Julia Gillard, Australia's new/first female Prime Minister

[eggs2see]

Nomad Blue said:

eggs2see said:

I'm pretty disappointed by the whole thing.  As others have said, our political system is crap the way an elected prime minister, elected by the people, can be removed by his/her party.  Fare enough if you are doing a terrible job or something, but he really wasn't so bad, and while his popularity was down i find it hard to believe the other guy (tony abbott) would have won the up coming election.

Do you actually vote for a prime minister in Australia though?  Or is it like the UK where you vote for a party/local member of parliament and the party with the majority(/gets a coalition govt together) picks the PM?

No, we have the same thing here where we vote for a local member. Actually i believe our system is very similar to the UK's.  But most people that I know vote for who they want as the leader and don't really factor in about their local member.  I do realise a number of people care about local issues and local members however i have a feeling this is mostly older people.