It’s been 20 years since the fall of the Soviet empire in eastern Europe, but as far as our media are concerned the region could still be hidden behind an iron curtain. The death of Polish president Lech Kaczynski and many of his senior colleagues in a plane crash — treated by the European media as one of the major events of the year — rated only No.3 on the ABC news on Sunday, and it could manage only page seven in yesterday’s Age.

Yet the crash was rich with symbolism. Take the fact that a Polish leader could die in an accident in Russia without arousing even the slightest hint that the Russians were responsible: when else in history could that have been possible? (Compare the allegations surrounding the 1943 death of General Sikorski.)

Or the fact that Kaczynski, a controversial and divisive figure, could inspire such a united display of national mourning in Poland — suggesting a degree of political maturity that was unthinkable a decade or two ago.

But having never been given any background, Australian readers and viewers can hardly be expected to understand why Kaczynski was controversial, what his death signifies, or (perhaps most interestingly) how there are some lessons to be learned for Australian politics. So here’s a quick summary.

Like most European countries, Poland has a conservative party (called Law & Justice) as well as a liberal party (Civic Platform). In the 2005 elections, the then social-democrat government was so unpopular that the centre-right parties were left competing against each other. Instead of forming a broad coalition, as had been universally expected, the conservatives (who came out narrowly ahead) formed government on their own, leaving the liberals in opposition.

The differences between them match fairly obviously with some of the fault lines in our Liberal Party. Law & Justice — led by Kaczynski and his twin brother Jaroslaw — are nationalistic, anti-gay, pro-death penalty, suspicious of free-market reforms and European integration, and obsessed with fighting communists. Civic Platform (led by current prime minister Donald Tusk), on the other hand, supports the EU, human rights and deregulation, and pledged to withdraw of Poland’s troops from Iraq.

To gain a parliamentary majority, Poland’s conservatives relied on two parties of the extreme right — the equivalent of half the Liberal Party teaming with Family First and One Nation. But the difficulties of that relationship eventually led to fresh elections in 2007, in which Law & Justice were soundly beaten. The liberals gained 76 seats, the extremist parties were wiped out, and Tusk formed government in coalition with the small rural-based People’s Party.

Kaczynski remained president (a largely ceremonial position), but it was widely expected that he would be beaten by a Civic Platform candidate in elections later this year.

For Australian commentators, all this is deeply alien. For them, “right-wing” denotes a single category embracing free-marketeers and moral conservatives; the idea that the two could be enemies rarely crosses their minds. Hence the regular efforts to paint John Howard (or, even more perversely Tony Abbott) as a friend of small government and deregulation.

Our way of dividing up the political spectrum fails to make sense of the political experience in much of the world, including the new democracies of eastern Europe. (Hungary’s elections, held Sunday, make the same point — good luck finding results in the papers here.) If we look closely it even fails to make sense of the internal divisions in our own Liberal Party.

But if the tragedy in Smolensk doesn’t make anyone notice Poland, then it’s hard to think what will.