Not long after, senators from his party voted in favor of a motion by a far-right politician stating that it is “O.K. to be white,” a meme popular with white supremacists on the internet, and condemning “the deplorable rise of anti-white racism.” This vote was later explained away as an “administrative process failure.”

Mr. Morrison spent early November undertaking a fair dinkum bus tour of the northern state of Queensland, with copious photo opportunities of him fair dinkum eating meat pies and drinking beer. During the tour it became apparent that rather than traveling on the tour bus plastered with his likeness, he was in fact flying between destinations on a Royal Australian Air Force V.I.P. jet.

A recent survey of Australians by the Australian National University captures the declining confidence in our political leaders, a disease that is not unique to Australia of course. The Australian Values Study released in October notes, “Although Australians remain supportive of the concept of democracy and broadly satisfied with how the political system is operating, their confidence in specific political organizations continues to fall.”

Recent years have been ones of good luck, but also thwarted opportunity. We have become a Ponzi scheme of a nation where every problem can be solved by ever rising property prices — that’s how we build personal wealth and accumulate tax revenue, which is then fed back into the system to further inflate prices.

We have become a funny sort of wealthy. A country wealthy enough to offer corporate tax cuts and subsidies to the coal industry, but not wealthy enough to afford action on climate change or high-quality care for the elderly. A country where those living in poverty on unemployment benefits get too much, but those with investments in real estate and stocks are still “doing it tough,” and should not lose their tax breaks, because that would be “the politics of envy.”

Still lucky, still second rate.

What I am saying should not be mistaken for cultural cringe, another Australian disease in which we think ourselves lesser than the grander cultures of elsewhere. I am not saying the country where I have gladly chosen to spend my life should be more like the United States, or more like Britain. I have much higher hopes for my country than that.

We are better than our government, and better than our worst impulses. If we can shake off the small thinking of our leaders, we can provide a model of a way forward for other countries, at a time when the world is struggling with political volatility, extremism and a sense that worse is to come.