Given that the relentlessness of the political year has ground most participants and onlookers to powder, I want to use my last Saturday column for 2018 to hoist us, briefly, above the ruckus. It’s worth the climb because, if we can gain sufficient altitude to map the terrain, some positive elements do reveal themselves.

We are deeply fortunate in some ways. The tumult of the Australian political system, while noisy, increasingly tawdry (the Nationals, good grief, make it stop) and deeply unfulfilling for people who just want an elected government to be competent, is a timid echo of the tumult in Donald Trump’s Washington.