Malcolm Turnbull is angling for an early election to establish himself with a larger mandate for action than he currently holds, but online, one very powerful organisation doesn't properly recognise his position as Prime Minister.
Twitter still thinks Tony Abbott is the PM.
Go on, search "Australian Prime Minister" on your phone's Twitter app. We did. This is what comes up:
That's right. Even six months after he was deposed by Turnbull, Tony Abbott is still the Prime Minister of Australia according to Twitter. Turnbull comes in as the second result; you have to scroll to the left to find him, though, to the second page of results.
Expanding further... yep, Tony's still number one.
Almost certainly, this is because search results are delivered according to what most people are tweeting about or searching for. No doubt the world was probably tweeting about or searching for "Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott" at a higher rate than "Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull" because... well... Tony Abbott did a lot of strange things that attracted the world's attention, like:
- Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott winks during radio interview with sex worker
- Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott offended Irish people with this St Patrick's Day message
- Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott eats an onion
- Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott eats another onion
We asked Twitter for an explanation of how their search algorithm works and why Tony Abbott is still the first result when you search "Australian Prime Minister," but they didn't get back to us.
Unfortunately for Turnbull, he may be the only world leader to suffer this indignity. U.S. President Barack Obama, and the Prime Ministers of Canada and Great Britain, don't experience similar problems.
Luckily, if you're ever worried or confused about who the Aussie PM is at any given point in time, there's the trusty Twitter account @WhoIsPM: