After decades of pursuing free trade at the expense of local jobs, the conservatives in the Coalition — aping Donald Trump and Boris Johnson — have decided to pivot to populism. Gone is the rhetoric of Alexander Downer and Julie Bishop about how Australia benefits from a global system of rules. Scott Morrison recently declared sovereign nations need to eschew an “unaccountable internationalist bureaucracy” and “negative globalism”.

It’s not just international bureaucrats the Prime Minister is keen to avoid. At Senate estimates last week, Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade secretary Frances Adamson revealed that neither she nor her department of 6,078 staff were consulted before Morrison announced his new approach to foreign policy. Nor was DFAT consulted about the Prime Minister’s decision to redefine China’s status as a “newly developed nation”. The Morrison government incurs all the costs of a sizeable bureaucracy and seeks none of its benefits.