If you look around other liberal democracies, it might seem like the left is having a moment.

In the United States, a self-described socialist is putting in a strong challenge for the Democratic Party’s presidential nomination, and and mobilising a movement which aims to force the party to the left.

In the United Kingdom, another socialist – Jeremy Corbyn – was last year elected Labour leader on the back of a surge of new party members, who rejected the legacy of Blairism.

Neither of these men may win government, but they both have already been transformational figures within parties that had never shaken off their complacent, third-way neoliberalism.

In Europe, new parties on the left like Syriza and Podemos have had mixed success in delivering on their aims even when elected, but they have nevertheless been established, competed, and caused huge headaches for the established center-left parties.

Australia seems like the odd man out.

The only discernible move to the left in recent national parliamentary politics has been the sacking of the most conservative prime minister in living memory and his replacement with someone from the Liberal party’s money wing. It’s hardly a Sanders-style “political revolution”.

The Labor party has no Sanders or Corbyn on the horizon. It’s still stuck in the essentially reactive and defensive position it adopted when last in government. It has no transformational social or political agenda, and its current plans seem to be more tinkering around the edges of the neoliberal consensus. At best it seems to want to reinstate elements of the Gillard legacy – like a carbon trading scheme – that even Malcolm Turnbull has previously agreed with.

Worse, in its increasingly forlorn obsession with electability, the ALP has actively colluded in the construction of the west’s most heinous refugee policy.

Even the Greens, under the emphasis provided by their new leader, seem much less like an insurgent third force connected to a vibrant social movement, and more as a group with a focus on parliamentary deal-making. And today came the news that the Greens have concluded a bargain with the government which would allow them to proceed to a double dissolution, and would likely wipe out micro parties.

Under Di Natale – despite his claims that he wants them to be a party of government – you could be forgiven for thinking that the Greens are treading water, leveraging their current share of the vote for a place at the table in political deals.

Perhaps this timidity on the official left is because Australia was spared the worst of the recession that ravaged North America and Europe from 2008.

Tough economic times are both politically polarising, and conducive to the formulation of new kinds of political demands, from new social movements. This, in turn, leads to pressure on major parties, and tangible reforms.

The Sanders candidacy can be traced directly back to the highlighting of inequality and corporate malfeasance by Occupy Wall Street. Experienced activists who were there at the beginning are now working on a presidential campaign that might finally bring the Democratic Party to constraining corporatist excess.

Australia was shielded from the worst of the crash by mining revenues. Inequality increased, but those who suffered most remained on the margins. That appears to be changing quickly, and it may be that this galvanises a broader movement.

If you want to see how quickly a movement can still develop and score victories in Australia, recent events in the fight against offshore detention offer a good example.

The events which led to several premiers writing to the prime minister to offer to support children due to be returned to Nauru snowballed quickly, due to pressure from progressive churches, refugee advocates, and NGOs.

#LetThemStay continues as a truly national movement does battle with a government which is determined to send babies back to detention. The federal ALP has been left looking flat-footed, as its members struggle to defend a policy that is not only indefensible, but suddenly looks less popular than had been imagined.

Perhaps the left’s moment in Australia has simply been postponed.

