There are things people say sometimes that really pull me up short and it happened again this week.

I was out filming for our new program The Link. On this show I want to try to connect to people. What's on our minds? What matters to us?

We were in Tuggerah Mall on the New South Wales Central Coast. This is a classic slice of 'middle Australia'.

At 10:30 in the morning the car park was full, inside there were young families, grandparents, workers dropping in for a quick coffee.

There was a young man sitting in the food court with his workmates — his name was Ross. He was sweaty and his hands were dirty from lopping trees.

I asked about his priorities — what was important to him.

"Probably not what's important to you," Ross said.

He said faith mattered to him; Jesus Christ.

I have thought about that ever since. Why would he think it wasn't important to me?

It spoke to the mistrust or disconnect people have with the media. Here we were from the ABC, from the city. We were only an hour away but we were a world away from him.

As it happens I am intensely interested in faith. I have reported from all over the world and I know faith, in all its forms, does matter.

Faith can be a comfort and a strength, it can be transformative, it can be inspiring and yes, I have seen how it can be misused and destructive.

Ross says faith is important to him. ( ABC News )

I found Ross refreshing. He was challenging; he made me think.

Everyone at the mall made me think. Here are people looking to live a good life, to care for their families.

They are concerned about the everyday things: will they be able to buy a house? Will their children get a good education? What happens if they get sick? Can they rely on their job? Will their pay cheque stretch far enough?

This week they were told that our economy is growing more strongly than we expected, but no-one here is feeling it.

Treasurer Scott Morrison knows this, and has said we cannot be complacent. But none of the people I spoke to believe that politicians really understand them.

Well, not all politicians. There is one exception: Pauline Hanson.

"She's honest," one person said.

Another said: "She tells it straight."

A man in his 20s, just laid off from work, pushing a pram with his young daughter, said: "She's one of us."

What does Pauline Hanson have that Malcolm Turnbull or Bill Shorten don't? Ask these people and the answer is simple: she is real. She speaks for them. They are prepared to forgive her.

"She's crazy, but good," said one young woman.

Another man said: "She's a bit racist, but she's old school."

Australia starting to sound like America

Thomas Frank says Australia's political elite could learn a lesson from the last US presidential election. ( ABC News: Myles Wearring )

Thomas Frank is an American historian and journalist who has studied the disconnect between politics and the people. He is a liberal — a Democrat voter — but his latest book is an indictment of how his side of politics has betrayed its base.

It has watched a generation of mostly white, working-class people lose their jobs and has told them it is their fault. In his book Listen, Liberal, he writes:

"To the liberal class every big economic problem is really an education problem, a failure by the losers to learn the right skills and get the credentials everyone knows you will need in the society of the future ... "But, of course, this isn't really an answer at all; it's a moral judgment, handed down by the successful from the vantage point of their own success."

Frank points to Barack Obama's 2011 State of the Union address. He says the then-president addressed the plight of the country's working people, describing how they'd been impacted by deindustrialisation, what Frank describes as: "Shattered towns, ruined lives and piddling pay checks."

Rather than outlining how he would fix this disaster, Frank says Mr Obama told them nothing could be done, it was reality and they needed to get used to it.

I interviewed Frank on The Link. He watched the people of Tuggerah and said it sounded just like America.

"Everything the people said, you take out the accent and the slang, and that is exactly what we heard from Americans in this last election cycle," he said.

Frank is from Kansas — American heartland. He has seen the future, how voters betrayed will turn to someone like Donald Trump.

Listening to the support for Pauline Hanson, he says Australia is ripe for the same political upheaval.

"What's really astonishing is when you talk to average Americans who voted for Trump, it is not because they are bigots themselves or racists themselves or hate people themselves, it's because they are desperate," he said.

Voters want alternatives

Americans voted for Donald Trump because they were desperate, according to Thomas Frank. ( AP: Jim Lo Scalzo )

There is a message in Frank's book for our political leaders. When people are hurting it isn't enough to tell them it is their fault. When factory workers lose their jobs it isn't as easy as saying they need to re-train. When penalty rates are being cut for casual workers it isn't enough to say big business needs a tax cut.

"You look at the kind of solutions our politicians constantly prescribe, constantly talk about and it's always innovation, creativity, Silicon Valley. They also used to talk about, before it became socially unacceptable, financial innovation," Frank said.

I don't know if Malcolm Turnbull has been to Tuggerah Mall recently, but it would be a sobering experience.

"Look where the Prime Minister lives, he is living it up. He lives in a mansion, he doesn't know where the average Joe Blow lives."

The woman who said that is a grandmother, she lives in a rented house with her daughter who has her own young son. She says they will never be able to afford to buy their own home.

Frank says the old social contract that ensured health care or retirement for blue-collar workers is over.

Australia is not America; we have a strong social safety net. Our political system is not given to the likelihood of a Trump-style political insurgency, but Ms Hanson's One Nation is gaining enough popularity to seriously disrupt the old orthodoxy.

The people we met at Tuggerah Mall are looking for alternatives.

"It's probably not important to you."

I am still thinking about what the young man Ross said, talking about his faith. I heard time-and-again that their lives are not important to the political and media elite.

Frank concludes his book with a warning: Liberals need to "live without the comforting knowledge that righteousness is always on their side".