This could be the year that Australian politics return to stability, with longer-serving prime ministers and effective treasurers if the incumbents, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison, can produce an electoral mandate supporting sustainable budget and tax reform.
Australia’s political landscape began to sour in 2007, when a tradition of powerful prime ministers with long tenures gave way to the Keystone Cops administrations of Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Tony Abbott.
Despite the country’s social stability and the benefits of the resources boom, recent prime ministers have come, gone, returned, and gone again in a parade of intraparty regicide. Treasurers also used to serve long periods and many...