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Further implications
There is a popular misconception regarding Australian politics. There is the mistaken belief that the Prime Ministership is meant to be and generally is conferred on a party leader as a result of a general election. This view is wrong in law and is not supported by the political history of this country.
The Australian Constitution not only makes no reference to how a Prime Minister should acquire the office, it makes no reference to the office of Prime Minister at all. The manner in which an individual becomes Prime Minister is determined by convention, and by convention the power to confer that position lies with the political party which has a majority in the House of Representatives.
Historically only ten Prime Ministers have assumed office as a result of winning a general election while twenty-three changes in prime minister have occurred without an election. Popularly elected Prime Ministers are the exception not the rule, as is the removal of a Prime Minister as the result of a popular vote.
Where then has the belief that the Prime Ministership of Australia should begin and end with a general election come from? Part of it is likely to derive from the Menzies era, the period furthest back in the active political memory of most Australians. Between 1949 and 1963 Menzies won an unprecedented seven general elections as leader of the Liberal Party (which he had founded). He was installed as Prime Minister in 1949 and retained that position until he retired in 1966. Thus the idea of an elected Prime Minister became firmly entwined in Australia's political DNA. This supposed norm was probably reinforced by the Prime Ministerships of Bob Hawke and John Howard. Each won four general elections as party leader and each became the country's Prime Minister, enjoying a high level of popular support for much of their period in office.
In addition, the marketing of political parties for election purposes has come to focus increasingly on the person of the party leader, presented to the electorate as their next Prime Minister. This is a trend that began with televised campaigns and has intensified with the extension and diversification of forms of media coverage. Twenty-four hour news cycles and the proliferation of photo opportunities and sound bites have turned party leaders into potential celebrities with all the attendant scope for idealisation or ridicule. The Internet, tweets, twitters and selfies have taken the focus on leaders and their pre-packaged personalities even further.
The trend has also been aggravated by the tendency of the Australian electorate to exaggerate the similarities between the American political process and that which pertains here. The President is a key figure in the United States Constitution with significant powers delineated in that document. Though nominated by the party, he or she stands for election in his or her own right and has a very high profile both within the United States and internationally. He or she serves a minimum four-year term and can stand for one further re-election such that each of the last three United States presidents, Bill Clinton, George W Bush and Barack Obama, has or will have served for eight years. Australians tend to see this country's Prime Minister as the direct equivalent of the United States President. This is not the case. The Australian Prime Minister serves at the pleasure of his or her party, does not have an independent office with significant constitutionally defined powers and is not popularly elected. Yet the confusion persists. Oddly enough, however, it is the increased profile of the Prime Minister and his or her significance to the electorate that tempts Australian political parties to try a new one when polling starts to go awry.
Does any of this matter? In the short and the medium term, yes. The commodification of the Prime Minister has reduced rather than increased his or her authority and the respect he or she receives. The focus on polling figures seems to have made party leaders expendable. This is unlikely to be good for the internal functioning of a party. Not only are policies unlikely to be persisted with, but personnel are jettisoned. Instability and uncertainty are the probable consequences. That this has happened in the past does not diminish its significance now. The reasons for the current rapid turn-over of leaders appear to be somewhat different than at other times in our history. Parties seem to be caught up in on-going election mode, with every poll seen as a marker of likely success at the big one. Thus governments no longer attempt to diagnose the long-term needs of the nation; they propose policies determined largely on what they believe the electorate will accept and change them if the next poll demonstrates otherwise.