Let’s not sugar coat this, the outcome in the Wentworth byelection is a disaster for the Liberals. Counting isn’t over yet, but the anti-government swing in this contest will be north of 20%, which is the biggest swing ever recorded against a government at a byelection.

It is a repudiation. A repudiation of a chaotic period in government characterised by self-obsession and self-harm. A repudiation of the party’s lurch to the right, and the hollowing out of the sensible centre.

A repudiation of amoral plots, schemes, coups, and seat-of-the-pants bullshit – a howl of frustration from voters, from the most well-heeled to the couch surfers, about the endless weasel words from their disconnected, half-deranged politicians – a group with scant respect for facts and evidence, intermittent competence and no plan in evidence to address the problems the country faces.

Kerryn Phelps and her purple army shake up politics-as-usual in Wentworth stunner Read more

20 October 2018 is a clarion repudiation of Punch and Judy politics, of a sideshow signifying nothing, conducted at taxpayer expense. The good people of Wentworth have stood up as a job lot, grabbed politics-as-usual by the lapels, leaned into its smug face, and screamed get stuffed you absolute morons.

And who can blame them? It’s the only thing to be said. It is the only, intelligent, honest response to what goes on in Canberra these days.

Play Video 1:06 Independent Kerryn Phelps wins Wentworth byelection: 'We have made history' – video

Funnily enough, Kerryn Phelps can thank Alan Jones for her victory in Wentworth. When Jones created a storm a few weeks back by advocating advertising a horse race on the Opera House, it created a focal point for outrage that helped galvanise her people-power insurgency in Sydney’s eastern suburbs. A rolling display of government incompetence, and desperation, over the final fortnight of the campaign, did the rest – a live laboratory experiment of events inspired to depress Dave Sharma’s primary vote.

Phelps didn’t need to submit a brief of evidence that politics-as-usual, and the toxic media chorus intent on making corrosion a business model, is intent on debasing itself in the middle of the public square; it did that all for itself, and at the most convenient time possible.

Phelps just had to be Not That, and have the emotional intelligence to be something more, something as simple and as powerful as a force for good in public service, someone who could focus on the things that matter to people, someone connected enough to know what those things might be.

As a medical doctor, Phelps could diagnose the ailing polity of being in need of critical care, and propose herself as being the person qualified to provide it, and having been invited to do so, Wentworth called the ambulance.

Scott Morrison was completely tin-eared in his response to the revolution of Saturday night. Chin up he said, it’s all a bit wonky, sure, but we’ll smash those Labor bastards until the last, until the bell rings. Hurrah said his fist-pumping supporters in Double Bay – the last partisans in the village.

Play Video 1:16 Scott Morrison says 'today is a tough day' as Liberals lose Wentworth byelection – video

The people outside the Intercontinental had just voted against crude partisanship, and talking-point pugnaciousness, and the endless fighting about nothing, and embraced something else, embraced anything but that.

Unless Morrison regains consciousness quickly and works out that’s what’s happening – that the Australian people are increasingly intent on taking politics into their own hands, and reshaping it – then the swing we saw on Saturday night won’t be the last of his humiliations. It will just be the beginning.

The rise of the independents isn’t just a problem for the Liberals. Representatives connected to their communities, with a will to serve them, can take seats away from Labor too, and from the Nationals. This is a major party problem, not just an affliction confined to a government that has forgotten how to be competent.

There’s an earthquake going on in Australian politics. So far it’s just a rumble, but if the incumbents don’t hear the rumble, and start to change things up, make no mistake: the rumble will become a roar.