Experts said it was still unclear whether Morrison would tilt toward conservatives or party moderates.

Jill Sheppard, a lecturer in politics at the Australian National University in Canberra, the capital, said Morrison was among the most conservative members of the Liberals’ moderate wing. “He has managed to straddle factions in the Liberal Party really nicely in the last couple of decades,” she said.

Other analysts said the fact that Morrison was regarded as a moderate only showed how dramatically conservative politics have shifted to the right in Australia.

“It’s just extraordinary that Scott Morrison is the moderate candidate,” said Susan Harris-Rimmer, a law professor at Griffith University. “He is an extremely conservative law-and-order person.”

Like Dutton, Morrison rose to prominence over his tough stance on immigration. After a boat carrying dozens of asylum-seekers sank in 2011, Morrison courted outrage by calling it a waste of taxpayer money for the Australian government to help pay for relatives to attend funerals.

“Any other Australian who wanted to attend a funeral of someone who died in tragic circumstances would have to put their hand in their own pocket,” he said.

In 2013, he became minister of immigration and border protection under then-Prime Minister Tony Abbott. In that post, he worked aggressively to stop asylum-seekers from reaching Australia by boat, continuing the country’s contentious zero-tolerance policy toward such migration. One of Australia’s tactics, offshore detention, has been roundly condemned by human rights groups and the United Nations.

Morrison became treasurer in 2015, after a brief stint as minister of social services. Faced with a revenue shortfall, he preferred cutting spending to raising taxes, analysts said.

“That’s a straight-down-the-line conservative approach.” said Richard Holden, a professor of economics at the University of New South Wales. “He’s been OK in a difficult set of circumstances without showing real vision.”

Sheppard said Morrison was unlikely to be a visionary leader. “He won’t probably set out any kind of expansive view for Australia,” she said.

An observant Pentecostal Christian and the son of a police officer, Morrison grew up in a beachside suburb of Sydney. Before being elected to Parliament in 2007, he oversaw tourism campaigns, including a contentious one for Australia with the slogan “Where the bloody hell are you?” It was banned from British television.

The frequent upheavals in government, experts said, have left foreign allies uncertain and voters angry when elected leaders are ousted in backroom coups. And compared to previous “spills,” as they are known, this week’s contest was especially messy and unpredictable.

“The leadership churn is unprecedented. No prime minister since John Howard, who lost office in 2007, has served a full term in office,” said Michael Fullilove, executive director of the Lowy Institute, a nonpartisan research organization. “Governments seem incapable of exercising their authority. They spend most of their time in survival mode.”

For his part, Turnbull suggested he would resign from Parliament if he was deposed. If he follows through, his vacant seat will be contested in a special election that could threaten the Liberal Party’s majority in Parliament when it reconvenes Sept. 10.

“The public hate what is going on at the moment,” Turnbull said, referring to Australia’s frequent leadership changes. “They want everyone here to be focused on them.”

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