Politics — It’s all a bit too much to swallow

The long-awaited Messiah Malcolm Turnbull was anything but, while Bill Shorten was unconvincing and untrustworthy. No wonder Middle Australia is fed up.

Dirty tricks sure work up an appetite. Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten tucks in to a sausage sandwich at Sydney’s Strathfield North Public School polling booth on Election Day. (Pic: AAP Image/Mick Tsikas)

If there’s anything we should glean from this election — whenever it finally ends — it’s that voters don’t much fancy being treated with contempt.

The massive swing against the Coalition and a record number of votes for Independents, as well as the large amount of donkey votes, suggests Australia is now well and truly part of the global protest against establishment elites.

Just look at what’s happening in the UK, with its shock decision (well, a shock for those smug Remainers, anyway) to leave the European Union.

The majority of voters opted for Brexit, fed up with Brussels deciding their laws and the consequences of European leaders like Germany’s Angela Merkel throwing down the welcome mat to uncapped numbers of migrants.

So what do the defeated minority do?

Decry the referendum — the very pinnacle of democracy — as somehow undemocratic and malign, belittle the 17.5 million in the other camp as “uneducated”, “old” and “racist”, and then, finally, they lie on the floor kicking and screaming.

EU Remainers protest in London. (Pic: AFP/ Niklas Halle’n)

On the weekend, thousands marched on the streets of London opposing the referendum result, their petulance neatly typified by one child protester who was photographed on an adult’s shoulders, grinning and hoisting up a sign calling UK Independence Party leader Nigel Farage, a “c***.”

And more than four million Britons have signed a petition calling for a second referendum, demanding a best-out-of-three result.

Well, boo hoo losers, that ain’t how democracy works.

Meanwhile, over in the US, we’ve seen the rise and rise of presidential candidate Donald Trump, the very embodiment of politically incorrectness.

Frustrated with establishment politics, as personified by dynasties like the Clintons, Americans have turned to the celebrity mogul in droves, entrusting him to protect their interests when it comes to concerns about immigration and terrorism.

The more outrageous his rhetoric, the more his popularity swells.

Back home, the votes are still being tallied in the federal election but what is indisputable is the anger and disillusionment the public feels.

Despite the back-patting from some sections of the media over Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull’s bloody overthrowing of Tony Abbott, what’s crystal clear is our new leader is completely out of touch with wider Australia.

One example of this is how Turnbull refuses repeated requests from programs like my own, A Current Affair, which has been asking him to appear since the day he seized power from Abbott.

But even though the show averages a million viewers a night, viewers that represent Middle Australia, the PM couldn’t even be bothered to grace us with a response.

Malcolm Turnbull whips up a treat with Annabel Crabb on ABC's Kitchen Cabinet. (Pic: ABC)

Yet there he is, courting the same select, upper-crust audience with clockwork appearances on the ABC, including Q & A, 7.30 Report, Kitchen Cabinet and even 4 Corners, where he was last week justifying the coup to journalist Sarah Ferguson by claiming an Abbott government would have lost the election resoundingly.

Abbott couldn’t have done any worse than Turnbull, though, and polling results actually suggest voters punished those Liberal candidates seen as the main backstabbers, such as Peter Hendy in the NSW bellwether seat of Eden-Monaro.

The long-awaited Messiah Turnbull most certainly was not.

Meanwhile, how can anyone trust Shorten, the man key to dethroning not one but two Labor PMs, Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd?

Let’s put aside his extremely suspect snag-consuming techniques for a moment.

Shorten is as unconvincing, if not more, than Turnbull.

Whether it’s on border protection, where his somewhat hollow promises to remain tough have been undermined by dozens of his own MPs speaking out publicly against the bipartisan offshore detention policies, or on gay marriage, which he tried to make a key election issue by vowing his priority if given power would be to introduce laws changing the Marriage Act, despite an overwhelming majority of the public wanting to have their own say on major social change via a plebiscite.

Then, in the final days of Shorten’s campaign, he pulls out the Medi-scare card, a dirty trick that may have helped Labor claw back seats but won’t earn their leader any loyalty from conned voters in the long run.

It’s little surprise to see, then, the rise of the independents and minor parties, such as Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, which looked to gain as many as four senate seats at the time of writing.

That such a divisive candidate is once again — after almost 20 years in the political wilderness — striking a chord with the electorate tells you everything you need to know about how disconnected the major parties are from voters.

Caroline Marcus is a journalist with A Current Affair. Twitter: @carolinemarcus9