Since Australia’s emphatic repudiation at the May 2025 election of the Coalition’s accelerated journey towards a strident rightwing populism, there has been a surge of interest in the country’s political distinctiveness. At a time of democratic backsliding in many other parts of the globe, not least in Trump’s United States, and an associated proliferation of populist strongman leaders, Australia had bucked that trend. Its democracy was resilient and its political centre holding.
Historians have been writing about the country’s democratic exceptionalism for many years, but suddenly it became a subject on which every galah in every pet shop was squawking. From overseas, there came expressions of envy and marvelling at Australia’s difference. According to one of Britain’s most influential political watchers, Rory Stewart, amid the fraying of politics in America, the United Kingdom and elsewhere, “if liberal democracy has a future, it looks surprisingly Australian”.
There is a hint in this awakening curiosity about Australia’s robust democratic formula of what occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries when international visitors, including from America, sailed to these shores to divine the secret of the society’s advanced democracy and witness its pioneering experiments in state provision, such as a minimum wage, regulation of workplaces and rudimentary welfare measures. Those visitors ascribed various labels to those experiments, among them, social democracy, equality of opportunity, state agency and state socialism. Significantly, those innovations were spearheaded by Liberals.
Voters queue at a polling booth at Sydney town hall, 16 September 1934. Compulsory voting had been introduced a decade earlier. Photograph: Mitchell Library, State Library of New South Wales
The paradox is that, more than a century on, contemporary conservative Liberals in this country appear set on cloning regressive ideas from the United States, while overseas besieged centrists are consoled by the view of Australia as a sanctuary nation that has the antidote to democracy’s global recession and the populist right’s onslaught.
Majoritarian oriented and practical minded, Australia has been a society averse to ideological extremes or demagogues, a nation open to curtailing individual rights and intervening in the market in the name of the common good. There was a marked propensity for experimentation in electoral matters, beginning in the 19th century with the internationally pioneering innovation of the secret (Australian) ballot and culminating in the adoption of compulsory voting in 1924. The latter is an institution inconceivable in the ferociously individualistic United States, with its terror of a tyranny of the majority.
Along with the Australian Electoral Commission – the nation’s most respected federal public entity – compulsory voting has been lauded as the institutional bulwark of the country’s democracy. In an echo of the arguments put forward 100 years ago, much has been said about how compulsory voting acts as a fetter against the political polarisation and incursion of grievance-fuelled militant populism on the march in other parts of the globe. Other benefits typically associated with compulsory voting include that by keeping turnout high – only once has it slipped below 90% since the practice was first deployed at the 1925 election – it affords enhanced legitimacy to election results. Significantly, it also encourages a socially even turnout, whereas in voluntary voting systems, the disadvantaged are most likely not to participate and are therefore at risk of having their interests marginalised by government.
double quotation markWhat is different is Australia’s young men: many of their peers internationally are falling prey to rightwing populists
Far-sighted political leadership is another reason why Australia has been more resistant to militant populism than have advanced democracies in Europe and North America. Though not without significant destabilising effects, the major modernising reforms executed in the final decades of the 20th century by the Labor governments of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating, and the early Howard prime ministership, laid the foundations for an extended period of strong economic performance that helped insulate the nation from the drastic austerity measures and serious erosion of living standards experienced in many other countries. In a similar way, the global financial crisis of the first decade of the 21st century was, compared with its severe economic and social effects in other parts of the globe, mostly harmlessly shrugged off by Australia. This resilience was again attributed to the reforms of the previous quarter of a century, as well as the good fortune of the nation’s buoyant trade relationship with China. Australia was envied from abroad as a miracle economy.
However, after more than two decades of relative public policy stasis, the country is now living on borrowed time. Though the evidence on this is complex and not uniform, the lion’s share points to growing economic inequality. A widening gulf between the generations has become an issue of particular concern. Former secretary of Treasury Ken Henry, for instance, has spoken passionately of the “wilful acts of bastardry” or “reckless indifference” of governments and vested interests in the face of the disadvantages being heaped on younger Australians.
Anthony Albanese leaves the polling booth after casting his vote in the 2025 election. Labor’s landslide victory was based on a low primary vote. Photograph: Hollie Adams/Reuters
One of the most striking features of political behaviour in contemporary Australia is that millennials and those from generation Z are skewing markedly to left-of-centre politics. This leftwards orientation is common to both genders, albeit it is most pronounced among young women. The pattern of young women heavily leaning towards progressive politics in Australia is consistent with what is happening in comparable democracies. What is different is the political behaviour of Australia’s young men: many of their peers internationally are falling prey to the blandishments of rightwing populists. In circumstances of unrelieved “intergenerational bastardry”, however, how long will it be before such a trend manifests in Australia? Can we realistically expect the young to show continuing forbearance in the face of a record of inertia in addressing the disadvantages in life chances they are experiencing?
There are other grounds for not being complacent about Australia’s democratic strength. Despite Anthony Albanese’s objective to restore faith in the political system and democracy, and although trust levels rose early in Labor’s first term, that improvement was not sustained. The long-term trend is heading in the wrong direction, towards discontentment.
There is also evidence of a geographical cleavage, with those in outer-regional and rural parts of the country substantially more distrustful of democracy and its institutions than their urban counterparts. Nor should we overlook that the “progressive” landslide victory of May 2025 was based on a low primary vote for Labor. As the party’s president, Wayne Swan, warned the following September, with its shallow roots, it is vulnerable to being swept away.
Additionally, Australia’s reputation for democratic innovation rests on practices and institutions inaugurated many decades ago. Where are the new ideas to freshen up the system and prevent it from growing stale and enervated? One potential measure – the United Kingdom is set to adopt this change at its next general election – is lowering the voting age to 16. Proponents contend that, as with past mass enfranchisements, this would provide a shot of adrenaline to democracy and also force politicians to be more responsive to the lived experience of the young.
Photograph: Melbourne University Publishing
The point that political leadership has contributed to the nation’s democratic resilience – and its emergent fragilities – brings us to the calibre of prime-ministerial leadership this century.
The exercise of power in a government and in a nation involves multitudes. That the inputs into decision-making are many and authority is dispersed are safeguards in a democratic system. Nevertheless, the prime minister is a paramount player in the country’s life. The character and behavioural traits, the habits of thought and worldview, and the strengths and frailties of those that occupy the office, all matter greatly.
This century has to date not been a happy time for prime ministers. Most who have tried have been defeated by the role. Even so, the much-quoted Donald Horne epigram that “Australia is a lucky country run by mainly second-rate people” is not borne out by the historical record. Since the birth of the commonwealth, the nation has had its fair share of accomplished and consequential leaders: Deakin and Andrew Fisher in the first decades after federation; Curtin, Chifley and Menzies in the mid-20th century; and Whitlam, Hawke, Keating and Howard in the modern era. Perhaps, if he can discover something of the heroic within him, Albanese will one day be counted among them.
This is an edited extract from The Alchemy of Leadership by Paul Strangio, published by Melbourne University Publishing