Only 43 per cent of people, according to the research, believe it matters which party is in government, a decline of nearly 25 per cent over the past seven years. Most worryingly, younger Australians – the foundational future of our political system – are now seriously alienated from politics and the party system. The ANU's research is not an isolated wake-up call. Its findings are echoed by surveys across the Western world that highlight how citizens are deserting parties en masse. In most democracies less than 5 per cent of voters remain party members. In Australia, the figure has dropped sharply to less than 2 per cent. All these are clear signs that the main delivery mechanism of democracy – the political party system – now has very little appeal for many. This is why grossly sexist Facebook posts, together with the litany of shonky political deals and donations uncovered recently in New South Wales cannot be seen as one-offs. Instead they highlight the extent to which our political parties and their organisational cultures have become seriously disconnected from the world around them. I believe the best way to view mainstream political parties in this day and age isto see them as the new fringe groups of the 21st century. We see the same trends at work in the United States and Europe where moderate voices within major parties there are being progressively marginalised by ideologues. To understand why our political parties are now gravitating to the fringe, we need to look past the idea that the party system should work effectively at all times and in all places.

The reality is political parties emerged in the 19th century in response to specific historical and political conditions. This was a world in which social, political and economic change was comparatively slow-moving. This was a world divided into relatively clear-cut cleavages of class, geography and ethnicity. This relatively static world allowed two or three major parties to monopolise the political process because they were able to effectively corral and represent differences with distinct and competitive political agendas. Thanks to the profound impacts on political and social life created by the internet and globalisation over the past two decades, none of these conditions exist in the 21st century. Instead of clear cleavages and fixed political voices, we now have a world that is endlessly fragmenting and shifting into new political divisions, new identities and new voices. Far from being the best way to adequately represent and respond to the political concerns of citizens, the major parties simply can't keep up. In response, they do the same as other organisations that find themselves stranded from a world they increasingly cannot decipher or control. They retreat into themselves, back into a world more attuned to the black and white views and divisions that parties are hardwired to understand. I believe the best way to view mainstream political parties in this day and age isto see them as the new fringe groups of the 21st century. We can see this retreat in the type of people the major parties actively recruit or attract to their ranks. Instead of embracing the diversity and flux of the 21st century world, party selection for parliamentary seats repeatedly draws from the same pool they recruited from a century ago. Lawyers, bankers and business figures - mainly middle age white males - dominate those chosen to represent and run the conservative side of politics. Lawyers and union officials - again largely middle age white men - dominate the ranks of those elected to represent the so-called progressive side.

The impact on our political culture of this profoundly outdated demographic is made worse by a new class of MPs, ex-political advisors. Most cut their teeth working for ministers and other MPs before moving directly into parliament. As such they know little of the world outside the political bubble in which they have spent most of their adult lives. Organised around such a shallow political gene pool, is it any wonder parties have become stamping grounds for anachronistic group-think? How else to describe a federal budget that would barely pass muster based on 1950s definitions of social equity? How else to account for why Labor remains surgically attached to a union movement where governance in many quarters seems more like a 1920s protection racket? Why would online misogynist rants seem that out of place in a party that appoints only one female federal cabinet minister? And what could be possibly wrong with 'brown bag' donations in a political bubble where old-style money politics continues to be the norm? It is no surprise young people are turning off from what must seem a freakish caricature of political life. The bigger problem is that Australia is now at serious risk of becoming a democracy 'without the people'.

Mark Triffitt is the former Director of Strategic Communications for the Business Council of Australia. He lectures in public policy at the University of Melbourne.