The protest that interrupted Malcolm Turnbull’s speech to the Committee for Economic Development of Australia (Ceda) on Wednesday was perfectly pitched. Just after the prime minister warned about the international return of “inward-looking” populist politics, in came a woman with a sign reading “FFS close the bloody camps”.

Turnbull’s attempt to project seriousness and toughness on economic matters was overshadowed by a reminder of how the Liberal party actually wins elections.

His attempt to criticise the likes of Pauline Hanson and Donald Trump in the name of free markets was deflated by a blunt reference to an electoral history that he, and everyone who has benefited from it, should never be allowed to disavow.

If you didn’t catch the speech, Turnbull diagnosed the rise of rightwing populism as an outcome of “uncertainty”:

Political divisions in advanced economies – particularly where there is high unemployment or a high risk of unemployment – are feeding on a sense of disenfranchisement among many people who feel the rapid economic changes of our time, have left them behind. Political responses to this mood of disaffection can have the potential to destabilise global growth, perhaps even reversing some of the spectacular gains that we have made over recent decades, through open markets and free trade.

Note that Turnbull’s main concern is that this all leads to “protectionism”. He doesn’t mention the blatant xenophobia that figures like Hanson and Trump invoke in scapegoating minority groups, and the heightened racial tension that this produces.

In a way, that makes sense. The Liberal party has shown, at least since the Tampa election of 2001, that it is more than happy to recalibrate the Hansonist message to its own ends. It has been populist on immigration, and ruthlessly orthodox on economics.

It has been far more concerned with departures from neoliberal doctrine than with the fate of those – including children – who have been imprisoned for seeking asylum in Australia.

Since 2001, at crucial moments, it has run on platforms that scapegoat refugees, while doing nothing to ameliorate the economic system that produces a feeling of “disenfranchisement” among those who have been “left behind”, and drives some of them into the arms of racist parties.

In particular, in 2013, when Tony Abbott won the majority that Malcolm Turnbull has all but lost, he ran a relentlessly negative and cynical campaign that could almost be a prototype for Trumpism.

Where Trump promises to “build a wall”; Abbott said he would “stop the boats”. Where Abbott promised to “end the waste”, Trump promises to “do better deals”. While Abbott pandered to climate change denying crackpots, Trump peddles conspiracy theories about his primary opponents. Each energised the rightward edge of his party.

And both men have projected hypermasculine public images while prosecuting intensely personal, sexist campaigns against female opponents. While Trump talks about “crooked Hillary”, Abbott yelled about Julia Gillard’s “criminal government”.

Granted, Tony Abbott and Donald Trump have different relationships to their parties’ establishments, but the fact that the Liberals promoted Abbott is not to their credit.

Turnbull served as a cabinet minister while all this was going on, and when the opportunity arose to knock off Abbott, he was happy to swoop on the fruits that the 2013 campaign bore. He is complicit in the further entrenchment of racially-inflected scapegoating as the Australian right’s way of doing politics.

In office, Turnbull may have wound back the rhetoric, but he hasn’t changed refugee policy at all, and seems unable or unwilling to rein in those members of his party who obsess about halal food or attend Reclaim Australia rallies.

If he deserves any credit at all, it arises from the fact that his lack of evident enthusiasm in administering these policies has led the likes of Andrew Bolt to criticise him relentlessly.

But that doesn’t change the fact that the Liberal party has been the principal agent in embedding an immigration system, and a kind of ambient public racism, that acts as a model for populist right wing groups in Europe and elsewhere. (Labor’s craven accommodation of this – after having initiated mandatory detention in the first place – is a discussion for another day.)

And Turnbull’s solution to the social and economic dislocations that far-right parties exploit is … more of the same. More free trade agreements, more tax cuts for business, and some vague noises about “innovation” and “inclusion”.

None of this suggests that Malcolm Turnbull understands what gives rise to populist revolts. And anyway, no one needs to take his pronouncements on rightwing populist ideas seriously until he stops profiting from them, and closes the bloody camps.