Malcolm Turnbull has ordered Bill Shorten to be thrown into jail and the Labor Party has been made an illegal organisation.

Mr Turnbull has threatened civil war in Australia if he's not re-elected and Defence Minister Marise Payne says the army will "smash the teeth" of any Australian who doesn't vote for the Coalition.

Mr Shorten is languishing in a remote Northern Territory prison, where he is reportedly being denied proper medical treatment. All Labor MPs have been banned from politics for five years and most have fled Australia, fearing arrest.

Thankfully, none of this is true for Australia.

But it's an exact transposition of the situation currently playing out in Cambodia, where a "sham" election on Sunday will see Prime Minister Hun Sen retain power, extending his 33-year reign.

While people march in Phnom Penh, Cambodians have been protesting in Australia ( ABC News: Liam Cochrane )

"In the lead-up to the election, Hun Sen has dissolved and banned the only viable opposition party in Cambodia, imprisoned and exiled its leaders, and shut down almost all independent media," a representative of the Cambodian Australia Federation (CAF) said.

On Saturday, many Australians of Cambodian background protested in Melbourne, Sydney and Adelaide.

"Sunday's election is meaningless and we call on Khmer voters to boycott this sham election," said the representative in a statement.

So why should other Australians care about a faraway election in which the result is all but guaranteed?

Here are three reasons: history, refugees and a speech in Melbourne.

Treason in Springvale

Hun Sen plays a video of Kem Sokha's speech in Melbourne. ( Reuters: Screen grab )

Back in 2013, then-opposition leader Kem Sokha was in the the Melbourne suburb of Springvale meeting the Cambodian diaspora, and he gave a speech at a Buddhist temple.

"Before changing the top level, we need to uproot the lower one," he said.

"The USA, which has assisted me, has asked me to take the model from Yugoslavia, Serbia, where they were able to change the dictator Milosevic.

"I don't just do what I feel, I have experts, university professors in Washington DC, Montreal, Canada hired by the Americans in order to advise me on the strategy to change the leaders."

What he was probably referring to was assistance provided by the US-funded National Democrats Institute (NDI), which has for years helped build the political capacity of the opposition and — crucially — Hun Sen's own ruling party.

But Hun Sen, the former Khmer Rouge commander-turned-ruthless political operative, saw his chance and pounced, declaring a CIA-sponsored "colour revolution" was being plotted.

Cambodia's pliable courts did the rest, dispatching the opposition party and its leader over this supposed treason.

All based on a speech made in Melbourne.

Reversing the flow

A protest against the refugee deal held outside the Australian embassy in Cambodia in 2014 ( ABC: Samantha Hawley )

Hun Sen trades on the fact that after his defection to Vietnam in 1977, he helped lead the fight against the ultra-Maoists Khmer Rouge, ultimately defeating them and ending Cambodia's civil war.

The murderous purges and subsequent Khmer-on-Khmer battles sent thousands fleeing.

Australia was one of the nations that opened its doors, and modest Cambodian communities have thrived.

But in 2014 — like the great Tonle Sap (river) that floods backwards each year — that flow of refugees reversed.

Australia's then-immigration minister Scott Morrison and Cambodia's Interior Minister Sar Kheng struck a $55.5 million deal to resettle refugees who had been denied asylum in Australia and detained instead on Nauru.

Despite a now-infamous champagne photo op, the deal was a dud.

Cambodia soon showed its interest was lukewarm at best and now only three refugees from Nauru are still living in Phnom Penh.

Canberra remains desperate to keep the Cambodia option alive, and observers have complained of a softening of Australia's diplomatic tone.

"Australia has mortgaged its human rights policy and its respect for human rights and its respect for democracy in exchange for a refugee program, to send people back from Nauru," Phil Robertson, deputy director Asia for Human Rights Watch, said.

"Cambodia knows that, Cambodia can yank the Australian chain anytime they want," said Mr Robertson, who labelled the election a "sham".

But on Friday, Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs came out with a stronger-than-usual statement, backed with action.

Or at least deliberate inaction.

"Reflecting our concerns with the electoral process, Australia will not monitor the national election," a spokesperson for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade said.

Even the harshest critics noted the shift.

"This is the first good Australian decision we've seen on Cambodian for quite some time," Mr Robertson said.

Brainchild gone bad

A rally for Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party ahead of this weekend's election drew thousands to the streets. ( ABC News: Liam Cochrane )

Australia's special relationship with Cambodia goes back far beyond the refugee agreement of 2014.

In the 1990s, Australia played a major role in the creation of the United Nations Transitional Authority of Cambodia, a peacekeeping force to end the civil war.

"Those agreements were very much the brainchild of Australia," Lao Mong Hay, a veteran Cambodian political analyst, said.

"Cambodian people have embraced those democratic values … [but] now when we look around us at the countries who helped us embrace those values, they seem to be abandoning us."

Some in the international community are speaking up forcefully.

This week, the United States House of Representatives passed the Cambodian Democracy Act, legislation that proposes sanctions on Hun Sen and his inner circle of cronies.

The legislation still needs to pass through another level of government, then be approved by the President, but naming the top ministers and generals of Hun Sen's regime is a significant diplomatic escalation.

"This is unprecedented barking, but it's not biting yet," one long-term observer of Cambodian politics told the ABC.

Not biting perhaps, but certainly nibbling.

Last month, the US Treasury Department used its powers under the Magnitsky Act to actually impose sanctions on the leader of Hun Sen's feared bodyguard unit, General Hun Bun Hieng.

The general's rather impassioned statement about how much he wasn't bothered by the sanctions suggest they did their job.

Australia has options to re-think its relationship with Cambodia, and this deeply-flawed "election" removes the fig leaf of pretend democracy that Cambodia has tried to hide behind for years.