Don't be Hastie, the joke's on you

Hence the opening scene, in which Traitor Number One, Anthony Albanese, recruits Andrew Hastie. He sets Hastie against Pauline Hanson by accusing her of using Chinese bots to flood his social media with accusations of treachery.

Hastie then sets off to mobilise the Liberal Party against One Nation while simultaneously mobilising against Angus Taylor, referring to himself messianically as "the Chosen One".

He and Taylor tussle over Taylor's balls-delivered from Amazon by an Indian delivery driver; this really is multilayered satire-and Taylor hits his head and falls into a coma. There, amid what appear to be heavenly clouds, he meets Sir Robert Menzies.

Borrowing from A Christmas Carol, Menzies shows Taylor visions of the misery of the Forgotten People, tells him to stop fighting his allies and sends him back to work. When Taylor returns, Hastie has usurped the leadership and is instructing his troops in the coming war against One Nation, Sun Tzu's volume prominently in hand.

Taylor reasserts his authority and turns his back on Hastie-who stabs him. There follows a flurry of backstabbing as each person touted as a future Liberal leader dispatches the previous contender in turn: Hastie, Paterson, Hume, Tehan, Wilson and Bragg. Finally, the hand of another, unseen traitor enters the frame.

The final scene has Sir Robert Menzies removing his jacket to reveal a One Nation T-shirt before sashaying into the sunset and declaring: "I guess it's One Nation or no nation. Good on you, Pauline."

While directed immediately at Hastie, the cartoon puts the political class generally, and the Liberal Party particularly, in the dock. Hastie is merely the traitor in focus.

It is telling Liberal voters that this might remain the party of Menzies, but it is no longer a party for Menzies. With around half the traditional Coalition voters in our research now supporting One Nation, it confirms those who have already defected while appealing to those who remain.

But it is also relaying an electoral truth: unless the parties of the Right stop fighting one another, Labor will win a third term-even as the cartoon prosecutes One Nation's own quarrel with Hastie.

Perhaps the political caste missed the joke because its members are not among the audience watching reality television. Yet this 68-year-old worked it out merely from seeing advertisements for The Traitors while watching free-to-air television news.

Isn't that part of our predicament? Those who control the levers of power, and occupy the pulpits in the public square, have seldom seemed so divorced from what their "subjects" are watching, doing, thinking and suffering.

Even Pauline herself, a former contestant on Dancing with the Stars, seemed oblivious to the depth of her own side's satire.