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A year before US President Donald Trump made his famous ride down the golden escalator to declare himself a candidate for the presidency, an obscure trade union official from Australia had made a troubling visit to the US.
Getting beyond the big coastal cities of America into its hinterland, the Australian realised that something was deeply awry. He wrote a note to himself on the plane back to Australia: “It feels like something is about to pop.”
That union official was Peter Malinauskas, the Labor premier of South Australia for the past four years. He recalls a “lovely dinner” at a union member’s home in Kentucky where he discovered the frustration and deep anger among American workers that he would later describe as “bloody dangerous”.
He didn’t foresee that Trump would ride that anger all the way to the White House. But he did get a premonition of the sort of populism that roiled Europe, Britain and the US and that has now arrived in Australia.
“I’ve never thought that Australia would be immune,” Malinauskas tells me, although he describes mandatory voting as long exerting a stabilising “ballast” effect for Australia.
“But now we are here,” with Pauline Hanson’s One Nation challenging the Liberal Party for the status of official opposition. “Time will tell whether this popularity of One Nation translates to the ballot box.”
But not much time. South Australia will be the first real-world test for the rampant One Nation since its poll surge that began around September last year. The state election is due in three weeks. Malinauskas will be Australia’s frontline defender against the same populist rage that he first felt in provincial America in 2014.
In the three polls on the South Australian election published so far, One Nation has been ahead of the Liberal Party in every one. The margin of its advantage over the Libs ranges from a scant 1 per cent in a Demos poll up to a whopping 10 percentage points in a Newspoll.
Labor’s hold on power does not appear to be at risk. After four years in power, Malinauskas is enormously popular, his government has a big majority and it seems set to increase its dominance. How so?
“He’s charismatic, he looks the part, he’s eloquent, he’s a family man, he plays footy, he’s the complete package – but people see through that after a while,” says Ed Cavanough, chief executive of the Labor-aligned McKell Institute think tank.
“What explains his sustained and rising popularity is that he delivers for South Australia.” Not that he’s kept every promise. The persisting problem of ambulance ramping, Malinauskas freely confesses, is “a failure point of the government. You have to be honest with people”.
But he is prepared to lead tough fights, says Cavanough: “It’s not about being in the mushy middle and being conciliatory all the time. Every now and then, there will be a big issue with winners and losers and you need to have the fight and demonstrate your values.” For instance, “no one thought he could win the battle over the teenage social media ban, but Prime Minister Antony Albanese followed suit and now the idea is ricocheting around the world.”
Malinauskas stood against his own party to ban all political donations; he decisively took the failing Whyalla steelworks into state control; he’s a huge advocate for AUKUS and the billions it brings to his state; and he successfully seized big events like the AFL Gather Round and the LIV golf tournament. The 45-year-old says he leads an “unapologetically pro-business and pro-investment Labor government”.
He took a risk to push the pace of home-building; the state increased water use charges above and beyond the inflation rate, using the funds raised to build more water infrastructure. As he says: “Without water, houses don’t get built. It’s starting to make a difference.”
But South Australians suffer the same cost-of-living frustrations as everyone else in the country. Why doesn’t this seem to weigh on Malinauskas’ approval rating, which is an impressive 67 per cent in the latest Newspoll, with disapproval of 27?
Cavanough says that Malinauskas, in material terms as well as in morale, has made South Australians feel better about their state and their future. “When I left uni in South Australia, I left the state, as everyone did. That’s starting to change.”
Indeed, Cavanough proposes Malinauskas as a model centre-left leader. Resolve Strategic pollster Jim Reed, brackets him with NSW Labor Premier Chris Minns: “They draw a line, take a stand and fight for it, as Minns did after the Bondi massacre, as Malinauskas did with the social media ban. It’s old-style conviction politics – who knew that would work?”
In his own words, Malinauskas says: “I like the idea that political leaders are decisive. Electorates are right to expect leaders to lead and make decisions. Avoid finger-pointing and just do things. I think sometimes we can be too risk-averse.”
Is this a contrast with the perpetual dirge about Albanese’s supposed lack of ambition? Cavanough thinks so: “There’s a huge restlessness in the Labor left that Albanese is not delivering enough change. The conversation is all about what he’s not doing.” Malinauskas, however, defends the prime minister: “I’ve been in the room where he’s been very decisive indeed. With the national health agreement, the NDIS agreement, his position on AUKUS is big and important for our country.”
So the status of the South Australian Liberals as a rump is partly because of Malinauskas’ success, and not only because of their haplessness, their three leaders in four years, a deep ideological fracture and a complete lack of any identifiable purpose. A description which, of course, could apply just as well to the federal Liberals.
The immediate question for the South Australian election is whether the Liberals, who now hold 13 seats in a 47-seat lower house, can hold any seats at all. And whether One Nation, for the first time, can displace one of the two long-standing parties of government. It would be, says Malinauskas with considerable understatement, a “significant moment”.
A racist party vying for power, rather than ranting from the fringe, in one of the world’s most multicultural nations would be more than significant. It could be socially ruinous.
Even though a state parliament doesn’t make immigration policy, a Hanson beachhead as the official opposition in an Australian parliament would validate the party’s naked contempt for outgroups, for “the other”. Hanson, over the years, has vilified Asian Australians, Indigenous Australians and Muslim Australians.
Labor can’t be smug, however. Even if it’s safe in SA for now, Labor is vulnerable. In a startling finding this week, 58 per cent of respondents told the pollsters they were “open” to voting One Nation at the next federal election, due in two years.
Among Labor voters, one-third said they’d be open to it. Voters’ partisan loyalties are feeble and fading; it’s a moment of tremendous fluidity.
The March 21 election in South Australia is shaping as much more than a provincial scuffle over who rules in Adelaide. It’s a referendum on the viability of Australia’s existing two-party system. Are future elections to be a competition to offer solutions or a competition of promised destruction?
What’s driving One Nation’s support? “A sense of frustration with political parties – left and right – generated by a sense of economic inequity or a feeling that economic opportunity is harder to come by,” Malinauskas says.
“There’s a sense in the community – and it has merit – that the intergenerational compact is at risk. In the most immediate contest, the most profound example is housing.”
The so-called “culture wars”, he says, “have exacerbated” the economic aggravation. Around the world, “identity politics is unhealthy and both sides of politics have invoked it to suit themselves”.
The political left has campaigned to promote transgenderism and antisemitism, while the political right has promoted xenophobia and disdain for feminism. “That’s set the foundation for populism to manifest.”
How to tackle destructive populism? Malinauskas has a two-pronged approach. One, he says, is to confront and criticise leaders like Hanson for divisiveness, while appealing to people who may be thinking of voting for her.
“It doesn’t hurt to speak plainly about things,” he says. “Talking about immigration and how important it is to our country. The idea that we can switch off migration and the housing problem is solved – it’s not right. Who’s building the houses?”
The industry depends on immigrants, he says: “If we didn’t have them, housing construction would decline. People aren’t silly. They understand when you explain.” In its first week, Labor’s campaign has been all about housing. The state claims to have the fastest growth rate of new housing in the country.
Critically, Malinauskas says a party of government “must not only identify problems; it must talk about solutions. Otherwise, you’re just like them”, the populists peddling junk answers to complex problems. Or, as Cavanough frames it, South Australia’s choice is between “ambition and extremism”.
Peter Hartcher is political editor.
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Peter Hartcher is political editor and international editor of The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.Connect via email.From our partners
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