Indeed, why would China bring a massive armada to conquer Australia, famously known for being checks notes over 2/3 worthless desert and what? 1k km away from literally everything else that matters?
Also based answer. Stupid reporter: "China is building ships is that not provocation?"
Gee moron what is the US doing then? Never mind everyone else or is China the only ones not allowed to have a military? He should have pointed out all the US bases around the pacific including the occupied Japan/Korean.
Both those countries have regular protests against these bases and yet having them against the will of the natives is not provocation lol.
Anyway Australia is shitty US vassal so none of this is surprising.
We don't really, at least not since WW2. Menzies served over 18 years on and off. Howard 11, and Hawke over 8, and Fraser, Huges, Lyons, and Bruce 2 full terms each. That's 65 Years out of 122. And it understandably took a decade or two for things to settle down, mostly because there was a real chance Australia was going DemSoc (If you look at Huges you can see he was PM for 3 parties and went fash in real-time, that's the Squatters (rich, originally illegal landowners) and the Brits stepping up reaction lest we pull an Ireland.)
But there's a few reasons they can serve shorter terms.
One is that we're a Parliamentary system and the PM doesn't exist in law like a President, it's just a customary role so just because the PM goes doesn't mean the government does.
Another is that PMs can set the date of an election to anytime before the clock runs out, and if they're slipping in popularity they'll often try to do it early.
Yet another is that there's a strong culture of the "Klingon promotion." especially in the Labor Party. Keating himself knifed Hawke after Hawke reneged on a promise to stand down and let Keating have a shot. Do it too much, like Labor did, especially in both state and federal elections, and you'll alienate the voters by seeming incompetent. Labor is extremely factionalised in a way that most people break down into "Right and Left" factions, because they operate under a weak form of DemCent and only an insider can really navigate what Trade Union is supporting which sub-sub-faction this week.
Finally, in the Coalition, there's an unholy alliance between The Liberal Party who are "moderate" city Haute Bourgois, and "Hard Right" Urban Petit Bourgois (including emigres from Asian countries that went red), Evangelicals, and Trad Caths (though Labor also has some Tradcath those mostly left and formed a small fash party called the "Democratic Labor Party"), and The National Party, which are frothing rural reactionaries (think the Landowner faction in Vic3.)
The moderates keep getting popular, and then get knifed by the PB hardliners with National support because checks notes they'd like the Murray River to not die and kill the most productive farmland inside a decade and so support irrigation restrictions and climate change taxes.
To clarify, I meant the last few PM's
I live in Canada, similar system
Thanks for the explainer on the inner politics of the parties
I saw a documentary on that
Sad stuff :(
I will say Albanese (our current guy) looks very stable, He's a left Labor guy but governing from the Right of the party in policy, so he's stable internally, and If he can face down the Murdoch Press and push the new advisory council for First Nations (another story) through a referendum he'll have the Liberals in the wilderness. The Libs are already reeling because the centre-right Intelligentsia split the party and formed a loose "Teal" coalition.