Girl Power

It goes against my grain and the ideals of this blog to talk about politics. In my world, any conversation regarding politics that lasts more than five minutes is a waste of time. I respect and recognize the significance of the political system that I was serendipitously born into. When it comes to issues that are important to me I exercise my right and rock the vote and in 2008 I took the necessary steps required for an American expat to vote in our last Presidential election.

It’s not so much the topic of politics that perturbs me but the complaining that inevitably accompanies it. Politics and sports are one and the same in this regard. If your team loses, get over it! Who cares who played a crappy game or made a bad call – what’s done is done and all you can do is continue to back your team and hope that they will come out on top in the next match. Besides, even in a democracy there is never going to be a leader that satisfies all his or her people so why complain if perfection is impossible.

HOWEVER. Something happened this week in Australian politics that’s quite monumental and to me very bizarre so I felt the urge to address it. I thought I had a decent grasp on the Australian political system but clearly I did not.

Some mornings the bedroom TV is switched on after the alarm goes off in an effort to procrastinate getting out of bed and going to work. This Thursday was one of those days. Shane flipped on the TV and started watching our favorite morning news program, Today. I was still half asleep and in a daze so when I noticed that the entire morning program had been dedicated to the political coup that was soon to see a change in Prime Ministers I thought it was a dream.

Apparently, the previous day the Labor Party, the political party currently in charge, had decided they weren’t happy with their current leader and PM, Kevin Rudd, and wanted to see Deputy PM, Julia Gillard take his place. So as it goes, that morning a ballot was cast in Parliament and before the day was done Australia had its first female Prime Minister. “How can they do that?” I said to Shane. I knew that Rudd’s approval rating had been plummeting but as I’ve already established, people will grumble. It’s not like he had an affair with an intern or embezzled money, people just simply weren’t happy. What I quickly learned was that when an election is held approximately every four years, the people aren't voting for a person but are voting for a party, most likely either the Labor (left) or Liberal (right) party. Whomever is leader of the winning party at the time of election becomes the new PM. The leader of the losing party takes on the title Leader of the Opposition. Therefore, the power ultimately lies within the cabinet of the party, not the public. Undoubtedly, people’s votes are swayed by who is the leader of each party at the time of election but it’s not guaranteed that that person will remain in power. In fact, there are a lot of rumblings that with a new election on the horizon the Labor party was unsure that their current leader would be able to keep them in power for the next term so they got rid of him.

There you have it. Australia has its first female Prime Minister. She’s also a red head (“ranga”, “ginger”) which is drawing just as much attention as her status as a female. On top of this she is also foreign born (Welsh by birth and immigrated to Australia at the age of three) and the first Prime Minister who is not and has never been married. However, she does have a de facto spouse whom she has cohabitated with for the past three years. They met when he was a hairdresser at her salon in Melbourne. A fact that I find charming.

The initial polls are positive; it looks like she may after all help the Labor party retain their status on top in the next election. But, give it time, soon they’ll find something to nag about. I promise this is the last you’ll hear from me on politics.