Why voters have stopped listening

It appears from the polls that Western democracies are lurching to the populist right. Voters across Australia, US and the UK are increasingly dissatisfied with major party duopolies – or as many call them, the ‘uniparty’.

It’s hard to tell them apart, given that the ALP, US Democrats, and UK Labour have embraced the same neoliberal ‘trickle down’ economic policies that the Grand Old Party (GOP/US Republicans) and Tories first rolled out in the 1980s.

What’s clear is that neoliberalism’s deregulation, privatisation, and low taxation haven’t served most people or societies well, entrenching inequality as they’ve concentrated wealth for billionaires, while leaving the rest of us behind with stagnating wages, unstable employment, and inadequate services.

With rising cost-of-living pressures and increasing housing unaffordability, voters are desperate. They want to feel heard, rather than talked at or about. But it often seems that politicians don’t have much to say outside of the party line.

Which is why politicians who communicate effectively will always command their attention. From Lincoln to Churchill, FDR to JFK, great leaders have offered clear visions with inspiring rhetoric.

When’s the last time you heard a politician speak like that?

You might say Barack Obama, whose 2004 Democrat National Convention speech launched him into the presidency.

But hope, no matter how audacious, is a high-minded aspiration, and Obama’s eloquence – like Kevin Rudd’s programmatically specific verbosity – doesn’t speak to the very people now turning to right-wing populists like Pauline Hanson, Nigel Farage, or Donald Trump.

You wouldn’t call any of them great orators, but they cut through not just by saying the things their supporters want to hear, but in a way they understand.

Tabloids like The Daily Telegraph pitch their copy to a reading age of around nine years old, meaning a primary school student can understand them. Broadsheets, particularly left-leaning ones like The Guardian, sit at around 14.

What’s that mean? Well, if you’re disenfranchised and unskilled, and Obama invokes ‘bending the arc of history from sea to shining sea’, you’re not going to feel he’s not talking to you, or even over you, but that he’s talking down to you.

Despite all the contradictions and gaffes, when the likes of Trump or Tony Abbott use slogans like ‘drill baby drill’ or ‘stop the boats’ you not only remember them, you can see them. Just as you can see them eating the cats and the dogs, or the big, beautiful wall that will keep them out, and stop them taking your jobs and women. It’s something Hanson constantly does, even as she swans about with billionaire Svengali Gina Rinehart. As she said of Barnaby Joyce’s trainwreck 7.30 interview:

‘People are fed up with this, honestly. There’s so much that’s happening out there… people are losing their homes, their mortgages, kids can’t get jobs, no future for themselves, people living in their cars, homeless …  And they’re worried about Barnaby telling his dog to sit down.’

As her daughter Lee said of her:

‘She may not be the most eloquent person in the world but… she’s not necessarily the polished politician that speaks the same talking points as everybody else.’

It can sound as though many politicians are just avoiding the question, rather than trying to explain anything. Albanese prides himself on caucus discipline that stays on message. But when it sounds like politicians are just talking to themselves to score points off each other, is it any surprise so many voters have stopped listening too?

That makes right-wing populists’ simple solutions seem so much easier to grasp, even if the actual policy details are vague, and, like the ‘establishment’ politicians they say they aren’t, they often evade questions about their policies or shadowy finances.

But given how badly the status quo is working for most of us, it’s clear people want drastic change, and they’ll turn to anyone who can promise it.

In the US, socialist Democrats like Zohran Mamdani and Alexandra Ocasio Cortez are successfully taking the fight to MAGA as they challenge the Democratic leadership’s centrist stance – which despite Trump’s historical unpopularity, is still failing to cut through – by addressing the real issues facing their Gen Z target audience: cost of living, housing stress, and job insecurity in ways they can relate to.

Having said that, Australian politics – and its many powerful rent-seeking interest groups and mainly conservative media – discourages substantive change. No government has dared reform as boldly as Whitlam, Hawke, or Keating did over 30 years ago. And we all know where John Hewson and Bill Shorten’s big ideas landed them. Since Howard, it’s been about ‘small targets’ which do little to address anything.

But as outspoken former minister Ed Husic said at this week’s ALP National Conference:

‘The public want to see politicians, particularly in our camp, stand up for something. We don’t sign up for the status quo. We sign up for change. That’s not always going to be an easy process.’

Still, after 18 disastrous months of Keir Starmer’s say anything, do nothing premiership, new British Labor PM Andy Burnham – who resoundingly thumped Reform in the by-election that returned him to parliament – spoke in plain English, without notes, and seemingly from the heart as he entered No 10, offering communities outside London abandoned by political elites a greater say in their futures.

He still faces many intractable problems caused by austerity, Brexit, and Trump, but at least he acknowledges these as he promises change. Whether he delivers – or can deliver, given the challenges – is another matter.

But for now, he offers some kind of hope for it, and for many with little else, that’s better than nothing.

Sunil Badami is a writer, academic and broadcaster. He’s appeared in nearly every major Australian media outlet, and is a regular on ABC Radio and TV.