EDITORIAL: So-called 'populism' is democracy in action

From Donald Trump to Brexit, from the Greens to One Nation, we’re told the emergence of the populist bogeyman is a threat to the foundations of Western democracy, eroding the majorities of the established parties and impeding their ability to govern in the “sensible centre”.

But in a world where anyone whose views differ from those of the Labor and Liberal orthodoxies is branded “populist”, dismissing these other points of view is fundamentally undemocratic.

By all means, the fact an idea is popular does not make it right – as many of the policies of Trump and Pauline Hanson make clear – but nor does it automatically make it wrong.

It has been said that the likes of Trump and Hanson were elected on a wave of support courtesy of a general dissatisfaction with the establishment parties – they may not be right about a lot of things, but at least they offer an alternative.

Indeed, voters are right to be wary of anyone who tries to claim the only sensible choices are between institutions so fundamentally flawed as either of the two major parties, here or in the United States.

But it’s easy to understand why this attitude prevails among political commentators of all stripes, many of whom have vested interests in maintaining the status quo.

We’re often told, for example, that a vote for a party with “radical” ideas will be bad for the economy, when what this really means is it will be bad for established interests who already control much of the money and power, and for whom change, any change, is inherently bad.

From their point of view, everything is just fine the way it is.

Like the new and troubling tendency of politicians to label inconvenient truths “fake news”, the populist bogeyman is in many cases actually a straw man used to argue against reforms judged too “radical” for those already in positions of power.

To be sure, the chances of my preferencing a One Nation candidate anything other than dead last on a ballot (unless Cory Bernardi happens to be running in that electorate) are slim to nil, but the fact voters are choosing to break the shackles of the Labor/Coalition duopoly is not only not a threat to democracy, it is democracy in action.