One Nation’s rise shocks a media untethered to Australia

I had an argument with a radio producer a few years ago when he insisted that Donald Trump could never be here. not in he Australia, with its political culture, informed voters and institutions built to protect us.

An American professor once told me something similar: The United States could never produce a Hitler. Not there, but in a mature democracy like theirs, with its constitutions, traditions, civic culture.

I grew up under two dictatorships; each followed democratic governments that thought they had ensured that there would never be another dictatorship, and each dictatorship was celebrated by most of the population when it emerged.