Democracy Sausage: Antidote to the far right

Is the collapse in trust of Australia’s institutions, the retreat of unionism from everyday working life, and the alliances forged in Victoria’s Covid lockdowns and reactivated by the 2023 Voice referendum responsible for the rise of the far right? Is One Nation’s surge a passing spike, or the tail end of a forty-year rupture in Australian political life? Could a revived, class-based union movement win back the “recent defectors” drifting from Labor to Pauline Hanson before it’s too late?

Oscar Kaspi-Crutchett is a research organiser at the Victorian Trades Hall Council and author of the new report Antidote: trade unionism as a vaccine against far-right politics. 

Dr Marija Taflaga is the Director of the ANU Centre for the Study of Australian Politics and a Lecturer at the ANU School of Politics and International Relations.

Mark Kenny is the Director of the Australian Studies Institute. He came to the Australian National University after a high-profile journalistic career culminating in 6 years as chief political correspondent and national affairs editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, and The Canberra Times.

Democracy Sausage with Mark Kenny is available on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Pocket Casts, Google Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We’d love to hear your feedback on this series, so send in your questions, comments or suggestions for future episodes to democracysausage@anu.edu.au.

This podcast is produced by the Australian National University on the lands of the Ngunnawal, Ngambri and the Ngarigu peoples.