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Scott Morrison, Australia’s Next Prime Minister, Pledges to ‘Heal Our Party’

Scott Morrison, right, and his deputy Josh Frydenberg in Canberra, Australia’s capital, on Friday. After a week of political infighting, lawmakers in the Liberal Party chose Mr. Morrison to replace Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister.Credit...David Gray/Reuters

Australia’s conservative lawmakers chose one of their own to become the country’s newest prime minister on Friday, after a vote that capped days of chaos in the capital and underscored the turbulence of the country’s politics.

Scott Morrison, who had been the country’s treasurer, was sworn in as the sixth prime minister in 11 years after a vote by the governing Liberal Party, in which he defeated Peter Dutton, a former home affairs minister, and Julie Bishop, the country’s foreign minister.

Josh Frydenberg, who had been energy minister under the ousted prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, was elected deputy leader.

At a news conference shortly after the vote, Mr. Morrison said he and Mr. Frydenberg represented a “new generation” of Liberal Party leadership. After a week of contentious party infighting and back-room backstabbing, Mr. Morrison pledged to “heal our party.”

Many of Australia’s citizens complained this week that their leaders were too focused on political machinations at the expense of more important issues, including a drought that has wreaked havoc across the country for months. Mr. Morrison called the record-breaking drought the country’s “most urgent and pressing issue” and promised to make it his top priority.

Friday’s vote was the second challenge this week to the leadership of Mr. Turnbull, who himself assumed office by leading a party revolt in 2015.

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Mr. Turnbull with his grandchildren at a farewell news conference Friday. He said it had been a “dispiriting” week of “vengeance, personal ambition and factional feuding.”Credit...Sam Mooy/EPA, via Shutterstock

But Mr. Morrison, 50, did not initiate the challenge. Rather, he backed Mr. Turnbull earlier in the week, then emerged as a more unifying alternative to Peter Dutton, a former home affairs minister known for his hard-line stance on immigration.

Mr. Dutton mounted the earlier, unsuccessful leadership challenge on Tuesday. After a week of turbulence that he ignited, he sought Friday to bolster the now-damaged Liberal Party as it moves closer to a general election expected in the coming months.

“My course from here is to provide absolute loyalty to Scott Morrison to make sure we win the election,” Mr. Dutton said.

For Mr. Turnbull, the end came quickly. After months of negotiations, a rift within the party escalated last weekend over an energy proposal from the prime minister, which was meant to reduce electricity prices and address climate change by cutting emissions.

Mr. Dutton rallied the party’s conservative wing against him, only to fail when the votes were counted.

[Read more: Does addressing climate change equal political suicide in Australia?]

“Australians will be just dumbstruck and so appalled by the conduct of the past week,” Mr. Turnbull said at a news conference following the vote, adding that the campaign mounted by Mr. Dutton was a “deliberate insurgency.”

“Disunity is death in Australian politics,” Mr. Turnbull said, warning in a parting shot that politicians needed to put country ahead of party or personal desires. “That’s why this week has been so dispiriting. It’s been vengeance, personal ambition and factional feuding.”

Experts said it was still not clear whether Mr. Morrison would tilt toward conservatives or party moderates, but in his first news conference he pledged to include his vanquished rivals, Ms. Bishop and Mr. Dutton, in his government.

Jill Sheppard, a lecturer in politics at the Australian National University in Canberra, the capital, said Mr. Morrison was among the most conservative members of the Liberals’ moderate wing. “He has managed to straddle factions in the Liberal Party really nicely in the last couple of decades,” she said.

Other analysts said the fact that Mr. Morrison was regarded as a moderate only showed how dramatically conservative politics have shifted to the right in Australia.

“It’s just extraordinary that Scott Morrison is the moderate candidate,” said Susan Harris-Rimmer, a law professor at Griffith University. “He is an extremely conservative, law-and-order person.”

Like Mr. Dutton, Mr. Morrison rose to prominence over his tough stance on immigration. After a boat carrying dozens of asylum seekers sank in 2011, Mr. Morrison courted outrage by calling it a waste of taxpayer money for the Australian government to help pay for relatives to attend funerals.

“Any other Australian who wanted to attend a funeral of someone who died in tragic circumstances would have to put their hand in their own pocket,” he said.

[Don’t miss an important story. Sign up for your local Morning Briefing to get the news you need, Monday through Friday.]

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Mr. Morrison, left, with Peter Dutton earlier this week. Mr. Dutton mounted an unsuccessful challenge to Mr. Turnbull’s leadership on Tuesday.Credit...Lukas Coch/EPA, via Shutterstock

In 2013, he became minister of immigration and border protection under Tony Abbott, then the prime minister. In that post, he worked aggressively to stop asylum seekers from reaching Australia by boat, continuing the country’s contentious zero-tolerance policy toward such migration. One of Australia’s tactics, offshore detention, has been roundly condemned by human rights groups and the United Nations.

Mr. Morrison became treasurer in 2015, after a brief stint as minister of social services. Faced with a revenue shortfall, he preferred cutting spending to raising taxes, analysts said.

“That’s a straight-down-the-line conservative approach.” said Richard Holden, a professor of economics at the University of New South Wales. “He’s been O.K. in a difficult set of circumstances without showing real vision.”

Professor Sheppard said Mr. Morrison was unlikely to be a visionary leader. “He won’t probably set out any kind of expansive view for Australia,” she said.

An observant Pentecostal Christian and the son of a police officer, Mr. Morrison grew up in a beachside suburb of Sydney. Before being elected to Parliament in 2007, he oversaw tourism campaigns, including a contentious one for Australia with the slogan “Where the bloody hell are you?” It was banned from British television.

Not a single Australian prime minister has completed his or her full term in more than a decade. The frequent upheavals, experts said, have left foreign allies uncertain and voters angry when elected leaders are ousted in back-room coups. And compared to previous “spills,” as they are known, this week’s contest was especially messy and unpredictable.

“The leadership churn is unprecedented. No prime minister since John Howard, who lost office in 2007, has served a full term in office,” said Michael Fullilove, executive director of the Lowy Institute, a nonpartisan research organization. “Governments seem incapable of exercising their authority. They spend most of their time in survival mode.”

Damien Cave and Rick Rojas contributed reporting.

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A version of this article appears in print on  , Section A, Page 8 of the New York edition with the headline: Latest ‘Spill’ (Australian for Back-Room Coup): New Prime Minister Is Picked. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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