Remember that movie Rollerball (the 1975 film with the hilarious futuristic fonts, not the turgid 2002 remake)? No? Huh. Basically, Rollerball envisaged a future where war was non-existent because large-scale conflict had been displaced by a hyper-violent sport named... Rollerball. Hm. Makes sense.



Now, the reason I mention Rollerball (besides the fact that it's AWESOME!!!!!...*cough*) is because I actually think there's something to the thesis that civil unrest can generally be avoided with the aid of a handy diversionary spectacle. As a general rule, people are fine not trying to kill each other when there are other people are willing to do the actual or figurative killing for them. And this is why I think one of the grandest markers of a nation's march toward an effective and stable democracy must surely be the point at which a given period of post-election chaos turns from the slaughter of innocent civilians toward the (political) slaughter of its not-necessarily-quite-so-innocent elected representatives. Over the past couple of years, America's done it to the Republicans, Britain's done it to the Labour party (who haven't even been voted out yet!) and right now Australia is making quite the long term spectacle out of eviscerating the Liberal party.

And what an entertaining and degrading spectacle it is. I mean, the party has been happily consuming itself pretty much non-stop ever since the 2007 election. First up there was Brendan 'Take Me To Your Leader' Nelson, the ultimate sacrificial lamb. Dished out to the public in the immediate aftermath of the 2007 shitmixing, Nelson's primary purpose in life was to absorb the inevitable explosion of voter discontent after 11 years of uninterrupted Liberal rule. No party falls from power after that long without alienating a significant portion of their voter base. And to a country full of people waking from a decade long John Howard reverie, Nelson was the ugly reminder of everything that was wrong about the previous 11 years. I mean, quite possibly Brendan himself thought that he would be leading the Liberals triumphantly through to the next election, but I can almost guarantee you that everyone else in the party simply saw a man with the words 'human shield' emblazoned on his chest. He should have had a t-shirt done up.

So, a year down the track, the inevitable happened and Turnbull deposed him. Of course, you'll recall that Turnbull actually challenged for the leadership in the immediate aftermath of Howard's departure but was edged out by Nelson in a partyroom vote. However, I think that probably had less to do with Nelson being the preferred leader, and more to do with the party's reluctance to throw Turnbull - charismatic, intelligent, likable and noticeably different from Howard - into the midst of what was sure to be a particularly vigorous bout of post-election bloodletting.  Thus, in September 2008, with much of the brutality presumably done, Turnbull assumed his rightful place at the helm of the Liberal party. And, you know, things were kinda OK for a bit. Turnbull seemed a likely sort. It almost looked like he was reclaiming the party for the wet Liberals too - the Liberal's long dormant socially progressive, economically conservative wing - a move to be much applauded.

But then Utegate kicked in. And shit, there ain't nothing to make you feel more like a provincial outpost of the empire than having your biggest political scandal for the past 5 years centre around a goddamn utility truck. Tensions had been brewing before this though - in many ways Turnbull was just too similar to Rudd for his own good. Much like the Labor party during its years in the wilderness, the Liberals were discovering that having a leader who could - at a pinch - step into the same role for the other side does not produce a stunning amount of voter excitement. But that need not have been a fatal flaw. However, as it turns out, being willing to stake your entire leadership around a personal assault on the Prime Minister's integrity, with the said assault based around a fictionalised document sourced from a mentally unstable public service employee, was.

Crippled and listing, the Turnbull leadership was never going to recover. It was really just a matter of time until somebody else stepped into the void. The only problem being that, well, there is noone else in the Liberal party right now. Turnbull's time in charge carried with it such a weight of electoral inevitability, that it seems like noone really looked around and said 'you know what guys? This basket is dangerously full of eggs'. And merely because of that Turnbull probably could have held on for a bit longer, and potentially even made it to the next election, was it not for some stunning political maneuvering from our Kev over the Emissions Trading Scheme.

Confident of Labor's superior place in the Australian electorate, Rudd had previously floated the idea that the ETS could become a double dissolution issue i.e. if the Senate rejected it twice, then he'd dissolve both houses of Parliament and call a snap election. Which the Labor party would win by a very comfortable majority. Obviously not something Turnbull wanted to countenance right now. But Rudd, playing the nice guy, offered the Libs some tasty concessions to try and make the whole idea more amenable to them. Although, the move was in no way altruistic. Because Rudd knew that by making a compromise offer to Turnbull, he essentially wedged the guy between a rock (rejecting the offer, going to an election and losing miserably) and a hard place (accepting the offer against the wishes of his party and facing a leadership challenge). The latter option evidently appeared to be the one he thought he had the better chance of surviving (or maybe he just flipped a coin, I dunno) and so late on Tuesday Turnbull announced that the party would support the ETS, despite the fact that it looked like the majority of them didn't. Cue mayhem. The chaos unfolded pretty much minute by minute on Twitter, and I spent much of Tuesday night watching the #spill Twitter-feed much like I imagine people used to watch a day's entertainment at the Coliseum; a glass of wine in one hand and a look of morbid fascination etched on my face. It was very entertaining.

And despite somehow managing to survive that initial challenge, by the time you read this, there's every chance that Turnbull won't actually be leader anymore, and we'll be dealing with a Hockey/Abbott team instead. Which sounds... inspiring. You know, Joe Hockey. That guy who did that stuff one time. But whatever happens over the next couple of days, I think we can all agree that it's been a hell of a week and one that really makes you thankful that we let political leaders do all the killing for us. It's much more fun that way.

Although not as fun as Rollerball.

In Monday's post: Much like that Buffy musical episode, the Liberal party asks themselves 'Where Do We Go From Here?' Oh, look, a Buffy reference. How cool am I? Please be my friend.