Australia's onion-eating, speedo-wearing prime minister was just kicked out by his own party

For the fifth time in as many years, Australia has a new prime minister today. Tony Abbott was removed from the leadership of his party, and by extension, the role of prime minister, in a Liberal Party leadership spill today.

The party held a vote in a closed room late at night, just in case the whole thing didn’t seem cloak-and-dagger enough to start with. Former Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull emerged victorious at nearly 11 p.m. Australian time, the ABC reports.

In a speech announcing his challenge for the leadership, Turnbull said Australia needs new style of leadership. “We need advocacy, not slogans. We need to respect the intelligence of the Australian people,” he said.

This might all seem a bit weird to anyone who’s used to voting for their own national leader directly, but Australians vote for a governing party, not a prime minister. The leader of the winning party usually takes power and stays in the role until the party’s term is over.

In recent years, things have been a little more dicey. It all began in 2010 with a series of Labor Party coups that first deposed Prime Minster Kevin Rudd, replaced him with Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and then replaced her with Rudd again. Following all that, the Labor Party lost the elections in 2013, and the Liberal Party was voted into power as part of a coalition government, with Abbott as its leader.

Abbott had plenty of weird media moments during his two years in power. There was the awkward time that he stared at a reporter in silence for 28 seconds, after being asked about his flippant response to a soldier’s death:

Then there was the time in March this year when, during a visit to a farm, he chomped down on a whole brown onion, skin and all, and pretended to like it:

Which, in the lead-up to his political demise today, was an all-too-easy target for Australians, who began posting pictures of onions tagged #putoutyouronions:

https://instagram.com/p/7nN_WHFngv/?tagged=putoutyouronions

Australians have also come to associate their now former PM with an iconic pair of red speedos, or “budgy smugglers” as they’re called in Australia, which he has worn proudly on multiple occasions:

https://instagram.com/p/7nP7tPO7iW/?tagged=budgiesmugglers

This is the legacy of a prime minister who will also be remembered for his controversial asylum seeker and climate change policies, at least from an international perspective.