There is an iron law of politics that the ideologues on both sides consistently fail to learn: push too hard in one direction, and society will eventually push back — hard — in the other. It’s not a theory. It’s not a talking point. It’s history, repeating itself with depressing regularity. And right now, in Australia in 2026, we are watching it happen in slow motion.
The question isn’t whether the pendulum will swing. It always does. The question is how far it goes — and whether we are honest enough to acknowledge what’s driving it.
The Pendulum in History
The pattern is not new. The social liberalism of the 1960s and 70s — which achieved genuinely important things, like civil rights, women’s equality, and the end of institutionalised racism — eventually overextended itself into a politics of cultural grievance that ordinary working people found alienating and exhausting. The result? Margaret Thatcher. Ronald Reagan. A hard right backlash that dismantled much of the welfare state and left lasting economic damage that we are still dealing with today.
Then the pendulum swung again. The excesses of unchecked free-market capitalism through the 80s and 90s produced inequality, insecurity, and a sense that the system was rigged for the wealthy. Progressive movements responded with renewed vigour. Which was, again, mostly justified — until it wasn’t.
Because at some point, legitimate advocacy for fairness and inclusion became something else. It became a culture of performance, of symbolic gestures over substantive change, of litmus tests and language policing that left the ordinary person — the one just trying to pay their mortgage and get the kids to school — feeling lectured, judged, and frankly, over it.
How America Got Donald Trump — Twice
Let’s be absolutely clear: Donald Trump is not a good leader. He is not competent, honest, or principled. His first term was characterised by chaos, corruption, and the deliberate dismantling of democratic norms. His return to the presidency in 2025 should concern every liberal democracy on earth, including Australia.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth that too many on the left refuse to sit with: Trump did not create himself. He was created — in significant part — by the overreach of progressive culture in America.
When ordinary American workers watched their manufacturing jobs vanish while being told that their discomfort with rapid cultural change made them racist, they didn’t become more progressive. They became furious. When urban elites sneered at rural communities, dismissed religious faith, and treated working-class white men as the embodiment of all social evil, those people didn’t quietly reflect on their privilege. They voted for the angriest, most defiant candidate on the ballot.
Trump wasn’t elected because Americans suddenly decided they liked authoritarianism. He was elected because a large chunk of the population felt unseen, unheard, and actively mocked by the political and cultural establishment — and Trump, whatever his many profound flaws, at least acknowledged they existed. That is the pendulum in action. And it swung to a deeply dangerous place.
Now Look at Australia
Australia is not America. But we are not immune to the same dynamics. Labor won the 2025 federal election and the next federal election is not due until 2028. But to assume that gives the progressive side of politics three comfortable years to govern would be a serious mistake. The pendulum is already winding up — and the first real test comes sooner than most people realise.
Consider the ordinary Australian. They’re working two jobs, or watching their rent go up for the third time this year, or quietly stressed about whether they’ll ever be able to buy a house. They care, genuinely, about doing the right thing. They’re not racist. They’re not heartless. They’re not ignorant.
But they are tired. And increasingly, what they see from the progressive end of politics is not solutions to their cost-of-living crisis — it’s an ever-expanding list of cultural obligations and symbolic gestures that feel utterly disconnected from their daily lives.
They’re sitting in a work meeting, already behind on three deadlines, and they have to sit through a Welcome to Country ceremony that has been copy-pasted from a template and delivered by someone who clearly learned it that morning. They don’t object to Indigenous Australians being respected. They do object to an empty ritual performed for compliance purposes that has been stripped of any genuine meaning by repetition and bureaucracy.
They hear about proposals for a formal treaty with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples — a conversation that involves enormous complexity, significant cost, and genuine constitutional questions — while they can’t afford to take their kids to the dentist. It’s not that they think Indigenous Australians don’t matter. It’s that they feel like the people in charge have completely lost touch with what ordinary life in Australia actually looks like.
This is not bigotry. This is the pendulum being wound up.
The Numbers That Should Terrify the Left
Here is where it stops being theoretical. In February 2026, with a South Australian state election just weeks away on 21 March, four separate polls — Newspoll, YouGov, Fox & Hedgehog, and DemosAU/AceStrategy — are showing One Nation polling between 19% and 24% statewide in South Australia, up from just 2.6% at the 2022 state election. In non-metropolitan South Australia, Fox & Hedgehog recorded One Nation at 26%. The Liberal Party, by comparison, has collapsed from 35.7% to as low as 14% in some polls.
Nationally, federal polls are showing One Nation gaining at the Coalition’s expense, with a quarter of Australians in some surveys saying they would “definitely” consider voting for a right-wing populist party at the next election. Antony Green, Australia’s most respected electoral analyst, has published a detailed breakdown of One Nation’s polling and seat prospects for SA2026, noting that the surge represents “a real political phenomenon with dramatic shifts in support on the right of Australian politics.”
These are not fringe numbers. These are numbers that could elect members to parliament. And while the federal election is still two years away, state elections in South Australia, Queensland, and elsewhere will feel the impact well before 2028.
The Greens and Labor: Handing Hanson the Ammunition
Pauline Hanson is not a good leader either. She has built a career on division, on fear, on scapegoating minorities for complex structural problems. One Nation’s policy platform, such as it is, offers no serious solutions to the issues facing ordinary Australians. Hanson has been consistently wrong on the facts and consistently cynical in her politics.
And yet her party’s polling is surging. Not because Australians have become more racist. Not because Hanson has become more credible. But because the progressive political establishment — the Greens in particular, but also elements of Labor — keep loading the cannon for her.
Every time the Greens prioritise a symbolic cultural position over a practical economic one, Hanson wins a voter. Every time a Labor minister talks about “intersectionality” at a doorstop instead of grocery prices, Hanson wins a voter. Every time a progressive commentator publicly sneers at the concerns of suburban and regional Australians as evidence of their ignorance, Hanson wins a voter.
The Greens have done some genuinely important work on climate and housing — areas where Australia desperately needs policy pressure from the left. But they have also become the standard-bearers of a cultural politics that a significant portion of the electorate experiences as condescending, impractical, and completely divorced from the realities of working-class Australian life.
Labor, for its part, is caught in the middle — trying to hold together a coalition of inner-city progressives and outer-suburban workers who increasingly want completely different things. The result is a party that sometimes looks like it’s governing for the cultural preferences of Fitzroy and Newtown while the voters of Penrith and Caboolture quietly sharpen their pencils for election day.
What Ordinary Australians Actually Want
Poll after poll tells the same story. Australians want affordable housing. They want healthcare they can access and afford. They want their kids to get a good education. They want to feel safe in their communities. They want governments that spend their money wisely and tell them the truth.
They are not clamouring for a culture war. They didn’t ask for one. But they are being handed one — from both directions — and the people doing the handing seem genuinely baffled when the electorate expresses its frustration through the ballot box.
The answer is not to abandon every value of fairness and inclusion. It is not to stop advocating for Indigenous Australians, for climate action, for equality. These things matter and they deserve serious policy attention.
The answer is to govern for everyone. To earn the right to lead on harder cultural questions by first demonstrating competence on the basics. To trust that ordinary Australians are capable of holding more than one idea in their heads — that they can care about the cost of living AND care about doing right by Indigenous communities — if you give them reason to believe you understand their lives.
Stop the Pendulum Before It’s Too Late
Australia has, for the most part, avoided the worst of the political extremism that has consumed parts of the United States and Europe. Our institutions are stronger. Our political culture — while far from perfect — retains some capacity for pragmatism. We have not yet produced our own Trump.
But we should not be complacent. The conditions that produce political extremism are not mysterious. They are well understood. And we are actively cultivating them.
When people feel ignored, lectured, and economically precarious, they do not respond by becoming more moderate. They respond by reaching for the loudest, most defiant voice available — even if that voice is peddling nonsense and division. That is not stupidity. That is what happens to human beings when they feel like the system has stopped caring about them.
The antidote to Pauline Hanson is not more progressive symbolism. It is better progressive governance. It is a politics that takes the cost of living seriously, that speaks plainly, that treats suburban and regional Australians as intelligent adults with legitimate concerns, and that earns trust through results rather than rhetoric.
The SA election on 21 March 2026 will be the first real test of whether the polling surge is genuine or just midterm frustration. Either way, the message it is sending should not be ignored. The pendulum is wound up. Whether it swings badly in 2028 — or whether someone is brave enough to reach out and steady it — is still, just barely, up to us.
