One Nation, science and democracy – a trust deficit |
The rise of anti-establishment politics reflects a deeper loss of confidence in Australia’s economic model, making investment in science, research and innovation central to rebuilding productivity, opportunity and trust.
The surge in support for One Nation is often explained away as a protest vote, a reaction to migration, cultural anxiety or dissatisfaction with the major parties.
But such explanations risk missing the deeper story. If current polling trends are sustained, they point to something more profound: A growing belief among many Australians that the economic and political model that has governed the country for the past four decades is no longer working for them.
The rise of anti-establishment politics should be understood not merely as a political phenomenon but as a symptom of a broader crisis of confidence.
Trust in institutions is declining. Trust in governments is declining. Trust in business, media and public authorities is weakening. Increasingly, many Australians doubt that the future will be better than the past.
This matters because democracies ultimately rely on public confidence that the system can deliver opportunity, fairness and security. When that confidence erodes, political fragmentation follows.
The Strategic Examination of Research and Development, Ambitious Australia, provides an important framework for understanding why this is occurring and what might be done about it.
The report bluntly argues that Australia’s neoliberal economic model is reaching its limits. For decades, economic growth has been driven by population expansion, resource extraction and rising asset values. Australia became accustomed to prosperity generated by what critics have described as a “beach and quarry” economy.
But the conditions that sustained that model are changing.
As the Prime Minister recently observed, the stable and predictable world of ever-expanding free trade has gone. International conflict, strategic competition, technological disruption and declining productivity are creating new economic realities.
The assumptions of the postwar economic order no longer apply.
The consequence is a growing sense of insecurity, particularly among younger Australians.
The survey evidence suggests generation Z is leading........