Utegate the affair, and on 1 December 2009, he was defeated in a party-room ballot by Tony Abbott as leader of the Liberal Party. Utegate Utegate (also known as the OzCar affair) refers to a 2009 controversy in Australian federal politics, revolving around allegations made by then Federal Leader of the Opposition and Liberal leader, Malcolm Turnbull, that the Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd, and/or the Treasurer, Wayne Swan, had acted improperly on behalf of a Queensland car dealer who was seeking financial assistance from a government agency called OzCar, and that they had misled Parliament. Central to this claim was evidence
Deputy Prime Minister of Canada prime minister from the political damage that Question Period can inflict on a leader", further citing the experience of Erik Nielsen during the Sinclair Stevens scandal. Unlike the Vice President of the United States, the deputy prime minister does not automatically assume the office of prime minister if the incumbent of the latter office dies or resigns. Although he or she would become the acting prime minister on a temporary caretaker basis to ensure continuity of government function during the immediate period of transition, the deputy prime minister does not automatically become the new permanent prime minister: constitutional convention actually