Australia's resisting the global populist tide. But now's no time for smugness
March for Australia rallies, at which neo-Nazis have been a visible presence. The heightened prominence of the sovereign citizen movement. Vigils in state capitals for the assassinated MAGA provocateur Charlie Kirk. A surge in the polls for One Nation. The intrigue surrounding the ambitions of Jacinta Nampijinpa Price and Barnaby Joyce, both figures with journalistic entertainment value, a prerequisite for successful political disruptors. US- and European-style populism appears to be taking deeper root on Australian soil.
Ever since returning from the United States four years ago – and waking up in a quarantine hotel on our first Saturday morning back to the muffled roar of an anti-lockdown protest down below – I have been sounding the alarm about the Americanisation of Australian public life. In recent months, however, I have not shared the fatalistic sense that Australia will inexorably travel the same path as the US, Britain, France and Germany. Populism with an Aussie twang is not somehow preordained.
True, Sussan Ley’s moderate conservatism looks like a frail finger in the dyke. Already, her leadership is under pressure from the right. Why, Andrew Hastie recently test drove the slogan “Australians First”, standing alongside a vintage Ford Falcon – a social media post laced with nostalgic nationalism and machismo.
Still, wasn’t the main lesson from the 2025 federal election that the electorate preferred to retain the services of an emphatically Australian prime minister rather than a hard-right opposition leader mocked as “Temu Trump”. In this polity, the theatrics of Trumpism, not to mention its testosterone, do not appear to have election-winning appeal, especially among women.
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https://www.theage.com.au/national/australia-s-resisting-the-global-populist-tide-but-now-s-no-time-for-smugness-20251030-p5n6nw.html
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