Let’s Talk About Kevin Andrews and the Fact Australia Hasn’t Swapped PMs in 205 Days

With Australians quickly tiring of having the same prime minister month after month (at time of writing: Malcolm Turnbull), this week's Newspoll saw the Labor party leading the Coalition 51–49 on a two-party preferred basis. Turnbull's personal rating took a four point slide, and the Labor leader (at time of writing: Bill Shorten) rose by six points.

Turnbull is unlikely to dismiss this Newspoll completely out of hand. After all, he cited the Abbott government losing 30 Newspolls in a row as the primary reason for his own leadership challenge. For the younger readers, that was back in September of 2015.

This is where Kevin Andrews comes in. As you might have heard the former defence minister and living department store mannequin Kevin Andrews, last week suggested that, in the right circumstances, he might consider the top job. "It's never been my burning ambition to be leader of the party," Andrews told his local newspaper, the Manningham Leader. "But if circumstances arose which they did in both of those instances where I thought there should be a change or a contest, I am prepared to do it."

Kevin Andrews is a veteran MP who began his career as a Melbourne lawyer. As a member of the Liberal party since 1991, he's known for his effort to ban the RU-486 abortion drug, and as being an architect behind the deeply unpopular WorkChoices policy. He's also supported the restriction of Australia's intake of African refugees because they weren't "adjusting into the Australian way of life as quickly as we would hope." Andrews has since claimed his comments were taken out of context.

Andrews has already challenged Turnbull for the party leadership back in 2009. He didn't even get to a vote, with the party overwhelmingly voting against a spill. Of course, Turnbull was later overthrown by Abbott. Then in 2015, Andrews took another run, this time for the deputy leadership. He lost to Julie Bishop, who got 70 votes to his 30. The margins by which he lost both of those challenges suggest that Andrews' colleagues share his lack of "burning ambition" to see him in this role.

But when Turnbull took back temporary custodianship of the country in late 2015, Andrews was relegated to the backbench, and has apparently been plotting another sure-to-be-doomed challenge ever since.

Of course, Kevin Andrews isn't the only one.

Former prime minister and walking confirmation of David Icke's worldview, Tony Abbott has all but confirmed his ambition to win back the leadership that was so unfairly wrestled from him. In January, it was announced that he would recontest his seat of Warringah.

This was a big deal. Abbott made a valiant effort to frame this news as a simple demonstration of his loyalty to the people of wherever Warringah is, but it was difficult for everyone to see how exactly a dethroned Prime Minister would happily sit on the backbench for another three years. Someone as ambitious as Abbott would certainly not be content with such a fate.

There's little doubt that Abbott is waiting in the wings for a return to the Prime Ministership, and he'll be keeping a closer eye on the polls than anyone. So with the "will Abbott challenge?" question out of the way, the question becomes "would Abbott challenge before the election or after?" With Turnbull threatening a double dissolution as early as July, he might not have much choice. He might have to wait until after the election.

Unlike Kevin Rudd, who dethroned Julia Gillard with the assurance that only he could win the next election, Abbott might be content to wait until after the election, and he might be content with his party losing. Could there be any better confirmation of Abbott's legacy than Turnbull losing an election to Bill Shorten?

And Abbott might not actually be against the idea of becoming opposition leader once again. He was far more effective in this position than he was as Prime Minister, and in three years he could effectively contribute to the dismantling of a Shorten government (and then a Plibersek government, then an Albanese government, then a Bowen government, and so on as we head into 2017 and a recalcitrant Shorten takes the job again).

More broadly, our almost annual tradition of replacing the Prime Minister is unlikely to stop any time soon. It's not necessarily down to dips in the polls: most politicians know that low numbers (especially one as narrow as 51-49) are not fatal. But with warring factions within the party—the Abbott loyalists still exist, and they're still pissed—every slip is something to pounce upon.

More than that, Australia is now used to the idea of our leaders changing as regularly as what was known in pre-global warming times as "the seasons." And it's hard to get that toothpaste back in the tube. We bore easily, and the narrative of a leadership challenge is one that we've become addicted to in a disturbingly short amount of time.

If Andrews and Abbott are, like Brutus and Cassius before them, both aching to take another stab at leadership, then we can expect at least some movement in the coming months. Kevin Andrews is a long-time Tony Abbott supporter, so it will be interesting to see what will happen if both of them throw their hats into the ring. I'm not saying Kevin Andrews is unpopular, but if he ran against Tony Abbott, Kevin Andrews would probably vote for Tony Abbott.

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