Already, the deeper story of the next federal election is written - tattooed, as it were, on the distended abdomen of our body-politic.

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What follows is not a prediction of the 2028 result, so much as an archaeological dig into what's going on underneath. A window into the dormitory drudgery characterising Australia's "safest" seats.

It is a story of households far removed from the CBDs, whose capacity to recover from a setback is zero thanks to no cash reserves, poor health, low social integration and inadequate services.

It is a story told by two million data points drawn from 2,261 communities and mapped over all 150 federal seats. Of Australians who both drive off for work in the dark and return, spending hours on crowded roads - hours not spent with kids or building social capital with the neighbours.

And it is a story of fatigue turning to fury right in the heart of the Australian dream.

The single most important thing to know is that this fury has been decades in the making. As such, it will not be neutralised by repetitive messaging, clever campaign ads and surgical spending - all the jiggery-pokery of politics-as-usual.

Why? Because voters have had enough. Stopped believing. Their disadvantage has been festering for generations. Only now though, can they see a way to tear it all down.

This subterranean umbrage will well up next month when Victorians mark a cynical state government. And when we say "Victorians" in this context, we mean specifically, blue-collar, Labor-voting Victorians. Labor's people in Labor seats.

It won't end there, predicts Kos Samaras - an ex-ALP official turned director at the social research firm Redbridge Group.

"More than one in five Australians now live in communities of significant vulnerability," he wrote recently in Pearls and Irritations, unveiling the new Australian Resilience........

© Canberra Times