Well we had a change prime minister this morning. Our governing party ousted their leader and appointed a new one. Kevin Rudd is no longer PM and Julia Gillard has taken his place.

It is history on a number of fronts not the least to have an elected Prime Minister ousted by his own party in his first term. As far as I'm concerned it's a crazy state of affairs whether you liked Kevin Rudd or not.

She is also our first ever female Prime Minister although she is a non-elected PM. Let's see if she manages to get elected in her own right at the next election later in the year. As far as I'm concerned she didn't get elected by the people so has not earnt the right to be our Prime Minister.

As you can see I'm not very impressed with what has happened here today.

Guess you've boarded the same boat as us Americans...

How did she get to be appointed the new PM?

Here we have a vice president that is elected with the president. If the president can't finish the term the vice president becomes the new president. I've never heard of anyone thinking that the vice president-turned president is not the legit president.

I don't think that's ever happened...

I think what happen in Australia would be like the same as if we didn't have a vice president and the president's own party voted to boot him out and chose a replacement without conferring with the people...

Yeah Eric, String has pretty much got it. Our system is different to yours and it was kind of like a legal coup.

The Deputy Prime Minister basically was part of a mutiny to oust the Prime Minister and she won. There's a lot of politics behind this but it was not a case of the PM not being able to complete his term of office but being kicked out.

It's different over here because technically it is the party who is elected by the vote and not the person themselves. But in reality the people vote for the leader of the party.
It would be like your President's party deciding they didn't want him as their leader any more and kicking him out and putting the Vice President in as their party leader. That then would make him the President even though when the people voted the Vice wasn't the leader. Make sense?

As I understand it that can't happen in your system because people vote specifically for the person as the President. Over here the people vote for the party but with a platform of a clear leader of the party who they expect to be leading the country for their term of government. Deposing him mid term has left people feeling their choice of leader has been taken from them.

Normally leadership of political parties change during their term in opposition and they choose the leader they want to put up for the next election.

This is only the 2nd time in history that a sitting Prime Minister has been deposed by his own party while in office and the last time the circumstances were quite different.

This was a clear mutiny and a 'assisination' of the serving Prime Minister by his Deputy and own party. Hence many people are very upset that factions within the party were able to depose the leader that the people voted in through voting for the party.

Does that make sense? I know that was kind of a round about description.

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What's this new politician's take on "Snake Control" over there?

I read online that she had made a deal with some dude in Arizona who agreed to take all the snakes they caught...Think his name was Barf, or Hurl, or something gross like that...

They probably mean to keep your snake in your pants. DUH.