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Simply put, we had an election on Saturday. Like the US, our legislature has two chambers (named in the same way) a House of Representatives and a Senate. The Prime Minister is the leader of the party or coalition that controls the House of Representatives. Laws need to be passed by both houses. We went into this election with a comfortable conservative (Liberal/National Coalition) majority in the House. We still don't have the final count, but it's looks like it's going to be a near dead heat with both the Coalition and the Labor Party holding about the same number of seats and independents and minor party candidates having the balance of power. We might hold on in that case with the support of those independents/minors - or Labor may take over government with their support. Even if we do hold on, it will likely be by a razor thin margin.

And our situation in the Senate (where we were already in the minority and they blocking a lot of things) has got even worse.

At the 2013 election, we elected a true conservative government lead by a true conservative Prime Minister (Tony Abbott). Unfortunately, largely due to a hostile media environment, he became very unpopular, and eventually about a year ago in a panic, his party voted to replace him with the centrist Malcolm Turnbull who was seen as more popular. If Turnbull had done well in this election, that might have seemed defensible in the end - but he's failed. Even if he's managed to hang on by the skin of his teeth, this just isn't good enough.

I am a huge fan of Mr. Abbott, who is indeed a true conservative (with some differences from the American flavor owing to Anglo-Australian history culture etc.). He is staunchly pro-life, deeply opposed to the invasion of his country by illegal immigrants, and he is an unabashed monarchist in a country where the political left is deeply infected with small (r) republicanism.