What did you do when the Earth was burning and democracy was failing?
If you’re the federal Coalition of 2026, you squabbled among yourselves and prioritised personal ambition over community and country.
If you’re the federal Labor government of the day, you pointed and laughed from your 94 comfortable seats.
In doing so, you both squandered the remaining skerricks of public trust.
Having narrowly lost the seat of Goldstein to the Liberal party at the 2025 election, you might think I’m joyfully grabbing the popcorn at the Coalition’s demise.
Instead, I am deeply apprehensive, even though they deserve to fail.
They’ve flip-flopped on climate, all but abandoning climate policy, and with it, our children, after the election. They’ve fanned xenophobia and fear over housing and immigration. They’ve stoked and weaponised societal division over Israel and Gaza.
Their daily parliamentary behaviour is emblematic of what goes on behind the scenes.
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But as the government’s hubris in parliament this week demonstrates, to have an opposition in such disarray is not going to advance our nation.
Both major parties seem to forget that is their job.
And along with the accountability void, we are amid a dangerous vacuum. One Nation filling it is a nightmare in the making.
Imagine a Senate where Pauline Hanson and Barnaby Joyce have the balance of power, or a One Nation coalition dictating the policies of both the Liberals and Nationals.
As I told my Liberal opponent, Tim Wilson, when I called him to concede the seat after a recount, a functioning opposition is critically important to our democracy. I wished him luck in doing that job.
Less than a year later, I’m not convinced it’s retrievable. At least not to deliver a reasoned, policy-focused alternative to Labor.
Even millions in spending to influence elections via fossil fuel-funded proxies like Advance and Australians for Prosperity, as happened in Goldstein in 2025, will not fix the values deficit between the Nationals and the Liberals. Nor will it solve the flaws in the candidate selection process that is dictated by a handful of members who align with Sky News.
Some suggest that the community independents have helped create the problem, by removing so-called moderate Liberals.
Not so.
Those who call themselves moderates are that in name only. They vote along party lines, and I see no evidence that they’ve actively tried to change them. People like me and the other independents stepped forward as an alternative because of this. The so-called moderates have gone with the flow, to the populist right.
They’ve now been overtaken by their own strategy, bleeding out to Pauline. They are truly paying the price for allowing the National party tail to wag the dog, failing to learn that the junior partner’s culture war positions on things like Indigenous rights and climate do not resonate where they need the seats – in the cities.
It could be laughable if it wasn’t so serious.
Because while this ongoing political drama series plays out, Australians are struggling to pay their bills, our children are weighed down with mental health issues, they can’t buy homes, our nation is flooding and burning, and long-term structural policy change on things like tax, housing and intergenerational equity remain in the too-hard basket for both major parties.
It’s no surprise that new data shows that it’s the cross-benchers who drive most of the discussion about policy in the parliament. But media outlets barely report it, attached as most of them are to the legacy party structure and combative political theatre to drive clicks.
Meanwhile, the government, while refusing to tackle tough but needed structural change in challenging areas, tinkers at the edges, thinks short-term and grins at its opponent’s apparent collapse, which gives it cover for its own lack of brave reform.
Why wouldn’t it? Doing something comes with risk. But so does doing nothing.
And I suspect that over time, doing not much won’t be enough for many Australians. This is not, after all, a first-term government any more.
For those enduring the day-to-day pressures of ever-higher costs and fewer benefits, for those who foresee that the future will be worse than the past, for those who want and need action over hope, it won’t be enough.
In that, One Nation’s rise is a threat to us all. Arguably, new election donation laws that will make it harder for independents to compete compound that threat.
When I was US bureau chief for the ABC during the first Trump election and administration, I noted that people across a broad spectrum had voted for Trump.
Some had voted for Obama, looking for action through hope. Disappointed, in 2016, they voted for disruption over dignity and respect.
Beware.
• Zoe Daniel is a three-time ABC foreign correspondent and the former independent member for Goldstein. She is the chair of Mental Health Victoria
