Tucker Carlson recently made the mistake of debating Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg on war and history. It didn’t go well.
Rees-Mogg – old Etonian, Oxford graduate, son of a Peer and former Cabinet Minister – was composed, forensic, and infuriatingly prepared. Carlson arrived with conviction. Rees-Mogg arrived with facts. By the end, the coroner’s report was unnecessary.
Which is a pity, because not long afterwards Carlson said something about American democracy that was not only right, but uncomfortably applicable to our own.
‘The problem isn’t that the leaders of the two parties don’t agree on anything,’ he said. ‘The problem is they agree on everything that matters.’
In Washington, the rueful expression was that no matter who you voted for, you got John McCain.
Australia has its own version.
No matter who you vote for, Canberra wins.
We still hold elections. Governments change. Ministers move offices and the new occupants replace the photographs on the wall. But on many of the largest questions – the size and reach of government, the power of the administrative state, the transfer of lawmaking from Parliament to regulators, and the range of opinions considered respectable – the electorate is increasingly invited to choose the manager rather than the direction.
That is not representative government. It’s managed democracy.
This doesn’t mean Labor and the Coalition are identical. They aren’t. The problem is subtler. They fight furiously over the available choices while rarely asking who decided which choices would be available.
In theory, the public elects MPs, MPs make laws, ministers direct departments and bureaucrats implement decisions. In practice, party machines select the MPs, party discipline usually determines their votes, cabinet controls the House, departments define the options and regulators write much of the detail. The public is invited every three years to approve one of two management teams.
In 2025, only 79 Acts passed the Commonwealth Parliament, while 1,584 legislative instruments were made. Not every instrument changes the country, of course, but the imbalance tells us where the daily business of government increasingly occurs.
None of this requires a secret cabal. Bureaucrats don’t need to conspire. Permanence itself is power.
Since his encounter with Carlson went viral, Rees-Mogg has been doing the media rounds. He has suggested that Carlson’s views become more extreme as the clicks and revenue increase. The more outlandish the performance, the larger the audience.
He may be right about the incentive. But every villain has an origin story. So does every modern political radical. The more important question is not why Carlson keeps talking, but why so many people want to listen.
Millions of people don’t seek out voices like Carlson simply because an algorithm hypnotised them. They do it because the respectable political class spent years telling them that the things they could see with their own eyes were either unimportant, unsophisticated or unmentionable.
In a responsive democracy, a voter casts a ballot to change direction. In an unresponsive one, the voter eventually goes looking for a grenade.
The more radical the candidate, the larger the explosion. The voter may not admire every feature of Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, or Pauline Hanson. That’s not always the point. When knocking politely produces no answer, disruption becomes the message.
The Australian Liberal Party ought to understand this. Instead, it has spent years confusing moderation with imitation. Pulled by lobbyists and preoccupied with winning back affluent inner-city seats from the teals – electorates whose politics have moved steadily left – it has followed Labor onto Labor’s ground.
In chasing voters who may never return, the Liberal Party has neglected voters who once had nowhere else to go. It kept looking left for the electorate it wanted while ignoring the one it had.
They have been saying that immigration is too high for the houses and infrastructure available. They are suspicious of laws allowing governments to police lawful speech. They want reliable, affordable energy before another grand climate target. They want government to do fewer things and do them competently.
For years, the Liberal alternative was Labor with better table manners.
To be fair, that may finally be changing. The Coalition has opposed Labor’s Digital Duty of Care bill in its present form. This week it proposed cutting net overseas migration to 100,000 for the first two years of a Coalition government. Political competition from One Nation plainly helped concentrate the mind.
That doesn’t prove that radical pressure is destroying democracy. It suggests radical pressure is sometimes the only thing making democracy respond.
The danger is what happens when mainstream parties still refuse to listen. Every failed protest vote creates demand for a louder one. Every attempt to censor the anger confirms the suspicion behind it. Every retreat into the safety of bureaucratic consensus sends another voter towards the political edges.
If established parties want people to stop throwing political grenades, they might begin by opening the door.
Every radical has an origin story. More often than not, the political establishment wrote it.
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