Scott Morrison Becomes Australia’s Prime Minister After Back-Room Revolt

The back-room bloodletting that has come to typify Australia’s turbulent politics claimed one conservative prime minister and anointed another Friday, in the sixth change to the country’s leadership in 11 years.

By the time the new prime minister, Scott Morrison, formerly the country’s treasurer, emerged from the room where Liberal Party lawmakers elected him Friday, his colleagues had ousted his predecessor, shut down the lower house of Parliament and blown up their own signature piece of energy legislation — all in the span of a week.

Members of the governing party forced out Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull — the fourth time an Australian leader has been undone by his own party since 2010 — leading many citizens to complain that the country’s officials were more interested in “Game of Thrones"-style political machinations than actual governance.

Morrison, 50, an erstwhile ally of Turnbull, was a compromise candidate who initially distanced himself from those who led the insurgency. In his first news conference after the vote, Morrison pledged to end the infighting and “heal the party.”

He referred to himself and his newly elected deputy, Josh Frydenberg, as a “new generation” of Liberal Party leaders.

Morrison, who has been an ardent supporter and enforcer of a contentious policy in which immigrants who try to arrive in Australia by boat are detained in offshore camps, was seen as a moderate alternative to the leader of the revolt, Peter Dutton, a former home affairs minister.

Friday’s vote was the second challenge this week to the leadership of Turnbull, who himself assumed office by leading a party revolt in 2015. Dutton, who is considered a hard-liner, led the campaign against Turnbull.

A third candidate, Julie Bishop, the foreign minister, was also in contention as Liberal lawmakers voted in a secret ballot.

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

Dutton rallied the party’s conservative wing against Turnbull, 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 needed to put the 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 not clear whether Morrison would tilt toward conservatives or party moderates, but he pledged in his first news conference to include his vanquished rivals, Bishop and Dutton, in his government.

“We will provide the stability and the unity and the direction and the purpose that the Australian people expect of us,” Morrison said.

He called a record-breaking drought that has wreaked havoc across the country for months his government’s “most urgent and pressing issue” and promised to make it his top priority.

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 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, Morrison became minister of immigration and border protection under Tony Abbott, then the prime minister. 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. Not a single Australian prime minister has completed a full term in more than a decade. The frequent upheavals, experts said, have left foreign allies uncertain and voters angry when elected leaders are ousted in back-room 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.”