Never a dull moment in Aussie politics

CANBERRA: Australian federal politics in 2018 has been a cross between House of Cards and Mr Bean.

The year began with a filing cabinet full of sensitive government documents being sold in a Canberra secondhand store.

In August, a cabinet full of insensitive government ministers sold out a prime minister.

A swag of seven byelections — which began with Labor’s David Feeney quitting in February over his citizenship status — ended in the Government collapsing into a minority in the final weeks of the parliamentary year.

Along the way, the Liberals retained government in Tasmania and ousted a 16yearold Labor government in South Australia. And Labor comfortably held power in Victoria in November, amid a fractious Liberal Party in Canberra and a lacklustre state campaign.

The first major hurdle of the year for the coalition government was the revelation in the Daily Telegraph in February that deputy prime minister and Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce’s former media adviser, Vikki Campion, was pregnant with his child.

Then prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, who instituted the socalled ministerial ‘‘bonk ban’’, put conservatives in his team offside by calling it a ‘‘shocking error of judgement’’ by Mr Joyce.

Wins for the Liberals in Tasmania and South Australia — the latter ending a 16yearold Labor government — were positive news in March.

While personal income tax cuts passed Parliament in June, the Government had to shelve its muchvaunted business tax cuts after Pauline Hanson withdrew support.

With the Liberals failing to win any of the five byelections on July 28, Mr Turnbull played it down. But within a few weeks he was caving in to conservative rebels in his ranks and retreating from plans to legislate climate change targets through the National Energy Guarantee.

Just days later after botched numbercounting by the Dutton forces, Scott Morrison accidentally became the 30th prime minister of Australia. Mr Turnbull resigned from Parliament, not wanting to be a ‘‘miserable ghost’’. A messy week in which Mr Morrison flagged the shifting of Australia’s Israeli embassy to Jerusalem and coalition senators voted in favour of Pauline Hanson’s ‘‘it’s OK to be white’’ motion (later backtracking) saw the Liberals’ Dave Sharma lose Wentworth to independent Kerryn Phelps.

The resignation of National MP Andrew Broad from a junior ministry over a sex scandal just before Christmas topped off a horror year.

Australians are set to head to the polls five or six weeks after an April 2 budget and obvious government disunity.