I wrote my first column for Guardian Australia in August 2016, when the winds of chaos were sweeping the globe, the forces of division were finding their voice and a centrist leader named Malcolm was scrambling to hang on.

A decade provides enough space to give events real definition in the rearview mirror while more recent events still feel like passing traffic or roadkill. So, let’s strap ourselves into the Essential DeLorean and go back to the future.

Malcolm has just narrowly survived the double-dissolution election he foolishly called, having been forced to dig into his own substantial personal wealth to sandbag what would end up a one-seat majority.

My debut column is about Pauline Hanson, who has returned to the parliament for the first time in nearly 20 years. I link the backlash against the levels of immigration to a growing sense of economic insecurity, something I argue should be harnessed rather than rejected as extreme.

“We’ve seen the rise of the outsider overseas, from Brexit to Le Pen to Trump and Sanders. One Nation is poised to become Australia’s expression of that international pushback on globalisation,” I write.

In October, Malcom and Bill Shorten, whose energetic leadership and ruthlessly truthy election campaign have put Labor back in the game, reach across the partisan divide in the name of social cohesion, issuing a joint rejection of discriminatory immigration policy.

When Malcolm had wrested control from the political wrecking ball that was his long-term nemesis, Tony Abbott, I (like many progressives) wished him well, a centrist leader from the other side who would confront the future with a modicum of shared purpose.

But by September our poll shows the weakness of his position, especially for a man who had used Newspoll to........

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