The challenge for the opposition has never been harder: here's why

Australia seems to becoming a one-party state, not like dictatorships elsewhere where all critics are suppressed, but where the very united Albanese Labor Party is so electorally ascendant, so dominant in setting the agenda, and so effective in occupying our key institutions, that there is now no effective functioning opposition.

All the electorate has left, and all the Albanese government has to face, is the disintegrating Liberals, the regionally limited Nationals and their various abandoning slivers, and the fragmented, often incoherent, and unpredictable minor parties and independents - in other words, not much.

Labor's recent election win showed that a party that is united, has clear goals, a commitment to achieve them, the strategies to implement them, and most importantly in a modern democracy, the personnel with the skills to present them, can change a nation's agenda.

And Labor has.

Their "mobilisation of bias", a term coined by American political scientist E.E. Schattschneider, now determines "what gets talked about and what gets ignored" and "what the game is about" and "who can get into the game" and thus who wins office.

As a result, the political environment has changed. Albanese's and Chalmers' political narratives have redefined the political agenda to be in tune with Labor's ideological objectives, institutions re-missioned to support and implement their agenda, and language, community values and myths, all manipulated to control the public discourse.

As a result, all this has rendered the previous criteria for judging "good" policy redundant and sidelined not just its political opponents, but all those who disagree. What policies we ought to follow, we no longer even discuss let alone strive to achieve. What concerns we should have, we now ignore.

Consequently, politics is no longer the "good fight" to convince the electorate by evidence and debate, about what must be done, but now is just about winning regardless of the policy consequences.

The real game in modern politics is not between competing party policy election promises or leaders, but the grounds on which the political game will be played, and that game has now been set by Labor that frames the debates and sets the criteria for political success.

The non-Labor parties have never really understood the game hence their surprise at their current situation.

Over the years their compromises caused them to surrender issue after issue to their opponents. They have let the other side determine the grounds on which debates occur.

In addition, they have been gradually disestablished from our key institutions - the media, the universities, the legal profession, schools, community and cultural groups and even the corporate sector and now, in opposition, have no networks or allies on whom to call for support and hence no influence on the issues to be discussed.

Meanwhile, those other groups arranged against Labor - the minor parties, some think tanks, US-inspired forums, and various interest groups, aren't in the game.

They snap intermittently from the sidelines on their pet topics, compete against each other, and talk only to their adherents and thus fail to get their messages heard and understood in the wider community, let alone actioned.

The Liberals and Nationals remain the only real alternative to Labor, but given their current, depleted, fragmented and confused state, they will be unable to respond unless they reconfigure themselves organisationally, ideologically, and gain the necessary political skills to present their case.

The political environment has fundamentally changed and so has Australia. The challenge for all the non-Labor forces, but especially the Coalition, is how to fit into this new landscape.

It's a big task. They need to distinguish themselves from Labor politically while developing policies that address the nation's problems more effectively than Albanese's, while garnering voter support to project them back into office. And they need to bring together the disparate forces on their side of politics.

Australia is now more captured by the electoral cycle and short-term policies, outdated ideologies, narrow vested interest groups, and as good money goes after bad policy and projects, a total disregard of efficiency with resulting rising debt, budget deficits and declining productivity.

Labor's dominance is clear and how is it ever going to be undone and by whom remains the challenge.