As much as we like to think that Australia, with its system of compulsory preferential voting, is protected from the kind of “populist” uprising that has unleashed the Brexit mess and installed Donald Trump in the White House, the result of the last federal election indicates otherwise. Just as in the UK and the United States, Australia has experienced the bewildering phenomenon of people across society voting against their own economic interests.

The urgent task of social democrats the world over is to understand why, and to develop a coherent response – a task we have been skirting around for at least decade, since the limits of supply-side economics, or “neoliberalism”, became plainly evident during the global financial crisis.

The election result underlined the strong streak of self-reliance in the Australian character. While the most successful European social democracies smooth income inequality through relatively large tax and transfer systems, Australian egalitarianism was built on the ability of working people to achieve a high standard of living through secure jobs with strong conditions and good wages.

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The fractures in our economy brought about by globalisation, deregulation, the privatisation of primary industries and essential services, and industrial disruption through technological change, have profoundly undermined the job security of working people across the developed world.

The problem is especially acute in regional Australia, where our traditional primary industries, such as mining and agriculture, around which the economic ecosystems of entire regional communities revolve, are facing existential threats from climate change.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A sign hangs on the fence outside the defunct Hazelwood power station in Victoria. Hundreds of workers were left jobless after the plant closed in March 2017. Photograph: Scott Barbour/Getty Images

Many of these regions have for years been afflicted with high rates of un- and underemployment, a lack of options for well-paid career alternatives, and limited markets for the jobs in service industries that have kept employment in our capital cities growing.

And even in those ever-growing cities, too many good, secure working-class jobs have been replaced by low-paid, insecure and often meaningless work, while our rate of underemployment is at a record high.

By repeatedly talking about the problems facing society without offering concrete solutions, we simply exacerbate fear

People who live paycheck to paycheck are losing faith in the idea that, if they work hard, they will be able to provide for their families; they fear for their children’s future and for their own security in retirement.

Social democrats have singularly failed to provide answers for these people. We have accurately identified the problems – the failure of “trickle-down” economics, the erosion of job security, the declining share of prosperity going to wages, the growing wealth divide, and the inevitable move away from carbon-intensive industries to address catastrophic climate change.

But by repeatedly talking about the problems facing our society without offering concrete solutions, we simply exacerbate fear. Talk of “just transitions”, “lifelong learning” and such defeatist ideas as providing a universal basic income to people to compensate for the loss of their jobs, offers nothing positive or hopeful for people who are looking for government to ensure they can continue to support themselves.

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In the absence of real progressive policies to provide secure incomes to working people, the desperate hope that “jobs and growth” from a strong economy will trickle down to those at the bottom of the heap is all there is to fill the void.

It is time for social democrats to focus on full employment. This means rejecting the economic framework of the free-market mantra that eschews an active role for government in the creation of jobs.

The fact is, when working one hour a week in the gig economy for less than minimum wage takes you out of the equation, a 5% unemployment rate is no longer an accurate measure of full employment.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Food delivery riders working in the ‘gig economy’ in Sydney call for an improvement in working conditions and entitlements. Photograph: Dan Himbrechts/AAP

For decades we have been told that if government stays out of the way, the market will create work for everyone who needs it, and do so in the most efficient way. Yet it is now painfully obvious that the market cannot deliver full employment that can support people to live a good life and ensure the fair distribution of our shared prosperity.

The case for government intervention in the market’s failure to provide full employment is clear. Social democrats must radically reframe the accepted boundaries of the economic role of government and engage urgently with the task of creating real, sustainable, reliable jobs for people.

Beyond making vague promises of skills training and redeployment packages, governments must actively invest in new industries, and put in place the necessary framework to equip people to make the shift out of their old jobs into secure work in a post-carbon economy.

This is not beyond our ken. Australian governments have delivered full employment before, most notably in the three decades after the second world war. But such a project necessitates a shift away from market solutions and towards direct government involvement in job creation and industry support.

Making new, government-supported jobs in infrastructure, advanced manufacturing, renewable energy and other new and emerging industries will entail all levels of government and industry cooperating across multiple policy settings, and working with local communities to understand the challenges and identify appropriate regional opportunities.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest A windfarm is seen on the horizon in Silverton, western NSW. Photograph: Mick Tsikas/AAP

This will require an active and interventionist fiscal policy, revitalised industry policy, leveraging government procurement, massive infrastructure investment – including in the care economy to lift the wages of low-paid women – government-funded skills training through an invigorated Tafe system, and guaranteed jobs from the public sector as an employer of last resort within the award wage system.

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While many local progressive policy thinkers are taken with the US model of a “Green New Deal”, Australia is uniquely placed to create our own comprehensive plan to achieve full employment in the post-carbon economy, one suited to our distinctive environment, population density and labour market structures.

This is the most urgent task facing progressive policymakers in Australia today. When social democrats have no answer to the loss of good jobs for an inherently self-reliant populace, then “have a go, get a go” becomes the most compelling offer on the table. Surely we can do better than that.

• Emma Dawson is executive director of progressive public policy thinktank Per Capita