These are unusual times; times of environmental limits and approaching tipping points, of global economic instability; of looming energy and water shortages; of sclerotic, overloaded cities. Times that call for leaders able to rise above the mire of politics-as-usual, and to make innovative, bold decisions.

These exceptional times are especially dangerous for Australia. Almost 50 years ago in The Lucky Country, Donald Horne wrote that Australia was a second-rate country living on its luck. Primary industry had sustained for too long what was basically a weak economy and a weak leadership class.

A decade into the most recent mining boom, the same is true today. We must consider whether we can continue to coast along, or make the changes needed to not only call ourselves ‘a lucky country’, but a country run by people who know how to make the luck last.

Instead, our leaders prefer to play dice with destiny. The Labor government talks about future generations more often than John Howard did, but the gap between rhetoric and reality reveals a lot of long bets.

Judging by the policies of the current federal government, it is betting that the mining boom will last forever; that we’ll discover a cure for Dutch Disease that doesn’t involve slowing the boom down; that cheap oil won’t run out, or that an equally cheap alternative will be found before it does; that global inaction on climate change will continue; and that Australia will escape the consequences of that inaction if it does.

Business as usual won’t cut it anymore. In areas like urban infrastructure, electricity generation, or paid parental leave, Australia is pursuing policies designed for a world that no longer exists: a world of cheap oil, or endless credit, or single-income families, or a climate that will remain stable forever. In some areas of Australian public policy, like our love affair with suburban freeways, or our workplaces’ attitudes to child-bearing, we have barely changed in generations.

Revolutions start when enough people get disgusted with the same thing. And enough people in Australia are now frustrated enough to want to start something new. The disgust that welled up in the Howard years has for many people returned, but with greater urgency given that on crucial issues such as global warming time is much shorter now.

Rudd once complained of the ten years wasted by the Howard government’s inaction on global warming. He and Gillard have since added another five. 2013 is too long to wait for an emissions trading scheme.

But it’s not enough to point fingers and complain and say ‘no’ to what we don’t like. Revolutions in thinking don’t start that way. We also need to map a viable path to the future we want.

To begin to map out a new political agenda for Australia requires at least two things. First, we need a conceptual framework in which to think through what is new about the world we live in and what that means. Second, we need to identify and strategise our way around obstacles to change.

One such obstacle is the vested interests that have stalled progress in so many important areas. Machiavelli recognised the problem 500 years ago, when he wrote:

"There is nothing more difficult to take in hand, more perilous to conduct, or more uncertain in its success, than to take the lead in the introduction of a new order of things. For the reformer has enemies in all those who profit by the old order, and only lukewarm defenders in all those who would profit by the new.^"

In Australia vested interests include corporations as well as the industry associations and lobby firms whose job it is to defend those who want to avoid paying the full costs of their activities.

Tasmania tells an important story here. Before the 2010 Tasmanian election there was almost as much concern about the distortion of the political process by powerful interests as there was about the hotly contested Gunns pulp mill itself. Essential Research found that almost half of Tasmanian voters thought that it didn’t matter which party they voted for, ‘because the major parties are both too weak to take on the interests of big business’. This perception probably played a major role in the decision of many Tasmanians who would not otherwise identify as ‘green’ to put the Greens in a position to decide who would hold government.

Often, vested interests have champions in the media: influential newspaper columnists who see their role as speaking up for ‘realistic’ policy – where realistic is defined as what entrenched interests will accept.

To tackle vested interests and deal with some of the problems covered within this book, we need to redefine realism – an action that is both necessary and physically achievable should be seen as a realistic action. Political reality must be reconnected with social and environmental reality. Australians who want real change can’t afford to just cross our fingers for the outcomes of the next review, the rediscovery of recommendations from the last review, an emergency spine transplant after the election, or the positive influence of a more progressive senate.

But there is little point in working to redefine realism if we don’t know why we are doing it or where we are heading. If we are to do more than merely rely on luck, we need a viable, hopeful narrative about the future. To build such a narrative requires that we be idealists first and pragmatists second – there is no point being pragmatic unless you know what you are being pragmatic about.

As many of the old standards of modern life lose their viability — the established print media, abundant fossil fuels, unconstrained economic growth, the availability of an endless environmental sink for pollution by the ‘externalities’ of industrial production — so we need to rethink our conceptual maps and write the story of our new political and economic future.

This is an extract from More Than Luck: Ideas Australia needs now, a publication from the Centre for Policy Development, edited by Mark Davis & Miriam Lyons. More Than Luck is a book for citizens who want to hear about policy ideas beyond the sound-bites cannot afford miss. A to-do list for politicians looking to base public policies on the kind of future Australians really want, More Than Luck shows what’s needed to share this country’s good luck amongst all Australians – now and in the future. Click here to find out more. Like what you’ve read? Donate to help make good ideas matter.