It is tempting to explain the crisis in Australian democracy as reflecting the same forces that installed Donald Trump in the White House and removed Britain from the European Union.
After all, the common denominators are there for all to see: anger at the establishment, distrust of the so-called elites and the ascendancy of opinion over fact.
More National News Videos
Wake up call for politicians
Australians are dissatisfied with democracy, don't trust politicians or have faith in their ability to fix the economy, new report finds.
But that would be letting the current crop of leaders in Australia and their recent predecessors off the hook, along with their party machines, minders and spin doctors.
Truth is, the alarming levels of distrust, cynicism, betrayal and disappointment recorded in the latest Australian Election Study are, overwhelmingly, the result of home-grown forces.
The survey tells us that things began to go pear-shaped after the election of Kevin Rudd in 2007. Every prime minister since has scored less than five out of 10 on popularity.
If there was a single moment when faith gave way to disillusionment, it was when Rudd walked away from his response to climate change and dubbed it the greatest moral challenge of our time.
The failure of leaders to meet the expectations of those who supported them has been a feature of politics ever since, along with disapproval of ever increasing doses of hyperbole, negativity and sloganeering.
Average punters do not dwell on or dissect the daily doorstops of leaders, but they do draw conclusions about double standards and duplicity and, right now, they are mightily unimpressed.
![Australians cast their vote at a booth during the July 2 election.](/web/20161222173130im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/q/0/h/z/4/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gtf5e9.png/1482305770722.jpg)
Malcolm Turnbull is accused of being "transactional" and Bill Shorten a "retail politician" when, as Barry Jones has observed, they amount to the same thing: where policies are seen to be adopted not because they are right, but because they can be sold.
Jones, who was a minister when Bob Hawke was PM, recently spoke of the troubling paradox that sees debate conducted within increasingly narrow parameters as ever-increasing amounts of information become available.
"There is an inverse relationship between available knowledge and the operation of political systems," he lamented in this year's Don Dunstan oration.
There is also an irony: the right accuses the left of political correctness when it comes to social cohesion and free speech, but recoils at the suggestion that we discuss whether the market has a role to play in tackling climate change.
The most troubling finding of all is that the dissatisfaction with democracy is most palpable in the demographic that should be most engaged in the contest of ideas: those in their 30s.
Ian McAllister, the lead researcher in the study, says this is not because young people are uninterested in politics or public policy, but because they reject what is being served up by the system.
Herein lies the challenge for Turnbull and Shorten, and the young idealists who have entered politics in the last couple of elections: respect the intelligence of voters, seek out common ground and aspire to the highest common denominator, not the lowest. Or deal with the consequences, just like America, just like Britain.