The rot festering in the floor of democracy |
Have you ever suspected a partner of cheating? Trust rarely ends with a single dramatic betrayal but with the gradual accumulation of small doubts. Those unexplained absences. Those vague half answers. Those excuses that never quite add up.
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You don't want to think the worst but eventually the pattern becomes impossible to ignore. By the time the moment of truth arrives, that gut-wrenching revelation is almost beside the point. Trust hasn't just frayed. It has fled.
That uneasy shift, from trust to suspicion to the reluctant acceptance of betrayal, is no longer confined to private lives. It's now playing out at ballot boxes around the world.
Last week's Farrer by-election, which saw Pauline Hanson's One Nation capture its first lower house seat, was not just a passing flirtation with populism or a one-off electoral fling. It was the culmination of a sentiment that has been growing for decades, not just in regional and rural areas but among that swelling number of have-nots around the country who feel left behind and deceived.
Independent MP Helen Haines puts it succinctly: "I think it was a purposeful vote ... when you turn on a tap and brown water comes out instead of clean drinking water, when you haven't got roads that are safe to drive on, when your local health service is getting squeezed ... it's not business as usual anymore."
It's more than just a middle finger raised to the Establishment. It's a rot festering in the floorboards of Western democracy, a growing belief that the system is broken, that institutions meant to protect us prefer power and profit. Donald Trump harnessed that distrust to win the White House. Nigel Farage is mounting a credible campaign of disruption in the UK. Hanson is making unprecedented gains around Australia.
That slow accumulation of small doubts has reached its moment of truth for voters. They no longer believe the established order's vague half answers and excuses that never quite add up. Trust has fled.
This erosion of faith did not begin in Australia with politics but with the banks. The scandals and misconduct of the 1980s and '90s chipped away at the assumption that large institutions operate in the public interest. That scepticism then hardened, spreading from banks to corporations, governments and traditional media.
And as anyone who feels cheated upon knows, once suspicion becomes embedded it is very difficult to shift.
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