Apparently everyone’s favourite media plutocrat isn’t happy about this, so another mark in the plus column AFAIC (but he’s a U.S. citizen now, so don’t see why it’s his concern).
In our guts, we knew he was nuts.
Beat you to it, Cory 
“Australia’s Liberal Party voted out its own leader… Abbott was a terrible leader: a sexist, racist, homophobic, xenophobic, authoritarian climate denier who substituted talking points for substance in his public utterances and debates.”
So does liberal mean the opposite in Australia than it does in the US because of it’s upside down?
My favorite part of the article:
The deputy Liberal leader Julie Bishop had already told Abbott – in a pre-question time meeting – that he should stand aside. At that point Abbott is understood to have been strongly resisting the idea of a challenge.
These are the few meetings in which I would like to be present, because the “strongly resisting” euphemism sounds like fun to watch. In the same way I’d like to see G.W. Bush, or D. Cheney, “strongly resist” being frogmarched out of whatever hole they’re currently residing in.
When the party was formed mid-20thC, they were trying to contrast themselves with the Australian Labor Party, whom they argued were too closely aligned with communism. The point was to emphasise “liberty” rather than “socialist”. Which is hilarious in retrospect - we haven’t had a true socialist democrat government since 1975.
And yes, the water goes down the sink the opposite way too. 
So is the media going to call Malcolm Turnbull a backstabber for contesting his party’s leadership, or was that a one-time-only special thing for Julia Gillard?
I assume it is liberal as in classical liberalism, rather than social liberalism.
Labour’s mistake was replacing a leader who was more enamored with the power than running the country, with a leader who was enamored with being our first female prime minister.
Maybe we’ll get a leader who is enamored with leaving a legacy of doing a good job and we might have a good PM after this string of duds.
More accurately, it’s liberal as in neo-liberal.
Hey, it’s turning out to be quite the week in politics, is it not? Here’s Hoping Clinton resigns from the primaries by Sunday, eh?
(Yes, I know, but one can hope)
Which means exactly the same thing as neo-conservative, so we still have the upside-down question.
Sir Les Patterson would have been my choice but he would not have lasted long. Australian politics is obviously full of back stabbers. At least he would have kept the same suit so we could all see how it happened
That depends on whether you use it to describe a place on the political spectrum or a set of generally similar political positions throughout history.
In the 19th century, at least in Europe, things like free enterprise, free trade, a basic division of church and state, disregard of nobility, deregulation and streamlined public administration placed you firmly on the progressive side of the political establishment.
The first two questions Turnbull fielded at a press conference as PM were from the Guardian and Fairfax.
Not that optimistic about the guy, but I’m glad we have an articulate smartarse in power for the first time since Keating.
