Left Won the Culture War – and Fuelled One Nation’s Rise: Extract Janet Albrechtsen, The Australian

"In Australia, the distance between each end of the dumbbell and the passion of the opposing positions is illustrated by the Prime Minister's reaction to One Nation's win in the Secret Harbour by-election. This week Anthony Albanese rounded on right-wing populists "peddling dangerous, divisive and dishonest" politics. He said: "They will say anything and do anything to win votes. Bend any facts, peddle misinformation and disinformation. Turn Australian against Australian."

Coming from a Prime Minister who promised "for the 50th time" in his 2025 election campaign not to bring in the changes to negative gearing and capital gains tax he has now brought in, who at other times also promised no changes to superannuation, a $275 reduction in energy bills, and a kinder, gentler politics, you'd have to wonder if he has any understanding of irony, or any ability to engage in self-analysis. …

It should come as no surprise that we have arrived at this dumbbell distribution in our political thinking. It is significantly a result of, and backlash to, the left's successful long march through the institutions. All our major institutions labour under a left-wing dominance that Rudi Dutschke, who is credited with inventing that famous phrase, could only marvel at. …

Our legal system too would make Dutschke proud. We have judges making themselves the sole arbiter of free-speech laws and, in doing so, turning the law into an incomprehensible, unpredictable mess. Once-settled immigration law has been overturned by activist judges, effectively destroying rational immigration policy. Senior judges compete to outdo each other with the number of acknowledgments of country at their judicial gatherings, while some even repeat legally nonsensical claims about "land never ceded."

Judicial commissions busily send judges who make accurate but un-PC comments about the strategic use of apprehended violence orders off to re-education camps. Two-tier justice doesn't get quite the publicity it gets in the UK but it is alive and well in Australian courts, or at least in the handbooks judicial commissions publish. And woe betide the judge who raises perfectly valid concerns about prosecutions of alleged sexual offences that lack the bare minimum of supporting evidence.

Francis Fukuyama may once have claimed the end of history had arrived with economic liberalism's defeat of socialism and its cousins, but it seems he spoke too soon. When it comes to our public institutions, the left has had a resounding win in every arena.

That is what drives the dumbbell shape of our politics, and the rise of One Nation. When any semblance of mid-course thought or political ideology is driven from our institutions, the middle disappears and what remains are diametrically opposed extremities. Deprived of representation in our public institutions, the only outlet for the right-hand end of the dumbbell becomes an election. No wonder One Nation's time appears to have arrived. …

Where to from here? In Australia – as in Canada and the UK – the ideological battlelines are drawn. Albanese and co can continue to seek to win by insult, but it is doubtful that can succeed in the long run. The practical results of the left's dominance of the culture wars are now too obvious. And voters are now being reminded of the disastrous consequences of the left's current economic ascendancy as well. It is too early to predict an outcome, but we can at least see the shape of the conflict. It is a dumbbell, not a bell curve."

https://www.theaustralian.com.au/inquirer/left-won-the-culture-war-and-fuelled-one-nations-rise/news-story/ba60e117c6101dcc361a4ba38242d3f3