To understand the context of the election you need to go back to 2007.
That was the year that the Liberal ("Liberal" is a misnomer, Tory is more accurate) party which had been in government for 11 years under John Howard (Australia's second longest serving prime minister) was swept out of office by the Labor party under Kevin Rudd.
Rudd was hugely popular and came in with great hope. History will probably look back on some of his achievements very favourably (please note Amir, that what I will say will probably be vociferously argued against !) - he delivered a long awaited apology to the Aboriginal People, he signed Kyoto, he dismantled some very unpopular workplace legislation and he delivered a stimulus package that meant Australia stayed out of recession throughout the GFC
He attempted and failed to introduce a "super profits" tax on the mining industry and after this his popularity plummeted. So much so that he was dumped by his party and replace by Julia Gillard - Australia's first female prime minister. This was the beginning of years of poisonous infighting within the Labor party. Gillard took the party to a hung parliament at the next election and Labor clung onto power in a minority government in coalition with the Greens and a rabble of independent MPs
Gillard suffered a sustained, sexist attack from the shock jocks and the Abbott led Liberal party, culminating in her famous misogyny speech
http://media.smh.com.au/news/national-times/julia-gillards-misogyny--speech-in-full-3701787.html
With her popularity falling Rudd mounted a challenge on the leadership and was defeated. Instead of going away, he continued to undermine Gillard until eventually in June this year there was yet another spill and Gillard was dumped in favour of Rudd.
In all of this, Tony Abbott - a right wing loony - sat cleverly by on the sidelines waiting for Labor to implode which they have just done.
Some examples of the stuff that our new Prime Minister has said
What the housewives of Australia need to understand as they do the ironing is that if they get it done commercially it’s going to go up in price and their own power bills when they switch the iron on are going to go up.”
"Sh* t happens"
On the death of an Australian soldier in Afghanistan
There may not be a great job for [aboriginal people] but whatever there is, they just have to do it... And if it's picking up rubbish around the community, it just has to be done."
I think it would be folly to expect that women will ever dominate or even approach equal representation in a large number of areas simply because their aptitudes, abilities and interests are different for physiological reasons
"The argument [behind climate change] is absolute crap. However, the politics of this are tough for us. Eighty per cent of people believe climate change is a real and present danger."