The Australian literary giant, David Malouf - who died just a fortnight ago at 92 - once described his task as "going to an ordinary or familiar situation and, in some really attentive way, looking at it again and trying to discover a strangeness or mystery there that at a first glance you wouldn't see".

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With that methodology in mind, let us consider the loss of faith in politics and ask why despite their falling support, Australia's traditional parties of government have so little stomach for changing course.

This, to be clear, is a bilateral problem with Labor's timidity in office exposing its claim to courageous reform as so much branding. The Liberal Party's decline is further advanced.

Illustrative of this problem is that none of the major parties is considered a realistic chance next weekend in a federal seat long held by the Liberals.

What does it say of this party that it can neither win in the cities nor retain one of its safest seats in the regions?

If agrarian Angus Taylor is really a viable offering as PM in two years, his party should be a shoo-in for this dependably Coalition-friendly electorate.

Yet the race in Farrer is between a second-time community independent (Michelle Milthorpe) and a rookie One Nation candidate (David Farley) who had shopped around before bobbing up on the right-wing fringe.

Remember, Sussan Ley easily defeated Milthorpe in 2025 (when the Liberals were thrashed elsewhere) with 56.19 per cent to 43.81 per cent, two-party preferred.

A year later, the Lib-Nats are mere bystanders, so detached from their once locked-in base that they've preferenced Pauline Hanson's rancorous outfit above their new nemesis, the centrist Milthorpe.

Perhaps their decline is a function of inputs. As the frustrated Liberal Party campaigner for female quotas Charlotte Mortlock noted a year ago: "The average Liberal Party........

© Canberra Times