Is it too late to solve some of our most wicked problems? The Australia Institute won’t let us die wondering

By Frank Bongiorno, Professor of History, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences, Australian National University

As I begin this review sitting in a Canberra cafe, there are two blokes on the next table complaining about the present federal election campaign’s lack of substance. The complaints of one of them about the Coalition’s fuel excise cut were the first to catch my ear, but it was soon clear enough that they didn’t think much of either party’s policy performance.

It was a very Canberra moment. I suppose that if I were eavesdropping in Melbourne, I would hear about football and in Sydney, property prices. But the opinions of these Canberra folk would not be unusual outside the capital’s…

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