Treasurer vows stability after Australia ousts yet another leader
CANBERRA, Australia — Treasurer Scott Morrison pledged to bring stability once he becomes Australia’s sixth prime minister in 11 years after Malcolm Turnbull relinquished power on Friday in a party coup.
In his first remarks after narrowly winning a Liberal Party vote over right-wing populist Peter Dutton, Morrison said he’d pick a new cabinet over the weekend and an election due by May wouldn’t be held soon. He also vowed to bring down electricity prices and address drought-ridden areas of the country.
“It’s also important that we provide the stability of government, which we will be able to do,” Morrison told reporters in Canberra. “I think today what the party voted for that stable choice, moving to a new generation. That means we’ll have a continuity but there will be points of emphasis and direction that we will be consulting our cabinet on.”
Morrison’s victory after a tumultuous week represents a defeat for Dutton’s allies in the party’s right wing, who sought to channel concerns over economic inequality and immigration that also underpinned Brexit and the rise of President Donald Trump. He now has a narrow window to unite a rattled government against the main opposition Labor party, which holds a growing lead in opinion polls even though leader Bill Shorten isn’t personally popular.
“They’ve gone for a compromise candidate in Morrison,” said Paul Williams, a political analyst at Brisbane’s Griffith University. “It does put the government back in the election race, albeit severely handicapped.”
The change in leadership extends 11 years of political turmoil in Australia, with no prime minister serving a full term since 2007. This week’s crisis has infected the nation’s financial markets and prompted a string of business leaders to demand the government provide policy certainty. In comments after the vote, Turnbull denounced a “determined insurgency” to remove him as prime minister.
Investors appeared relieved that lawmakers picked Morrison, who holds one of the most high-profile and powerful roles in government. Since being promoted to Treasurer in 2015, he has overseen a hiring boom and managed to shrink the budget deficit, even though stagnating wages and soaring housing prices have brewed discontent against the government.
The local dollar climbed as much as 0.6 percent against the greenback after Morrison’s win, following a 1.4 percent decline on Thursday — the steepest slump since May 2017. The benchmark S&P/ASX 200 Index was up 0.3 percent to 6,262.00 as of 1:16 pm in Sydney, erasing losses ahead of the party-room meeting.
Morrison, 50, entered parliament in 2007 during an election that ended the Liberal party’s 11-year rule under John Howard. After the party returned to power in 2013, Morrison was appointed immigration minister and charged with enacting “Operation Sovereign Borders” aimed at stopping asylum seekers arriving in Australia by boat.