In an Australia entering the last week of an election campaign, this anti-globalisation movement has echoes in Nick Xenophon's rising NXT Party, plus the Greens, and even, unofficially, sections of the ALP and the National Party.

This largely unheralded shift could presage an Australian election night of unforeseen swings, and a stronger showing by the Greens plus new kid on the electoral block NXT, than forecast so far in the polls. These will further complicate the calculation of likely preference allocation, making forecasts of the ultimate result more risky.

Both the Greens and NXT occupy anti-globalisation positions, albeit from the left and the centre, whereas the Coalition is broadly pro-globalisation. The ALP still leans that way, although it also flirts with an emerging anti-globalisation 'other side'.

Despite this global turmoil, pundits, professional poll analysts, psephologists and Party operatives still largely stick to a forecast of a small-to-comfortable Coalition win. Opinion polls have been tight for seven weeks, but a Labor Party still recovering from the turmoil of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years just doesn't have the 'ammo' or 'gas in the tank' to win enough government-held seats, they believe.

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Whatever the final result, voters face a perfect storm of global confusion and panic in the last week of campaigning. The July two Australian election is sandwiched between the June 23 Brexit referendum in the UK and the July 18 Republican Party Convention in the US.

In the UK, the electorate has voted to leave the European Union after 43 years of membership of a 28-member body officially wedded to "ever closer union."

The problem for Australia in any new international crisis resulting from the Brexit vote is that it is exposed. Both major parties' fiscal policies, which do not anticipate lifting Australia out of deficit spending until 2021, increase our vulnerability.


Ballooning debt and fiscal lassitude, plus finance markets ructions resulting from the Brexit referendum, could be tested soon by a possible downgrade in Australia's credit rating from Moody's or Standard & Poors.

Independent federal Senator Nick Xenophon with some of his team will be key power brokers in the new parliament. Paul Jeffers

The immediate impact of the pro Brexit vote in the UK is that it will be harder for our banks, mining companies and service firms with offices in London to expand into continental Europe.

Further, Australian finance markets, with their complex range of formal links and personal ties with The City in London, will be diminished by the rupturing effect that Brexit will have on those UK markets.

The longer term demonstration effect of the pro Brexit vote will also be bad. Apart from a tendency to view the EU through the prism of British ambiguity, even hostility, about the European project, there has been a local failure to understand that the negative consequences of a pro Brexit vote will be worse on the Continent than in the UK.

The rapid rise of right wing populism in France, Holland, Austria, Scandinavia, and Eastern European states like Poland and Hungary in the wake of the refugee crisis and the GFC, threaten to splinter Europe. The impact of Brexit may be even worse in an Eastern Europe suffering from fighting between the Ukrainian army and Russian- backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

Meanwhile in the US, and barring some last minute boilover, Donald Trump expects to receive confirmation as the Republican Party candidate for the November presidential election at the July 18 Republican Party Convention in Cleveland, Ohio.

Employing a populist campaigning style aimed at white lower middle class Americans with shrinking incomes, Mr Trump has threatened to erect a wall on the US-Mexico border, sharply increase tariffs on Chinese imports, tear up global trade agreements and force allies, including, presumably, Australia, to contribute more to defence treaties with America.


Facing this rapidly roiling international scene, the Australian electorate has, on a general, two-party preferred reading of the polls, so far apparently remained solid. Lack of poll movement during the long campaign has been attributed to absence of a killer blow from both sides, lack of inspiring rhetoric from major Party leaders, and emotion-sapping vagueness of campaign mantras like 'jobs and growth' and 'fairness.'

But there is another way of approaching the unfolding of this long campaign and its voting denouement. Picture a hill overlooking a battlefield. Observers take their position on the hill, field glasses at the ready, and swap fairly safe forecasts based on past trends about the likely results from what they expect to be a traditional battle.

Sure enough, a frenzied battle does ensue. But instead of two armies fighting each other in a binary tussle, other, smaller groups also engage in the conflict, and at times they shift support between the two main sides.

The battle is messy and hard to track because of the remarkable array of new weaponry involved, and the fact that so much of the real action is camouflaged from view. Cries of "jobs and growth, "fairness," "Medicare" and "refugees" ring out, but it's the 'globalisation' ensign that is attracting much of the real action.

Casualties are many, and the final victor matches with the observers' forecasts. But observers and combatants alike realise at the end of the battle that things will never be the same again.

For a start the 2016 election campaign marks the point where social media – Facebook, twitter, Instagram, You Tube and the like – has become crucial. Social Media outlets were active in the 2007 election, and in the 2010 and 2013 campaigns, but this is the first time it has become "first port of call," according to Ariadne Vromen, Professor of Political Sociology at Sydney University.

Professor Vromen points out that there are now 12 million Australians on Facebook. Political Parties are now able to "re-frame issues" through Facebook and Twitter.

"Social media provides this immediate feedback. As soon as major party advertising comes out there's a whole response on Twitter. It makes people pay attention to the ads. "


"The recycling of the ad increases its penetration," says Professor Vromen, who is in charge of the Australian arm of a US-UK-Australia study on the impact of social media on politics and new forms of campaigning on-line, which is sponsored by the Spencer Foundation in the US.

She cites as examples of social media-increased penetration the lengthy Liberal Party ad featuring Malcolm Turnbull's personal background, and the tradie ad attacking Labor's planned restrictions on negative gearing.

"We have seen a lot of this going on in the last two elections. Now it's just kind of first port of call. Social media really helps ordinary citizens."

As Professor Vromen says, it gives people "the space to have a say and occasionally make a difference. It was hard to do that before unless you were a part of a business group or a union."

Social Media can also give stars with issues a push along as well. Hollywood star Lindsay (Mean Girls) Lohan became one of the Social Media highlights of the Brexit referendum results night as she offered a running commentary on the voting. Her first tweet was a video in which she appeared to advertise Chanel while showing her Instagram followers she was watching the BBC's EU referendum results show.

Professor Vromen, who has written books on "Digital Citizenship and Political Engagement" and "The Networked Young Citizen", says political parties are adapting to this new on-line environment. "The pioneer always was (Prime Minister) Malcolm Turnbull but he's not faring as well now. In the ALP it's (Senator) Sam Dastyari but the Greens are doing it very well as well," she says.

Social Media is also responsible for the more fluid nature of party loyalty. This shows up strongly in the current election campaign where polls suggest that up to a quarter of the vote – comprising Greens, NXT and independents – is moving away from the two main parties.

In some seats, regions and even states, this non-major-party-vote will be much higher. In South Australia, for example, recent polls suggest the NXT vote is approaching an astonishing 30 per cent of the vote. Translated into election results, this could mean Liberal-held seats like Sturt, Barker and Mayo fall to NXT and it gains four Senators out of 12 in SA.


Led by South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon, the NXT is projecting as a centre Party, but with a strong protectionist bent. Senator Xenophon is pushing a 'buy Australian first' policy in manufacturing, has questioned recent trade deals, and has also raised the issue of tighter controls on foreign investment.

Elsewhere, the Greens, which are opposed to de-regulation and open markets, may also secure a vote surge well above 2013 levels, according to polls. The Greens' 2016 result could almost match its record 11.8 per cent of the national vote in 2010.

Translated into lower house seats, this means the Greens are in the running in two Labor-held seats in Victoria – Batman and Wills – and could even cause an upset in the Liberal-held seat of Higgins, which has been a jewel in the Liberal Party's electoral crown for decades.

In the Senate, the combined Greens, Xenophon-NXT and independents' vote could see up to 20 non major party members in an upper house chamber of 76. This would make it harder for any Government – Labor or Liberal, but particularly Liberal – to get its legislation through the Upper House.

Post Brexit, the Australian political scene has become more unpredictable, tense, interesting – and dangerous.