Editorial: Cannibalistic cabinet spits out another failed PM

ANOTHER one bites the dust of the Great Victoria Desert as Australia's political merry-go-round spins on and on to the tune of Waltzing Matilda.

The one with the joke sticky-out ears and oil-slick hairdo has been ousted by the one with the amiable smile and glasses (two things which did not do Kevin Rudd much good).

So Malcolm Turnbull becomes Australia's 29th Prime Minister and Tony Abbott is jettisoned to the political outback.

Only his cronies will lament Abbott's departure. Apart from generally coming over as a bit of an idiot, his record on the callous treatment of refugees and immigrants, and on gay rights, condemns him.

Remarkably, he was even worse than Julia Gillard who - with a voice that could grate gravel at 20 paces - was so busy reminding people that she was a woman in a man's world that she forgot to govern the country.

Which raises the question: Does Australia need governing?

In a country where politics has been reduced to cannibalism at its most voracious and where the election of a new Prime Minister (Turnbull is the fourth in two years) seems to signal their "colleagues" to furtively form a back-stabbing committee, most ordinary Aussies seem to ignore it all and just carry on.

As long as the cricket's okay and its the league play-offs, who cares what a self-obsessed bunch in Canberra are up to?

And, after another night of the long knives, who would trust these people, anyway?