Right now Australian politics feels like an exercise in resignation. Like the ill-fated Melburnians waiting on the beach for Nevil Shute’s nuclear cloud to finally reach them, we are waiting for populism to infest our shores and degrade our polity.

In the wake of Brexit and then the inexplicable triumph of Trump, domestic politics has been framed by many pundits (myself included) around the consensus that we were facing our own imminent populist moment.

There’s been the resurgence of One Nation, the defection of Cory Bernardi to the Family First fold, Labor’s foreign visa crackdown, even the Coalition has taken to bashing the banks.

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On both sides of the aisle, the major parties appear frozen by their concern voters will turn to the margins if they are not fed their red meat, with reactionary social policies and anti-market economic policies competing on the fringes for the same disaffected voters.

The major parties justify their approach by telling themselves if they don’t follow the electorate to the political edges, then the backlash will only be greater. They are not pandering to populism, they are channelling it.

But the failure of One Nation to build on its vote in recent months has got me wondering whether we haven’t got it all wrong – whether we are not mistaking the windscreen for the rear-view mirror.

What if there is no populist surge on the horizon? What if Australia has already had its populist moment ahead of the other western democracies and we are now dealing with the consequences of that misadventure?

Think about it: emotive slogans, simple solutions, isolationist and divisive rhetoric fuelled by a partisan conservative media, leading to bad policy outcomes that ultimately let down the very people who respond to the clarion call.

Stop the Boats, Axe the Tax, Cut the Debt, Ditch the Witch: all would be at home at any Trump rally.

A government that closed our borders, albeit borders already girt by sea; that turned its back on the scientific consensus on climate change; that willed away complexity by promising no one would suffer. Until they did.

What if Tony Abbott was our Trump moment, sweeping to power on a wave of rage and discontent?

What if the Liberal party was like the Republicans, prepared to turn a blind eye to their leader’s transgressions, so long as it delivered them power and its trappings?

And more significantly, what if Australia’s decisive rejection of Abbott was more than a personal rebuff, but a rejection of his simplistic, divisive populist model?

What if Malcolm Turnbull is our own Mike Pence, desperately trying to restore sanity and trust but condemned by his own collusion?

What if One Nation is an echo rather than a gathering storm, a direct product of the desperate double dissolution called by the PM as the Coalition attempted to resume normal transmission?

There is some evidence to back this theory. In the post-Abbott era, belief in and support for climate action is back to the levels of the early part of the decade before the bipartisan consensus for a market-based approach was smashed.

Do you believe that climate change is happening? Do you believe that there is fairly conclusive evidence that climate change is happening and caused by human activity or do you believe that the evidence is still not in and we may just be witnessing a normal fluctuation in the earth’s climate which happens from time to time? (February 2017)

Industry has seen what populism did to energy policy and they are now calling for a clear path for energy transition, with a market mechanism to reduce carbon emissions and to support renewables. They know they can’t afford to make the same mistake twice.



Meanwhile, the number of people demanding tougher border protection measures for asylum seekers has also fallen away, the border panic that consumed us for a decade finally quelled by the sheer excess of its response.

And in a series of questions posed this week, the majority of the public have responded well to more sober, grown- up messages – with one notable exception.

Granted, these questions place the challenges government face in a positive light, but when complexity is shared with people, these findings suggest they respond positively.

We say we are sick of simple solutions, we reject isolationism, we recognise that governing is tough and that we have unrealistic expectations of government. We want our leaders to work together to find common solutions.

That said, the one proposition roundly rejected is the one that talks to the positive motivations of our leaders, suggesting fertile conditions remain for plain-speaking populist outsiders.

But if my overriding theory is true, this has profound consequences for the political context over the next two years, most notably for a Labor party that continues to enjoy a dominant polling position.

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If I am right, then rather than seeking to tap an angry populist wave and ride it into power, Labor’s challenge is to restore confidence in government by grappling with the complex issues that populism has failed to address.

Fundamental to this project is the need to address the three looming sources of insecurity: rising power prices in an era of energy transition, job insecurity as the wave of automation hits, and a housing bubble driven by the preferential treatment of investors.

These are easy scabs to pick, the anger is there to be tapped, but the actual solutions are more complex, requiring government support and intervention, without stifling business activity in each of the sectors.

If the populist moment has passed, Labor is free to offer up more thoughtful policies embracing complexity rather than the false prophet of simplicity.

Labor in opposition does not have to be quite so angry, so desperate to win every political point. It could maybe even admit it sometimes doesn’t have all the answers, but it does have the values to find the right solutions.

Freed of the allure of the cheap shot, there is just the chance that a party could win power on the promise of making the system work, rather than simply tearing everything down.

And the prize would be a much greater chance of enduring success in government.