The federal parliament is now stacked with politicians peddling anti‑globalisation agendas contrary to Australia's interests.
The underlying motivations for the Turnbull government to call the 2016 election, refilling the upper house with compliant legislators but maintaining a stable working majority in the lower house, have backfired spectacularly.
It is clear the Coalition's political strategy to shake out the Senate minor parties has utterly failed, with the upper house still very much resembling a Tatooine bar scene.
At the head table in the Senate bar of the politically wild and wonderful sits independent Nick Xenophon and his new South Australian colleagues, who will be most determined to flex their legislative muscle over the next three years.
And of even greater concern is that the deeply xenophobic Pauline Hanson has returned to the federal political scene, thanks to a much‑reduced quota threshold for election to the Senate this year.
Election campaigns often set the tone for the subsequent term of government and its policy agenda, and the reality is most of the political debutants want to roll back globalisation as a basis for Australia's future economic success.
One can only imagine what potential investors based in London, New York or Shanghai might think about their future prospects for doing lucrative business in Australia, given the scrum of politicians so blatantly against the very concept of freedom of trade and investment.
Returning to protectionism will wreak great economic harm to Australia as an island trading nation, whose costs could be magnified if Xenophon and the other anti‑globalisers dissuade the Turnbull government from pursuing freer trade with a Brexiting United Kingdom.
But for a modern nation built upon the influx of people from all corners of the Earth, and with embodied human capital representing a major driver of economic growth, it is even more tragic that Hanson seeks to radically reduce Australia's immigration intake to a trickle.
In the coming months it is likely to become increasingly important to ask from whence do these retrograde ideas come.
It seems some segments of the voting population feel their interests are not advanced by cross‑border trading and investing relations, which is most ironic considering the huge extent to which Australian consumers have particularly benefitted from globalisation.
A related aspect of anti‑globalisation sentiment is the misconception that freeing up trade or immigration somehow leads to job losses.
The price of economic liberty is eternal vigilance, and so sensible economic reformers in the Australian Parliament must partake in fresh efforts to counter the ill‑feelings and resentments whipped up against globalisation.
Those amenable to globalisation can point to the empirical benefits of freer trade, investment and immigration, and refer to powerful case studies showing how average Australians gain in a globalising world, and that trade, investment and labour barriers will ultimately hold back wealth and prosperity for ordinary people.
But do the pro‑globalist economic reformers left standing in Parliament in the wake of the 2016 election have the courage and nous to win the argument?
For Australia's sake, let us hope so.
MIKAYLA NOVAK is a senior researcher with the Institute of Public Affairs.
