Donald Trump's explosive election win has altered the political landscape in Australia. Over the past two weeks, politicians have been pondering the question: could the Trump model of nationalism, protectionism, parochialism and trickle-down capitalism work in the Australian context?
Trump, with all his grating contradictions, doesn't neatly fit into any ideological box. Some of his economic policies would make a modern-day socialist blush: reversing decades of progressive trade liberalism and rebuilding local industry among them.
Daniel Andrews has been using rhetoric designed to resonate with a particular group of disillusioned voters.Credit:Justin McManus
Others represent clear examples of trickle-down free market liberalism, including blowing away regulatory barriers and slashing the corporate tax rate from 35 per cent to 15 per cent.
Australian politics has traditionally been played out along a clear left-right divide. But this could be changing with the realisation that, like in America, there exists a large group of disaffected voters who are increasingly distrustful of politicians and the media and care not a hoot for ideology.
As Opposition Leader Bill Shorten put it this month in an address to Labor Party faithful: Australia is a different country to the US, but some of the "seeds of the disquiet" that helped deliver Trump's election win are present and growing in this country.
Whether this is an overstatement is debatable. Australia, after all, remains a broadly optimistic nation, as recent surveys have shown. But there are some worrying signs.
Over the year to September, private sector wages crept up by just 1.9 per cent – the lowest since the Bureau of Statistics series started in 1997.
So-called underemployment is a growing problem. As reported by Fairfax Media last week, a record 1.1 million workers want more hours but can't get them. That's equivalent to 8.7 per cent of the labour force, the highest proportion since the bureau first started keeping records in 1978. In Victoria the underemployment rate is even higher, at 9.5 per cent.
The point is, growing numbers of workers are clinging to employment by the barest of margins, with the loss of thousands of manufacturing jobs in favour of less secure service sector jobs.
Parts of the state are wracked by high unemployment, or "non-employment", where people drop out of the hunt for work entirely.
Having weathered the loss of tens of thousands of manufacturing jobs over the past decade, the outlook for many workers remains tenuous, with the state yet to feel the full impact of the end of automotive manufacturing or the closure of the Hazelwood power plant.
A whole generation has been clamped out of the housing market by soaring prices and a tax system stacked in favour of investors, forced to rely on insecure rental accommodation. In September, just 13 per cent of new home loans were taken out by first-home buyers, a near-record low.
The Trump phenomenon has probably been overstated, particularly by the right, which is keen to use the result to spruik its own agenda. As US journalist Paul Waldman, points out this week, Hillary Clinton received 1.7 million more votes than Trump – more votes than any presidential candidate in history not named Barack Obama. Various post-election polls suggest a majority of Americans remain deeply uneasy about the result.
Australia is nothing like the US, with a different political system that includes compulsory voting and far more comprehensive social safety nets. And unlike America, the minimum wage in Australia has risen steadily in real terms in recent decades, even if private sector wages growth has stagnated in recent months.
Even so, the thinking in political circles is that there is a whole swath of society that is "up for grabs", politically speaking. Hence, in recent weeks we have witnessed a distinct change in rhetoric.
The Turnbull government has ramped up its border protection rhetoric, including the extraordinary comments by Immigration Minister Peter Dutton suggesting the former Liberal Fraser government should not have let Lebanese Muslims into Australia because some of their children and grandchildren had been linked to terrorism.
Labor has ramped up its rhetoric against the importation of workers on 457 visas, with Shorten warning local jobs were increasingly threatened by foreign workers on lower pay rates and worse conditions.
Or in recent days, State Opposition Leader Matthew Guy has ramped up the tough-on crime rhetoric, including talking up the idea of deporting non-citizens convicted of crimes (something that presumably already happens under the federal migration act).
Daniel Andrews, who is often referred to as the most left-leaning premier in the nation, has adopted a Trumpesque tone on industry policy, talking up the need for government intervention to protect local jobs.
In a recent speech to a business audience he said Victoria needed to "put fiscal and industry policy back on the agenda", promising to put government spending back to work to shape the economy.
What all of this means in reality is a bit unclear. If it is merely rhetoric designed to resonate with a particular group of disillusioned voters, it could be a dangerous thing indeed.
For unless governments can actually deliver on their rhetoric and improve the outlook for those who feel left behind, the pool of discontentment, disillusionment and mistrust, will only continue to grow. This is the real challenge.
Josh Gordon is State Political Editor.