The political poles are moving – and that’s not a typo. The stark class divides of 20th century politics are flipping, with once conservative parties of capital respawning as champions of the common folk while progressives are condemned as privileged elites.
Regardless of the outcome of the US presidential election, a close result will confirm this inflection. Trump is the cartoon version of this shift, but across the west the right is successfully targeting those the system fails with economic and cultural grievance.
Could it work here? Peter Dutton is not about to die wondering. With little prospect of winning back the swathe of inner-city seats seized by the teal independents in 2022, Dutton’s only plausible route to power is via the outer suburbs and regions where cost-of-living pressure is biting.
As this week’s Guardian Essential Report shows, he has a lot to work with: a majority of voters now say they are either struggling to pay the bills or in serious financial difficulty.
These are not good numbers for an incumbent government presiding over difficult economic times. If the material conditions of a majority of an electorate are negative, “more of the same” becomes a hard sell.
A few things stand out. The economy is working significantly better for men than women, while those in the mid-stage of their lives with mortgages and school-age children are more likely to be feeling financial heat.
But the pressures of tough economic times do not discriminate by age or cultural identity and Dutton is revelling in the opportunity to staple the Albanese government to the broader body politic that enables the inequities of late-stage capitalism.
You can see this strategy playing out in the successful effort to silence the voice; the ongoing attacks on “woke” corporates and super funds; the dismissal of Labor’s Future Made in Australia as “billions for billionaires” and forced divestment of supermarkets.
Granted, this requires a level of cognitive dissonance, given that the economic pressures driving the collapse in faith in the system are a direct consequence of the right’s neoliberal agenda of the past forty years.
Indeed, it is these neoliberal policies that have robbed present-day governments of direct control over the economy through privatisations, contracting out and trade agreements that render national regulation unlawful.
For those with memories of the Howard era, the seduction of the “battler” is not a novel approach for conservatives; both he and Menzies before him sold “aspiration” and the right to set up a small business and thrive, to get a share of the system.
The current conservative appeal to outsiders is far darker: the system is broken and those who are thriving are doing so at others’ expense.
These numbers should serve as a wake-up call to a Labor government for whom due process, caution and sober incrementalism are considered virtues.
Only among the small cohort describing themselves as “comfortable” do more than a quarter describe the current system as working well while a majority of those struggling want to see fundamental change.
A separate question found even bigger splits when participants were asked whether the gap between rich and poor is widening, with more than three-quarters of those struggling agreeing, and basically no one rejecting the proposition.
Faced with these feedback loops, how does an incumbent respond? The tendency of this government is to compile a list of achievements – and, to be fair, it’s a decent list that would tick off the middle column in the above table.
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It starts with reworking the former government’s tax cuts so they do not destroy our progressive tax system; it moves to the support for wage increases for the lowly paid and the creation of new rights for labour hire and gig workers; it notes the increase in rental assistance, energy rebates, cheaper medicines and the changes to childcare that are driving down prices for families with young children.
But to resist the politics of grievance that Dutton threatens to unleash on Labor, the defence cannot end with a report card; it demands a more ambitious plan that talks to those doing it the toughest.
It is here where there is growing desire for active intervention into the economy: in a separate question, three-quarters of those doing it tough want the government to intervene on the prices of groceries, rent and energy.
In our deregulated system these are not straightforward asks, but defending the status quo risks votes bleeding to the right. At least that is the experience in the US.
A final table shows that from a standing start there is the outline of an axis inflection in Australia too.
Despite its battler bluster, the Coalition remains the preferred party of the well-off, and it’s lineball between the majors on those who enjoy some level of financial security; it is where people are struggling that the coverage of the major parties breaks down.
The Greens, independents and minor parties of the right like One Nation and the UAP all enjoy significant support from those who believe the economic system is not working for them, with the flow of preferences amongst those in the most difficulty flow to Labor.
So, before we start catastrophising about the Trump-ification of Australian politics, it is worth noting the differences between our systems. Whereas in America the two parties’ hold on power is absolute, in Australia these smaller groupings on the left, along with the ongoing institutional influence of the union movement, makes a full ideological eclipse less likely.
Paradoxically, for all the pain their insurgency causes Labor, the Greens and independents play a stabilising role, ensuring enough of those dissatisfied with status quo politics might still find a progressive home.
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Peter Lewis is the executive director of Essential and host of Per Capita’s Burning Platforms podcast