Right: Harold Holt, seen here close to the spot from where he disappeared in 1967. Holt was Prime Minister for less than two years after succeeding Australia's longest-serving PM, Sir Robert Menzies. After Menzies and Holt, the nation's politics became progressively more robust and, some would say, more interesting.

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Arguments against a prime minister being removed from office without a general election

1. The importance of the role of Prime Minister has grown in the media and in the public mind
Although the Australian Constitution does not refer to the role of Prime Minister and so does not treat it as a distinct entity within an elected executive, the significance of the prime ministerial position has grown over many decades.
It has been claimed that the increased importance of a governing party's media presence has meant that its leader has assumed a higher public profile and has become the public face of his or her party and the government it forms. This means that many electors actually vote for a Prime Minister rather than a party.
After Mr Abbott's removal the Internet petition site change.org carried a petition to the Governor General protesting against the removal of an elected Prime Minister. The petition was posted by Karen Mooney, who stated, 'We the people cast our vote at an election based on many factors, one of which is who is leading a Political Party at the time of an election.'
The Australian Political Studies site australianpolitics.com notes, 'The PM's position assumes power and prestige because the media focuses on the PM. This means that the PM is able to go over the head of his colleagues and party and communicate directly with the electorate.'
Australianpolitics.com further notes, 'The PM is the public face and spokesperson for the government, both domestically and internationally. Even though a Foreign Minister is appointed, the PM usually takes on the role of international spokesperson for the nation.'
It has been claimed that the role of the Parliamentary leader of a federal government has become more like the role of a president, such as that of the United States, who has clearly defined powers distinct from his or her role as leader of his or her party and who has a major role in government defined within the United States Constitution.
In an opinion piece published on the ABC's political commentary site The Drum, Tim Dunlop stated, '[Y]ou can argue that in a parliamentary system the role of prime minister is less central than say, the role of President in the US system, and you can even lament the fact that our system has drifted towards the presidential model. But the fact is, it has so drifted, and not only the media but the parties themselves treat the office as a semi-presidential one. In so doing they create certain expectations amongst the electorate.'

2. A Prime Minister is only seen as legitimate if he or she has attained that position through an election
It has been argued that a Prime Minister can only claim to hold that position legitimately in a democracy if he or she has been elected to it.
Neither the Prime Minister nor Cabinet is mentioned in the Australian Constitution. Both operate by custom and convention, which determine that it is the party elected to power which determines who its leader will be and thus who will be Prime Minister.
However, that Australia is a democracy inclines many to believe that no prime minister who has not been elected by the people has the moral authority to lead the country.
This argument was put by former Prime Minister, Tony Abbott, in response to Malcolm Turnbull's recent leadership challenge. Mr Abbott stated, 'The Prime Ministership of this country is not a prize or a plaything to be demanded. It should be something which is earned by a vote of the Australian people.'
After Mr Abbott's removal the Internet petition site change.org carried a petition to the Governor General protesting against the removal of an elected Prime Minister. The petition was posted by Karen Mooney, who stated, 'We do not believe it is the right of a Political Party to remove a sitting Prime Minister. It is the democratic choice of the people to vote in a Prime Minister.... It should be the choice of the people to vote out a sitting Prime Minister at the next election.'
When removed from the Prime Ministership by his party in June 2010, Kevin Rudd had protested, 'I was elected by the Australian people as the prime minister.' After he was deposed Kevin Rudd called his successor, Julia Gillard, a 'coup plotter', suggesting he saw her taking of power as illegitimate.
After she had deposed the elected incumbent, Kevin Rudd, Ms Gillard stated, 'I also certainly acknowledge that I have not been elected Prime Minister by the Australian people. And in the coming months I will ask the Governor-General to call for a general election so that the Australian people can exercise their birthright to choose their Prime Minister.'
When returned to the Prime Ministership, again by a vote of his party, in 2013, Kevin Rudd successfully sought to change the rules governing the manner in which the party's leader could be changed so that an elected Prime Minister could not be readily removed outside a general election.
The caucus ratified a move that requires the support of 75 per cent of its number to force a ballot against a sitting prime minister, which drops to 60 per cent for a Labor opposition leader.'
Mr Rudd made it plain that these changes were intended to make it virtually impossible to remove an elected Labor Prime Minister. Mr Rudd stated, '[T]he prime minister the Australian people vote for is the prime minister the Australian people get.'

3. Frequent changes of leader make it difficult to implement government policies
It has been claimed that when leaders are changed often, it is difficult for a government to implement its program.
One of the reasons offered for this is that Prime Ministers become fearful of poor results in public opinion polls as poor polling can result in them being deposed by their party.
In an opinion piece published in The Daily Telegraph on September 18, 2015, Simon Benson stated, 'The peculiarity of Australian politics is the poll-driven responsiveness to, not just policy, but leadership...
The incipient problem is that governments - beginning with the first Rudd administration - now take these public and internal polls to conduct quasi-internal elections at any point they choose to in the electoral cycle, through an unbroken cycle of performance assessment.'
Critics are concerned that governments will not pursue necessary but unpopular policies because leaders are afraid of being replaced by their party before an election and members of the government are afraid of being replaced as a result of an election.
In a comment published in The Conversation on March 25, 2015, Mark Balnaves, Professor of Communication at the University of Newcastle, stated, 'We know that Australian politics is already highly poll-driven, with everyone from the prime minister down closely watching opinion polls and focus groups. So do we really want one more method of telling politicians their reforms are unpopular, when sometimes those policies might be the right thing to do?'
Another reason frequent change of leadership makes it difficult to implement policies is that the new leader is unlikely to follow the full program of his or her predecessor. Thus when Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd in 2010 she immediately changed the manner in which the government was dealing with the implementation of the mining tax and its handling of asylum seekers.
Similarly, though Malcolm Turnbull has promised to proceed with the policies of the Abbott government, there is a popular expectation that he will soon be adopting policies more distinctly his own. Laura Tingle expressed this expectation in an opinion piece published in The Financial Review on September 19, 2015, in which she wrote, 'The government and its agenda will be completely restructured under Malcolm Turnbull.'

4. Frequent change of leader creates instability within a political party
It has been claimed that frequent change of leader creates disunity within a party. The argument put is that ambitious men and women within a party focus on their own personal advancement and sometimes actively undermine their leader in order to promote their own leadership hopes. Such tensions, it is argued, damage leaders and parties alike.
In the last speech he gave after being deposed as Liberal leader and Prime Minister, Tony Abbott stated, 'The nature of politics has changed in the past decade. We have more polls and more commentary than ever before - mostly sour, bitter, character assassination. Poll-driven panic has produced a revolving-door prime ministership, which can't be good for our country, and a febrile media culture has developed that rewards treachery.'
On Monday September 21, commentator and cartoonist Larry Pickering stated on his blog of Abbott's removal, 'Monday was a sad day for the Liberal Party, it is deeply fractured, possibly beyond repair, and the Abbott experience tolls an eternal warning for all Party leaders.'
The period between 2010 and 2013 during which Labor Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was deposed in favour of his deputy Julia Gillard who was then deposed in her turn by Rudd has been described as a period of damaging instability which created serious divisions within the Labor Party. In an opinion piece published in The Conversation on June 28, 2013, Shaun Carney, Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Political and Social Inquiry at Monash University, stated, 'The truth is that the Australian Labor Party nationally has in the past three years experienced its most rancorous divisions since the split of the 1950s. Unlike the period of the split, which occurred in opposition and guaranteed many more years of it, the party has endured these divisions while holding office, and the enmities have, for the most part, grown from ego rather than ideology.'
Liberal Senator Cory Bernardi opposed the removal of Tony Abbott and criticised those in his party whom he believed had fomented instability in the name of personal gain. Senator Bernardi stated, 'I think it was absolutely wrong to roll a first-term sitting prime minister. Australia has now had six prime ministers in the last eight years. This is making politics a circus... and it's wrong.'
Senator Bernardi further claimed that the change in leader had rewarded 'treachery and disloyalty'. He stated, 'It's treachery of the highest order but what's done is done and they'll get the spoils of office...We'll see who's taken their 30 pieces of silver in the promotional ranks of the ministry. We've learnt nothing from Labor's mistakes and I just think this a huge step in the wrong direction.'

5. Such changes of prime minister damage Australia's international standing
It has been claimed that frequent change in political leadership damages Australia's international reputation, as it makes the country's political institutions appear unstable and disrupts established relationships between countries and leaders.
In an opinion piece published in The Goulburn Post on September 15, 2015, Chris Gordon stated, '[W]hen a country changes leadership this frequently and there is a perpetual "Now Under New management" sign at the door, it reduces our international reputation which flows on into many other areas, not the least of which is our economy and international trading.'
Gordon made comparisons between Australia and coup-prone Fiji, stating, 'It's become a learned behaviour, like a more peaceful and civilised version of the Coup Culture that developed in Fiji where if, they weren't happy with election results or political decisions, they held a Coup (as they did in 1987, 2000 and 2006)...
That made Fiji the pariah of the South Pacific for a while - and they didn't have five changes of leadership in eight years like we have. Just what damage these repeated and rapid changes in leadership are doing to our reputation in the region, or around the world, is anyone's guess.'
In an article published on September 16, 2015, in the Lowy Institute for International Policy's The Interpreter, Nick Bryant stated, 'With five prime ministers in as many years, so much change has come in such a short space of time that it has surely damaged the conduct of Australia's foreign affairs. No Australian prime minister can cast a long shadow on the international stage for the simple reason they do not get to stride it for long enough. The personal chemistry so important in international diplomacy seldom gets the chance to brew.'
Bryant further explained, 'What adds to the sense of disorientation internationally is that these overnight changes of leadership can come with sudden changes of personal belief and style. Turnbull, a committed environmentalist, republican and foreign policy thinker with more of an Asian focus, has replaced a climate change sceptic, monarchist and Anglophile. Rudd, a thrusting internationalist and multilateralist, was replaced by Julia Gillard, a prime minister who told the ABC's Kerry O'Brien in an early television interview that she had no great appetite for summiteering. What were fellow world leaders to make of that?'