Chicken Kev and the new brutality

摘要

One thing that sets Australia apart from its Asian neighbours is the interminable, vicious public infighting that scars its politics. On March 25th Julia Gillard, the prime minister, shuffled her cabinet for the fourth time since scraping home in an election in August 2010. She purged it of supporters of Kevin Rudd, her predecessor, whom some of her Labor Party colleagues had tried and failed to install as her replacement on March 21st. Australian commentators wrung their hands at the tawdry politicking. "Our long national nightmare continues," lamented Sam Roggeveen on a blog on the website of the Lowy Institute, a foreign-affairs think-tank in Sydney, fretting that Australia was becoming a laughing-stock. It is true that its politics provokes a smirk or two elsewhere in Asia. Few could argue with Ms Gillard's assessment that the coup attempt was "unseemly" and "self-indulgent".