Australia's Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull survived a leadership challenge today, but his position as Prime Minister is tenuous.
His challenger, Immigration and Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, resigned from Cabinet after the vote, won 48 votes to 35 by Turnbull, but will likely spend the coming hours and days working to swing the seven votes needed to oust Turnbull.
The Guardian reports Dutton is poised to challenge again, possibly as soon as this Thursday, while Sky News reports Turnbull could call an early election, in the hope of holding on, to let the Australian public make the call at the polls. Australia's General Election is currently scheduled for next May.
Turnbull calls surprise spill - catches Dutton off-guard
Turnbull this morning called the vote at a meeting of conservative Liberal Party lawmakers as speculation mounted about his support within the government.
Dutton, who was readying to challenge later in the week, was caught short by the move, though political commentators were stunned by his level of support.
Dutton supporters say the former police drug squad detective could have amassed enough support to successfully challenge for the leadership on Thursday, before Parliament takes a two-week break.
Liberal MPs abandoning Turnbull over fear of future - analyst
Nick Economou, a political analyst at Monash University in Melbourne, believes lawmakers are abandoning Turnbull because they fear he will lead them to a crushing defeat at elections due by May.
The longer Turnbull remains prime minister, the worse the government's opinion polling was likely to become, Economou said.
"Voters will do what they always do - they react very badly to internal tensions, to disunity," Economou said.
Turnbull abandons his signature greenhouse emissions plan to try and retain power
Turnbull made a major concession to his opponents within his party yesterday, by abandoning plans to legislate to limit greenhouse gas emissions.
The concession avoided the most conservative government lawmakers voting against the legislation in Parliament, openly undermining his authority.
But former Prime Minister Tony Abbott, who was replaced by Turnbull in a ballot of government lawmakers in 2015, was not convinced that Turnbull had given up on reducing Australia's greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent below 2005 levels through legislation.
"What we want to know is: Where are this prime minister's convictions?" Abbott told the ABC outside Parliament House on Monday night."
"It was a conversion of convenience this morning," Abbott added.
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