News Limited columnist Joe Hildebrand is quite right when he says the implosion of the Coalition is not good for the country, because to make democracy viable we do need a functioning opposition.

But it appears that the Coalition became so blasé about the extensive period they have had in power, that is, about two-thirds of the time since their inception in 1944, they believed their dominance would never end.

When Labor was soundly beaten in 2013, they still clung onto 55 seats out of 150 and as a singular party held together to make a remarkable recovery in the 2016 election to claw back 14 of them. The then Coalition leader Malcolm Turnbull had to inject almost $2 million from his own pocket to save his hide.

The shellacking that the Coalition received at the May election last year has left them, after Barnaby Joyce’s defection, with 42 seats, 28 of them Liberal and 14 of them National.

Recent polls show even that meagre number is under threat because Pauline Hanson, whom the Coalition shared preferences with at the last election, is now taking over where they left off. This tripartite split has been a long time coming as this country becomes more and more polarised, especially after the tragedy of 14 December.

Instead of standing together in a time of crisis, the Coalition made shrill calls for a recall of parliament while some of their supporters chose to accuse Anthony Albanese for having blood on his hands.

Now their partisan approach has backfired and they are left scrambling to pick up the pieces.

When Adolf Hitler was dictating his inane antisemitic Mein Kampf in prison in 1924, people thought he was a joke. Ten years later he became Fuhrer of the Third Reich.

Pauline Hanson is also considered by most as a short-sighted politician with plenty of grievances and no solutions besides her Trumpian call to stop immigration.

There are many others that also use the Trumpian drain-the-swamp analogies that to be progressive is elitist, condescending and lacking the common touch. Never mind that Donald Trump has since filled the swamp with billionaire elitists.

This century several Liberal party politicians have used similar language and moved the party further and further to the Right. Their views on the Voice, climate change and immigration have become almost synonymous with those of One Nation.

The diminishing number of moderate Liberals watch on as their rightist counterparts try to out-Hanson, Hanson. Unsurprisingly, their former supporters increasingly fail to see why they shouldn’t vote for One Nation, as they come to believe, albeit misguidedly, that Pauline has the whole box and dice.