Australia avoided the populist-right breakthroughs seen in the US and Europe for longer because prosperity, stronger institutions and a more equal income distribution absorbed the shocks. Those protections are now weakening. Part one of a two-part analysis.

Roger Beale

The rise of One Nation has come later than the populist right’s breakthrough in the United States and much of Europe. For a time, Australia seemed an exception. The explanation lies partly in our economic history since 1990: more people shared in growth, unlike the US and UK, our tax and transfer system ensured no appreciable rise in income inequality, and we created no large concentrations of poverty equivalent to the US rust-belt, Appalachians or the UK’s post-industrial north-east.

Also, in spite of the bleats from the right, we were never as ‘woke’ as the US – there were no racial or other minority quotas for higher education or employment, cancel culture existed as a pale shadow of its US equivalents and we avoided the silly extremes like claims that punctuality is a racially repressive concept.

That history helps explain the lag. It does not imply that everyone prospered. Agricultural production has grown while needing fewer workers. A town can have no unemployment crisis and still lose its bank, school, young adults and confidence in its future. Moving to a larger centre helps an individual find work, but can leave the town of origin older and thinner in services. Mining fortunes also differ sharply from those of farming and former manufacturing communities. There is no single regional economy.

For households nationally, the prolonged disposable income slowdown is real, but unlike our international comparators real disposable income for median households has not seen a long period of actual falls. The Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey describes strong income growth in the first decade of this century, much weaker progress in the 2010s, a temporary pandemic lift and a more recent squeeze driven by the intersection of inflation, interest rises, increasing mortgage costs and increased tax due to bracket creep (offset by the later tax changes). This story is broadly echoed by the ABS Survey of Income and Housing.

While income inequality hasn’t increased, the same is not true of wealth. Burgeoning superannuation balances and soaring house prices saw the wealth of older Australians climb strongly. Reflecting Piketty’s famous formulation for increasing concentration of wealth, returns to capital (r) strongly exceeded the growth rate of the economy (g) since 2015. The rich and ultra-rich grew richer still. But younger people facing higher housing prices, higher rents and insecure tenure and dealing with university debts despaired of getting on the home ownership ladder and delayed parenthood; mortgagors were exposed to higher interest payments which sharply squeezed disposable income. And everyone faced higher costs for energy and insurance. The divide between people accumulating assets and those reliant on wages has made the promise that work leads to security less credible.

Kos Samaras and Tony Barry’s RedBridge ‘Three Australias’ analysis adds a provocative geographical dimension drawing on the ANU Regional Living Costs Index. Extrapolating from that they estimate that real disposable income indexed to 2015 rose six percentage points in inner metropolitan Australia, but fell eight in outer suburbs and 11 in the regions. Their polling also finds One Nation support rising with distance from city centres. They locate a particularly strong shift to the right among generation X and younger baby boomers without degrees in outer suburban, peri-urban and regional places.

Another regional grievance is the uneven bargain of the energy transition. Developers, skilled workers and host landowners can receive substantial returns from wind, solar and transmission projects; the wider population benefits from electricity supply and lower emissions. But nearby households may see changed landscapes, construction traffic, pressure on local housing or a transmission corridor without a corresponding payment. Short construction booms do not guarantee long-term local jobs. A neighbour who bears an enduring cost deserves a share of the benefit.

Yet economics alone does not drive an electoral destiny. The ANU March 2026 POLIS study finds that the strongest attitudinal predictor of a favourable view of One Nation is populist orientation. Stricter border control and less stringent environmental laws are its most distinctive associated policy preferences. Financial stress contributes, but many equally stressed Australians vote for other parties. In a 2019 Monash survey, financial concerns were only weakly associated with One Nation voting intentions.

The early surge may have drawn heavily from Coalition voters, but a larger One Nation vote cannot be explained by one demographic stereotype. Some voters seek lower migration; some feel ignored; others want a government capable of restoring economic security.

Australia’s populist surge was delayed because our institutions and prosperity absorbed shocks better than in many comparable countries. We had civic capital in the form of strong trust in our institutions compared with other OECD countries – never higher than during the GFC and COVID. While that trust has softened somewhat it is still much higher than in the UK and vastly so than the US. We have had a traditionally pragmatic and unideological attitude to government, treating it as a giant public utility to provide services and security rather than an inherent risk to liberty as in the US. We have compulsory and preferential voting – a bulwark against the triumph of “the worst full of passionate intensity” (W.B. Yeats, The Second Coming). Even when “the best lack all conviction” (ibid.) they are forced to turn out and vote.

Radical-right populism’s late arrival signals that these protections cannot be taken for granted. We need to test the geography of the living-standards squeeze carefully, repair the unfairness people can identify in their lives, and recognise that economic and social policies will succeed politically only if they also address questions of belonging and trust.

The next article considers what such a response would require.

https://johnmenadue.com/post/2026/10/why-the-populist-right-arrived-later-in-australia-part-one/

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