‘Australia needs leadership, not cowardice veiled as pragmatism’, shouted out a woman in the audience at a Republican conference in Canberra in 1999. The audience roared in approval. The comment resonated with people's frustrations with Australian politics. In the race for a new vision, the difference between leadership and pragmatism will be crucial. Pragmatism is the art of recognising the existing constraints and finding solutions within existing boundaries. Leadership is questioning the existing boundaries and disregarding unnecessary constraints to open up new possibilities. It is about identifying the parts of conventional wisdom that don't apply anymore, that never applied or that can be sidestepped. The party that breaks the Australian drift will be the one that shrugs off the ‘politics of economic necessity’. It will be the party that escapes the inhibiting conventional wisdom of the last 20 years and paints a future for Australia that offers the values we are yearning for.

We must have robust debates about how we manage our economy because ultimately they are not simply about interest rates and GDP (gross domestic product) growth. They are about the Australia we want to live in. Our old economic institutions underpinned a unique combination of social values, creating an unusual mix of social trust, individualism and a focus on private quality of life. These traits have been defining of the Australian way of life. They underpin our mix of cohesion and tolerance. They are the basis of the ‘she'll be right’ ethos.