Australia PM’s nasty case of second-term slump

Sydney : Critics have lined up to kick Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull after the conservative Liberal-National coalition’s narrow election victory. On 2 July, the night of the election, ultra-conservative commentator Andrew Bolt was first out of the blocks, telling Turnbull bluntly: “Resign.””You have been a disaster,” Bolt wrote. “You betrayed (former PM) Tony Abbott and then led the party to humiliation, stripped of both values and honour.”Opposition leader Bill Shorten spent last week gleefully calling Turnbull a “prime minister with no authority” and predicting Australians would be back at the polls within a year.
Australia PM Turnbull’s conservatives win tight election
But while things look chaotic from close-up, Australia’s recent political history suggests this is business as usual. Turnbull is suffering from a political malaise that’s common “down under” – the second-term slump.
‘Don’t slit your throat’

Amidst the rancour and heated denunciations last week, former prime minister John Howard offered a much cooler assessment of the government’s performance and Turnbull’s leadership.
“This hasn’t been an outcome that we wanted, but it’s not the end of the world and people shouldn’t start slitting their throats,” he said.Howard knew this from experience – he, too, suffered from second-term slump.