Australia’s post-pandemic politics may look more divided, but fears of a rising populist backlash are overstated. Demographics, institutions and economic geography still anchor the nation’s long-standing consensus in favour of openness, migration and global integration.

As Australia was tentatively exiting its strict lockdowns and border closures that marked the COVID-19 pandemic, some worried that the legacy of the ‘Fortress Australia’ approach to pandemic control would be to steer the country’s political culture in a more insular and divided direction, damaging a fragile consensus in favour of migration and integration with its region.

Even under the centre-left Labor Party that has governed since 2022, there is clearly a new ferment on the political right that has buoyed support for the populist One Nation party and seen conservative hardliners assert influence within the opposition Liberal–National party coalition. A series of anti-migration marches in major cities have underlined the increasing resonance of far-right messaging in disparate online communities.

But anxieties about the prospect of conservative populism emerging as an agenda-setting force in Australian politics are overblown. In Australia, the forces of nationalism and insularity are growing more assertive precisely because they are losing.

The disastrous results of the Liberal–National opposition’s flirtations with culture-war populism in the May 2025 federal election campaign, and the dominance of the Labor government in the months since its landslide re-election, reflect more than cyclical political factors. Australia’s demographic realities and economic geography dovetail with its electoral system to push anti-globalisation forces to the political sidelines, and ensure that the technocratic consensus in favour of openness to overseas goods, capital and people retains strong political underpinnings.

Effective fiscal federalism, and a well-functioning tax and transfer system, have helped ensure that the aggregate economic benefits of international integration are broadly shared across society. Strong macroeconomic management has helped sustain living standards amid the........

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