Prime Minister Of Australia
The Prime Minister of the Commonwealth of Australia is the highest minister of the Crown, leader of the Cabinet and head of government, holding office on commission from the Governor-General of Australia. The office of Prime Minister is, in practice, the most powerful political office in Australia. Despite being at the apex of executive government in the country, the office is not mentioned in the Constitution of Australia specifically and exists through an unwritten political convention.
Barring exceptional circumstances, the prime minister is always the leader of the political party or coalition with majority support in the House of Representatives. The only case where a senator was appointed prime minister was that of John Gorton, who subsequently resigned his Senate position and was elected as a member of the House of Representatives (Senator George Pearce was acting prime minister for seven months in 1916 while Billy Hughes was overseas).
Julia Gillard is the current Prime Minister, leader of the Australian Labor Party, and the first female Prime Minister of Australia.
Read more about Prime Minister Of Australia: Appointment, Powers, Salary and Benefits, List of Prime Ministers, Graphical Timeline, Living Former Prime Ministers, Religious Beliefs, Convictions, Births and Deaths, Ages, Post-office Longevity
Famous quotes containing the words prime minister, prime, minister and/or australia:
“If one had to worry about ones actions in respect of other peoples ideas, one might as well be buried alive in an antheap or married to an ambitious violinist. Whether that man is the prime minister, modifying his opinions to catch votes, or a bourgeois in terror lest some harmless act should be misunderstood and outrage some petty convention, that man is an inferior man and I do not want to have anything to do with him any more than I want to eat canned salmon.”
—Aleister Crowley (18751947)
“In time, after a dozen years of centering their lives around the games boys play with one another, the boys bodies change and that changes everything else. But the memories are not erased of that safest time in the lives of men, when their prime concern was playing games with guys who just wanted to be their friendly competitors. Life never again gets so simple.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“[T]he dignity of parliament it seems can brook no opposition to its power. Strange that a set of men who have made sale of their virtue to the minister should yet talk of retaining dignity!”
—Thomas Jefferson (17431826)
“I like Australia less and less. The hateful newness, the democratic conceit, every man a little pope of perfection.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)