The undying budget backlash suggests that there are limits to what a reactionary government can do when the people push back, writes Tim Dunlop.

Normally you have to wait for a government to reach its third or fourth term to see it fall into the sort of disarray that the Abbott Government is currently experiencing.

But less than a year into its first term, the Coalition is looking like a tired, out-of-ideas bunch of third-term incompetents heading for either defeat or a leadership change.

I'm not predicting either, but the vibe is unmistakable.

As the walls come tumbling down, the schadenfreude on the left is palpable. Having seen the Rudd/Gillard governments fall victim to the excesses of the right-wing media in full anti-Labor, misogynist mode, it is hardly surprising that some are feeling a little bit vindicated.

The man the media christened the "best opposition leader ever" has turned out to have feet of tofu and can't stand up for falling down.

Putting particular schaden into the left's freude is the matter of honesty and election promises.

After the fuss Tony Abbott made over Julia Gillard's alleged lie about a price on carbon, and the extraordinary lengths to which he went to assure the public that he would - to paraphrase King Lear - never, never, never, never, never wilfully mislead them, it is hardly surprising that his political opponents are rubbing his supporters noses in the fact that, when it comes to breaking promises, this prime minister makes the last one look like an amateur.

Still, it is worth noting that as understandable as the left's glee is, schadenfreude will only get you so far.

It's not as if Labor wasn't the architect of many of its own problems. They actually did change leaders in their first term of government, and then spent their second term flaying each other via leaks to a complicit media.

And it's not as if the Shorten-led Labor Party is stepping into the breach created by the current Abbott misery with anything like a positive, nation-rallying agenda that makes victory in 2016 inevitable.

Labor mightn't be in favour of the sort of capitalism-without-a-safety-net that the Coalition is trying to install, but to most people, Bill Shorten looks pretty much like Tweedledee to Abbott's Tweedledum.

And this is where the real problem starts.

The elite consensus around matters such as privatisation, trade liberalisation and the various programs of deregulation may have delivered increased national wealth, but they have also stripped governments of key aspects of their sovereignty as well as upsetting social relations in ways that fracture hopes and expectations of a decent, fulfilling life.

Throw in the rising inequality that seems to be part and parcel of the current economic dispensation, and it is not hard to understand people's concerns.

In other words, for all of our good fortune as a nation, we are suffering through a period of massive dislocation and ill ease that goes beyond the ability of a merely successful economy to even touch, let alone heal.

Thus we see popular disquiet reflected in various opinion polls, including a recent survey by the ANU. They found that our faith in democracy as a form of government has declined from 86 per cent in 2007 to 72 per cent now, and that only 43 per cent people thought it made a difference as to which party was in power.

A similar poll by Lowy Institute found only 60 per cent of people think democracy is the best form of government, and that figure drops to 42 per cent for those aged between 18 and 29.

More telling are actual voting figures. As was reported on Lateline on Monday night:

Nearly 20 per cent of eligible voters effectively opted out of last year's election. That's about three million Australians who either didn't enrol to vote, didn't show up to vote or voted informally.

The lack of authority within the political mainstream has real consequences, not the least of which is the tendency of incumbents to try and assert relevance by attacking the most vulnerable in the community and by attempting to rally national unity in the face of enemies real or concocted.

Tony Abbott's pathetic evocation of "Team Australia" in regard to data retention is a classic case, but others are easy to find: the whole disgusting cruelness of our asylum seeker policy; the near-abusive treatment of the unemployed mooted in the budget; the unseemly grasping of the destruction of flight MH17 as a national rallying point; the income management being imposed on Aborigines in the Northern Territory, a system that some want to extend to all welfare recipients - all of these are symptoms of a political class who mistake authoritarianism for authority.

Still, despite all this, reaction to the budget has been instructive, and maybe we can claim it as a glimmer of hope.

The difficulties the budget is having don't arise, as leading voices in the media suggest, from an "unruly, populist Senate"; nor are they caused by the "decline of mass media" which "weakens the ability of leaders to carry opinion".

It certainly has nothing to do with the business community failing to cheer hard enough in support of it, as the Treasurer has complained. I mean, good heavens, Joe, how much more onside could business be?

No, the real problem the budget faces is that it violates the unwritten rules of fairness that are as close to the essence of a national identity as we have. (As I've said before, it feels like WorkChoices for everything.)

In so doing, it has reminded people that we live in a society, not an economy, and that it is simply not enough for a government to screech "balanced budget" ad infinitum as a cover for what amounts to an attempt to dismantle social programs people consider part and parcel of a civilised nation.

Don't get me wrong, there is a long way to go. The neoliberal consensus still rules, and certain elites still have way too much sway over government policy. But the budget backlash suggests that there are limits to what a reactionary government can do when the people push back.

The lesson we should learn is simple: push harder.

Tim Dunlop is the author of The New Front Page: New Media and the Rise of the Audience. He writes regularly for The Drum and a number of other publications. You can follow him on Twitter. View his full profile here.