Search icon

News

13th Apr 2016

A 12-year-old made himself the prime minister of Australia and nobody noticed

Fair dinkum

Matt Tate

With David Cameron currently defending himself against allegations of tax dodging, and the public’s trust of politicians at an all-time low, you’d think a 12-year-old prime minister couldn’t do much worse in politics right now.

Providing you take the word of Wikipedia as gospel – you should, it makes life far more entertaining – that’s exactly what the people of Australia had for two historic days.

Orley Fenelon, 12, from Brisbane, did what any ambitious child of the millennial generation would do, and manipulated the internet to make himself the most powerful individual in the country for a whole weekend.

Orley’s stunt meant he became Australia’s 30th prime minister, with poor old Malcolm Turnbull (the actual prime minister) seemingly unaware that he’d been overthrown by a high school student.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BEAvObhAZtK/

The site didn’t notice the alteration had been made, and considering how regularly Australia seems to switch up its government, the young PM’s two-day tenure should probably earn him a place in the history books.

Speaking to Mashable Australia about the brilliant Wikipedia sabotage, Orley said:

“I was just bored and it was a running joke among friends. We came up with the joke of fooling around with the prime minister. Me and a couple of friends were editing Wikipedia pages and it kinda went from there. I thought it was just a stupid Internet thing that I would make a joke about, get above average amount of likes on Instagram, and just totally forget about forever.”

Come on Orley – we all know stupid internet things are the lifeblood of the 21st century.

Featured image credit: Orley Fenelon/Facebook

anigif_enhanced-18136-1416360523-1