New prime minister Malcolm Turnbull began work straightaway after unseating Tony Abbott in a party-room ballot, but the big task for him is to unite the party behind him.
The day after the vote, he took his place at the dispatch box in the House of Representatives as prime minister of Australia.
"As Honourable Members are aware, last night I was elected leader of the parliamentary Liberal Party, and I have been subsequently sworn in as prime minister by the Governor-General today."
Australian politics is aggressive by nature, both between political opponents and inside political parties.
The ideological battle between Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull has been intense.
In the late 1990s, they were on opposite sides of the republic debate.
That was a contest Tony Abbott won when he and the Australians for a Constitutional Monarch defeated the push for the republic in a 1999 referendum.
Still, Prime Minister Turnbull paid tribute to Mr Abbott in the House of Representatives.
"Our nation, our parliament, our government, our party -- our parties, the Coalition -- owe Tony Abbott an enormous debt of gratitude for his leadership and his service over many, many years. He led us out of opposition, back into government. The challenges of leadership are very considerable. The pressures are enormous. And as Tony Abbott has often said himself, very profoundly, all of us here are volunteers, it is our families who are conscripts. And so we should acknowledge today, of course, the debt we also owe to his wife Margie and their daughters."
Political contests also deliver rare moments of candour.
Opposition Leader Bill Shorten added his comments as well.
"(I) want to add my remarks to the events and the departure of Mr Abbott as prime minister. Politics is a privilege to serve here. It is a vocation. But, as we know, it can be very hard as well. Now it is part of the Australian spirit not to score points when someone is down, so I just want to say that public life is hard on people who serve, it's hard on their families. It is not for me to be partisan about Mr Abbott's record, but he certainly had led the Liberal Party formidably for well in excess of five years. He is a fierce proponent of his views, a formidable proponent of his views, a ruthless advocate for what he believes in."
Mr Abbott is considering his future.
As an opposition leader, he was the most successful the Liberal Party had seen in recent times.
But as prime minister, he stumbled, and public support fell away, with 30 bad published opinion polls in a row.
Frontbencher Christopher Pyne says the party gave Tony Abbott a chance but things did not improve.
"For two years, we've been behind in the polls. Tony Abbott had a warning in February from the party room. Seven months later, things weren't any better. So it was very hard for anyone to argue that he wasn't given absolutely every opportunity to prove that he was the best person to lead the party."
Mr Abbott gave his last statement in the prime minister's courtyard of Parliament House.
"I am proud of what the Abbott Government has achieved. We stayed focused, despite the white-anting.* Of course, the Government wasn't perfect. We have been a government of men and women, not a government of gods walking upon the earth. Few of us, after all, entirely measure up to expectations. The nature of politics has changed in the past decade.
We have more polls and more commentary than ever before, mostly sour, bitter character assassination.
Poll-driven panic has produced a revolving-door prime ministership, which can't be good for our country. And a febrile media culture has developed that rewards treachery."
Former prime minister John Howard has been a mentor to Tony Abbott and offered his sympathy.
"Inevitably, with the pang of disappointment and loss that, undoubtedly, my friend Tony Abbott feels at this particular time, I say to him as a friend and as a former Liberal Party leader that he has an enormous amount to be proud of. To Malcolm Turnbull, I offer my congratulations. I've known Malcolm for a long time. He was, of course, a Howard-era minister, and he was a very good minister. He's a person of great intelligence. He has the capacity to explain economic concepts very clearly and very lucidly."
From 2007 to 2013, divisions inside the Labor governments of Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and then Kevin Rudd again destroyed that party's years in office.
Malcolm Turnbull has to bring his party together if he is to succeed and avoid the disaster that engulfed Labor.
Mr Turnbull is more popular in the electorate than Tony Abbott, but his danger lies inside the party, where critics can make his political life difficult or near-impossible.
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