Pauline Hanson has sometimes given this country a scare, notably in 1996 when she was elected to Parliament and this year when her One Nation Party won four Senate seats. But her American equivalent, Donald Trump, last week delivered a still sharper shock, inflicting the biggest election upset in living memory by winning the White House.
Like Hanson, Trump is a symptom of a wider political malaise: fear of globalisation and radical socio-economic change. Perhaps that's why Hanson herself cracked open a bottle of bubbles to celebrate last week's victory.
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Shorten on Trump: Australia could go same way
Opposition leader Bill Shorten has described 'attacks' on Australia's working class. Vision courtesy ABC News 24.
The twist is that many Australians on the centre-right spectrum also cheered on Trump. Cory Bernardi is hardly alone. I have many local mates who lionise The Donald: last Wednesday, while I was wiping the egg off my face at Channel 7 in Martin Place – like most so-called experts, I had long called a Hillary Clinton win – several friends celebrated the election result at a rugby club down the road. Some, such as former Liberal MP Ross Cameron, Spectator Australia editor Rowan Dean and News Limited columnist Miranda Devine, proudly predicted Trump's triumph. So, too, did my friend and former Labor leader Mark Latham, who admires Trump for defying the Washington cabal of media elites, defence hawks and identity politics zealots.
I fully understand why Latham, not to mention Hansonites and Palmerites, root for Trump. But why would people who barracked for mainstream centre-right politicians John Howard and Tony Abbott support a rude and lewd demagogue who's peddled conspiracy theories? A crass opportunist who from 1999 to 2011 changed political parties five times.
![US President-elect Donald Trump has promised to 'drain the swamp' - promising to ban his administration's officials from ...](/web/20170324190036im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/o/0/b/g/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsnfqh.png/1481238129788.jpg)
The issue is all the more perplexing when you bear in mind that most Australian conservatives are unashamed advocates of US global leadership that culminated in the Iraq war, which the more dovish Trump says he opposed. Liberals champion free trade whereas Trump supports high tariffs on China and Mexico and opposes trade deals, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, which the Abbott and Turnbull governments have backed. And most Liberals espouse free-market reforms whereas Trump rejects Tea-Party style cuts to welfare entitlements.
Moreover, Trump's election, as the left-wing documentary maker Michael Moore recognised early on, was largely thanks to the white working class in those rust-belt states (Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin) that usually vote Democrat. These blue-collar battlers had suffered wage stagnation and economic dislocation in recent decades. Far from panting for Reaganite capitalism and a Pax Americana, they were attracted to Trump's economic nationalist and less interventionist foreign-policy pitch.
So why do so many Liberals find Trump such an attractive political figure?
I suspect part of the answer lies in understanding how Trump has struck a hammer-blow against political correctness. For years, a left-liberal media and a political establishment stood at odds with the instincts of the general public. Many serious subjects could not be debated openly without inspiring immediate hysteria.
![Illustration: Jim Pavlidis.](/web/20170324190036im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/o/d/z/9/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsnfqh.png/1479206635782.jpg)
Climate change was one of them. So too was immigration. Whenever Republicans attempted to raise concerns about porous borders or decarbonising the economy they were vilified in the mainstream media. As a result of the refusal of the political establishment to discuss illegal immigration or carbon regulations, and other issues of concern to ordinary voters, a giant vacuum had emerged in American public discourse.
Trump dared to state in public what many American people – and many others all over the western world – feel: that uncontrolled immigration makes ordinary people feel their national identity is being undermined and that multiculturalism seems only to intensify intolerance. When the American media entered into the spirit of denunciation in epic fashion, the result was the Trump backlash.
![In Trumpier times ... Senator Pauline Hanson toasts Donald Trump's election victory with Senator Malcolm Roberts.](/web/20170324190036im_/http://www.smh.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/m/g/m/0/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gsnfqh.png/1485646236103.jpg)
All this has led to talk that Trumpism – an angry populist revolt against the political elites – is destined for Australia. Don't bet on it.
To be sure, populism is on the rise across Europe. From Scandinavia to France to the former Warsaw Pact states, support for nativist movements is increasing in response to sluggish economic growth, lax border controls and a failure of many conservative Muslims to integrate into western society. Such trends have been exacerbated by the decline of the mainstream media and the proliferation of obnoxious social media and Internet outlets that allow populists, such as Marine Le Pen, to propose simplistic solutions to fantastically complicated problems.
In Australia, the circumstances are very different. Sure, Brexit and now Trump have emboldened Malcolm Turnbull's internal critics. But remember we have not experienced a recession in a quarter century. Nor have we softened our border protection controls.
With continuous economic growth and public confidence in our immigration system, it is no wonder that Hanson's support is confined to the margins of the Australian body politic. Compulsory voting also plays a role. At the federal election, One Nation won only 4 per cent of the national vote – a far cry from Trump's 47 – or Marine Le Pen's 30 per cent support.
The lesson here is that orderly and controlled immigration and a robust economy helps guard against nativism and protectionism. If we go into recession and/or lose control of our borders, then we might be vulnerable to a Trump-like wave at the ballot box. For the time being, however, the kind of populism that is on the rise across the US and Europe is unlikely to shake up the political establishment in Canberra.
Tom Switzer is a senior fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney and a host on the ABC's Radio National.
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