I hate those little memes that political journalists run where they use one politician to describe another, usually with some qualification. Like Kevin Rudd = Tony Blair or Tony Abbott = John Howard.

Except when I use them, when of course they’re far more nuanced and evocative, a feat normally achieved by using a more obscure, and preferably American, politician as comparator.

Nonetheless, Tony Abbott  has been doing his level best to give substance to the John Howard comparison, dipping into the Howard-era lucky dip of greenhouse handouts for his climate change policy, and dog-whistling to the right-wing conspiracy theorists with an unfilmed meeting with Chris Monckton.

As an aside, Abbott is a far more interesting and engaging political figure when he strays out of the Howard shadow – Battlelines, for example, is best when it leaves Howard behind on issues like federalism. Abbott said when he launched that book that the Howard Government’s success was peculiar to its time, a lesson he appears to have either forgotten or changed his mind about.  Abbott has a very changeable mind, and that’s not always a bad thing.

There was an interesting observation offered by an anonymous Coalition figure during the early moments of the Hanson phenomenon; to wit “Hanson’s a bigger problem for Beazley than she is for us.”  That turned out to be one the less insightful observations of modern Australian history, as One Nation proceeded to wreak havoc on the conservative vote and deprive the conservatives of office in Queensland, a situation that remains unrectified many years later.

Now of course we have a new version of Hansonism, in climate denialism, and the same observations are being made – that this is a problem for Labor, not the Coalition.  And maybe that’s right.  Or maybe not. We’ll see.

For years the consensus has been that Hansonism, or rather Hansonites, One Nation voters or those tempted to vote One Nation, were mishandled by the mainstream media, which insisted on mocking them and their red-headed leader, when in fact it was a cry for help from a demographic group struggling to cope with a decade and a half of economic reform – older blue-collar workers and members of regional communities that had seen economic opportunity swing away from them and their neighbours, off to newer classes and new forms of economic activity.

It wasn’t until after the Tampa and September 11 that these people decided Howard – hitherto associated with aggressive economic reform – really was one of them, and swung back behind him. Even as Pauline Hanson was declaring the Americans might take a long hard look at themselves, her followers, the geriatric army she’d assembled, was turning to Howard – whom they’d derided only a couple of years earlier as “Jackboots Johnny Howard” for his gutsiest and most important reform, the gun control laws.

Howard became their Lord Protector, with a sword of righteousness in one hand and a cricket bat in the other, ready to smite the swarthy who had designs on coming here, either to enjoy or destroy our way of life.

I’ve always thought Hansonism-as-economic-reform-fatigue was a convincing analysis, but I wonder if climate denialism demonstrates a basic flaw in that thesis. The geriatric army is on the march again, and it’s the same crowd as One Nation (and for that matter the same crowd as the monarchists get).  What are they objecting to in the climate change thesis?  It won’t affect them, for the most apart.

Moreover, doing something about climate change won’t affect them either – they’ll all be compensated.  There’s no economic plea for help here. It’s simple, arbitrary crankiness. The crankiness of older, conservative, Anglo-Celtic, lower and middle-income people who grew up in an era when people like them ran things – everything from the corner shop to the Government.  What they’re really angry about is that they’re no longer in control.

The opening of the economy in the ‘80s and ‘90s began the shift of economic control out of their hands, off into international markets and faceless overseas investors, aided and abetted by politicians who insisted that market forces be allowed to hold sway, that “the markets” prevented them from doing what politicians used to do – prop up local industries and provide gold-plated infrastructure regardless of the cost.

Pauline Hanson articulated — to the extent she could be ever said to have articulated anything — their fury at this rebalancing of their economic world.

Now, for these people, climate change is the ultimate insult.  The idea that the climate is changing affronts their control-centred world-view.  And it’s entirely international in flavour – all that filthy Chinese carbon coming here – and the solution is even worse – more markets, more international activity. That’s why they simply refuse to accept it, like they refused to accept the immigration might be economically beneficial, or that economic reform had made Australians richer.

There’s no reasoning with such people, because no one can give them what they really want, the sense of control and order they grew up with.  The world has changed. Only the people trying to claim it hasn’t get listened to.

Spare a thought, then, for Warren Truss and the Nationals, who face the same problem that they faced a decade ago all over again – a large and disaffected segment of their base threatening to walk. Like Tim “bucketloads of extinguishment” Fischer, Truss needs to convince these people he’s on their side, or lose his job.  Tony Abbott faces a smaller version of the same problem with his blue-rinse base.

Howard got lucky, and was gifted (ironically) foreign-sourced mechanisms for luring these people back into the Liberal and National column while not upsetting – indeed, attracting – more mainstream voters.  Abbott, who as yet has only a fraction of Howard’s political skills – needs something similar to achieve the same feat.  The geriatric army is on the march – and dragging the Coalition with them.