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Australia’s First Female Prime Minister

Last week Australia got its first female prime minister.  The previous prime minister, Kevin Rudd, had been very popular in Australia.

Then he made some decisions, such as delaying an emissions trading scheme (designed to reduce climate change) and this disappointed many people.

In recent polls the government had lost a lot of its support, but it still looked likely that his government would win the next election.  (The opposition leader is very unpopular and has some unpleasant policies).

But lots of people in the Labor party were worried about losing the election and so there was a coup against the prime minsiter.  Julia Gillard, the deputy prime minister became the new prime minister.

Australia has a similar parliamentary to Britain and Japan.  Japan is notorious for how often it changes prime ministers and after Prime Minister Koizumi retired, there hasn’t been a leader that lasted very long.

There is no president in Australia.  The British Queen is the head of state, but she doesn’t have anything to do with politics (in the same way as the Emperor in Japan).  The Queen’s representative in Australia is the Governor-General.  Australia got its first female governor-general a couple of years ago.

So last week, Australia’s first female governor-general swore in Australia’s first female prime minister.

Australia was the second country in the world to allow women to vote in elections.  New Zealand was the first.  Many countries around the world (Britain, India, South Korea) have had female political leaders but not the USA and Japan.  Sri Lanka was the first country to have a female leader in 1960.  The rest of the world has been slow in catching up.

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Tags: Australia