In international terms, Australia is a beacon, a country with a thriving economy and a political system that has not yet turned entirely on itself and succumbed to the populist forces roiling democracies elsewhere. Still, 2018 was a brutal year in national affairs.

After a long siege, the Liberal party in late August felled another prime minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and installed its third leader in only two terms in office. Turnbull, a pragmatic centrist in a fractiously ideological centre-right party, was reasonably popular with the public but barely tolerated by his conservative colleagues, who undermined his position despite winning many practical concessions throughout his prime ministership.