So many people are angry. It’s becoming clear where this comes from

October 15, 2026 — 2:00am

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Leonardo DiCaprio fought one battle after another. Voters in Australia and elsewhere feel like they’re experiencing one letdown after another. Across the world, these are unhappy times. We’re living in a great age of disappointment and disinformation. The economic system that most of the developed world has relied on for the past 40-plus years – privatisation, financialisation and the monetisation of as much of daily life as possible, from your shopping and cultural interests to your sleep patterns – has increasing amounts of sand in its gears. Radical, nativist populism is on the march here and in Europe, the UK, and in North and South America.

The default analysis is to put this down to political failings: poor salesmanship, incompetence via bad policies, today’s politicians aren’t a patch on the pollies of old and so on. That’s not completely off the money. On the Australian front there are valid questions about the government’s advocacy performance. Treasurer Jim Chalmers is under heavy fire, and he’s not assisted by Anthony Albanese’s softness as an advocate of detailed policies in difficult times.

Yes, Bob Hawke, Paul Keating and John Howard were more able national leaders than Scott Morrison and Albanese. But that doesn’t provide a full explanation and let’s not overdo the romanticism. The Hawke-Keating-Howard years were fundamentally different times. You can’t expect a mechanic who in the ’80s could pull your Commodore apart and put it back........

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