Miriam Lyons is executive director of the Centre for Policy Development, an independent progressive think-tank. With Mark Davis.

An uninspiring election that floundered in rhetoric underscores the need to change politics, not just policy. Our leaders need to step up and map a viable path to the future Australians want.

Invitations to ‘politics-as-usual’ are everywhere in Australian politics. A stasis has settled over government and opposition. The media is caught up in the logic of old politics that necessitates a straightforward political and popularity contest. The electoral system means the ALP can afford to be contemptuous of progressive ideas because it knows preferences from disaffected Labor voters often flow back to them.

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

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

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, like our love affair with suburban freeways or our workplace attitudes to child bearing, we have barely changed in generations.

Given the lack of the ‘vision thing’ in this election campaign, many are left asking what use is politics? Yet revolutions start when enough people get disgusted with the same thing. 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 need to map a viable path to the future we want.

This 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.

To tackle one such obstacle, vested interests, and deal with our systemic problems, 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.

But first we must know 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, so we need to rethink our conceptual maps and write the story of our new political and economic future.

Converging issues
The single issue with the most potential for transforming the politics we have into the politics we need is global warming. It’s difficult to be anything other than deeply alarmed about the incapacity of modern politics to deal with climate change – but by highlighting the deep problems in our tools for tackling complex global problems, this issue is also planting the seeds of change.

An abiding theme for any hopeful narrative about the future will be the growing interconnectedness of everything. As our car-dependent lifestyles make us fatter and sicker, so urban planning and health policy converge.

Given our reliance on centralised supplies of energy and water, so infrastructure policy is also national security policy.

In an information- and knowledge-based economy, education policy drives long-term economic development. Whether indigenous policy succeeds or fails depends on the effectiveness of policies that span several departments and levels of government.

Globalisation is at the same time driving a new dynamic of policy connectedness. In an age of global financial shocks, environmental disaster and mass movements of peoples, more than ever the decisions made in one place affect all others.

Solving this century’s problems will require the ability to think in systems. Our solutions need to be holistic. The stories we need to tell about the future need to be inclusive; our ideas for policy need to reach across disciplinary, portfolio and national boundaries.

But where will the political will come from? After the 2007 Federal Election, GetUp! consulted its members on their vision for the new Labor Government through more than 300 ‘Get Togethers’ in people’s houses – thousands took part in meetings where they discussed everything from climate change to civics education.

Since then, GetUp! and others seeking to harness people power have moved to the forefront of politics. People with less money and media in their pockets can still win policy victories when they have the numbers on their side. After all, new thinking and leadership always starts small.

This is an edited version of the introduction to More Than Luck, a free online book from the Centre for Policy Development (http://morethanluck.cpd.org.au).