Photo: John Howard was the last prime minister to both enter and leave office at an election. (Sergio Dionisio: AAP)
John Howard was an exception. The vast majority of Australia's prime ministers have either started or finished their terms without the public casting a vote, writes Joff Lelliott.
One of the many things Australia's 43rd Parliament will be remembered for is perpetual questions over prime ministerial legitimacy.
The Opposition under Tony Abbott has successfully kept the issue alive first by questioning Julia Gillard's arrival via the caucus room in 2010 and then moving on to the return of Kevin Rudd in June this year.
Many voters share this concern at the manner in which recent prime ministers have entered and left office. There is a widespread belief that legitimate prime ministers arrive at the Lodge via the ballot box and leave office when the voters turf them out again at an election.
The assumption that the real world works like this is wrong.
Australians have always tended to let circumstance change the prime minister and then go on to endorse (and occasionally reject) the decision at the subsequent election.
The first decade of federation saw the prime-ministerships of Barton, Deakin, Watson, Reid, Deakin again, Fisher and Deakin yet again. But it took until 1910 for a prime ministerial change to be triggered by an election when Andrew Fisher's Labor Party defeated the third Deakin ministry.
This set the pattern for Australia's political history. Since federation in 1901, 27 people have served as prime minister in 33 different terms (Deakin, Fisher, Menzies and Rudd have each held office on more than one separate occasion).
John Howard was the last prime minister to enter office by winning an election and to leave again when the voters decided time was up. He was one of a select band. Before Howard you need to go all the way back to James Scullin in the Great Depression to find another, and then to the years before World War I for two more, with Andrew Fisher's second term and then Joseph Cook.
That is the entire list. Just four prime ministers have both begun and ended prime-ministerships courtesy of the public. That means 29 prime ministerial terms either started or finished without the public casting a vote.
Many of the country's greatest prime ministers - including Deakin, Menzies, Curtin, Chifley and Hawke - were installed as leader or left office without an election.
Between Joseph Lyons' election victory in late 1931 and Gough Whitlam beating William McMahon forty years later in 1972, just one prime ministerial change was triggered by an election. The rest were a happy game of turn-and-turn-about in party rooms and on the floor of Parliament.
Across those 40 years, the job was held by Lyons, Page, Menzies, Fadden, Curtin, Forde, Chifley, Menzies again, Holt, McEwen, Gorton and McMahon. The only change triggered by the voters was in 1949 when Robert Menzies' Liberal Party beat Ben Chifley's ALP.
All of this is a product of the Westminster system of government. Rather than receiving a direct mandate from the public, prime ministers govern because they command a majority on the floor of the House of Representatives. In an era with strong parties, it is almost inevitable that parties will install prime ministers without calling elections.
Being a product of the Westminster system, the issue is not unique to Australia. Other Westminster democracies display the same tendency, including Britain, home of Westminster government.
Since World War II, only Attlee, Wilson mark one and Heath began and ended their prime-ministerships at the ballot box. Correspondingly, Churchill, Eden, Macmillan, Douglas-Home, Wilson mark two, Callaghan, Thatcher, Major, Blair and Brown all either entered or left 10 Downing Street outside of the electoral cycle.
Tony Abbott and the Liberal Party are wilfully misunderstanding the Westminster system and their own history in decrying Labor's leadership changes outside of the electoral process.
Since the father of the Liberal Party, Robert Menzies, assumed prime ministerial office in the party room in 1939, the Coalition and ALP are more-or-less level pegging on installing prime ministers behind closed doors.
The irony is that for all the noise, if Tony Abbott wins September's election he is more likely to be replaced by someone from his own party without the public getting a say than he is to ever be rejected by the voters.
That is the history of the Westminster system in Australia, and of his own party.
Dr Joff Lelliott is state director of the political think tank The Australian Fabians (QLD). View his full profile here.
PMs rarely begin and end with the people - The Drum (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)
