You could be forgiven for thinking that the prime minister’s image transformation is the biggest story in Australian politics right now.

Gone is the besuited custodian of the nation’s finances. Arrived is the self-proclaimed “daggy Dad”, a man who lives not for economic strategy, but for family, faith and the Cronulla Sharks.

In Liberal-facing circles, the transformation has been widely hailed as a storming success, offering the party its chance of recapturing a lead from Labor. In more critical places, it is all a distraction from what really matters.

Voters everywhere have had it with the established political class, spills and endless squabbles in party rooms

In all the hullabaloo, we are in danger of missing something really vital. This rebrand is not just a “nice-to-have”, the brainchild of some particularly gifted marketing agent. It is as close as politics comes to an absolute necessity, driven not by short-term polling but by the total collapse of faith in conventional politics.

Voters everywhere have had it with the established political class, spills and endless squabbles in party rooms. They are looking intensively for alternatives.

And they’re doing so at the very time when we need action the most to meet the challenges of climate change, deepening inequality and the rise of new technologies with unknown consequences for jobs, services and quality of life.

We have seen where this leads overseas. The United States and Britain are both convulsed in political crisis. The old politics of the established parties has reached the end of the road in Spain, Greece and Italy.

Of course, some say Australia is immune from these trends. The argument goes; a combination of compulsory voting, years of uninterrupted growth and the remnants of a welfare state protect us all from the social instability of other developed democracies.

But the evidence for such confidence is shaky. Survey after survey has revealed that millions have given up on politics here, despite the absence of a recession for decades. Trust in politics has fallen off a cliff in what should have been the most propitious circumstances possible.

Whatever you think the future holds, Australia has an opportunity to make the most of the breathing space it enjoys. Given relative prosperity, the absence of a powerful populist challenge and no urgent foreign policy dilemmas, all of the parties have a chance to shape proposals for far-reaching change; the kind of change that could reconnect the lives and experiences of everyday Australians with those of the class that governs them. Doing so effectively could both help avoid a more acute crisis in the future and show the rest of the world how it is done.

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Such change could start with opening up the formal processes of politics.

For trust to be restored, the secrecy of the party room will have to be gone forever. Party selections should be opened up to participants of all backgrounds, whether through open primaries or quotas or some combination of both.

But change will need to go beyond the parties if the gulf is to be narrowed between the powerful and the people whose lives that power actually affects. There is no reason the elected officials of the commonwealth and the states should be the only ones to enjoy the right of political decision making.

Australia could benefit from real city government, proper neighbourhood representation, and this is the time to experiment with precisely how. If one lesson from around the world needs to be learned it is that power must reside at the lowest possible level if it is going to be responsive to the people who currently feel excluded.

Although these proposals are bold by themselves, they won’t be enough on their own. Making a success of changes like this requires more than just structural alteration. It also means doing all we can to equip as many people as possible from every background with the skills and opportunities to exercise genuine political influence in their own right.

It is a more demanding politics, requiring millions more citizens to take responsibility for day-to-day decisions

Democracy is a skill and a habit, and it requires training and practise. That could start early. Curriculum reform for schools could emphasise “action civics” to give children a real-life experience of finding their voice and sharpening their influence. NGOs and peak bodies could provide new and genuine opportunities for service recipients to become equal participants in the day-to-day governance of their own lives.

And great Australian universities could play their part in making their world-beating research and expertise freely available to those who need it.

None of this would be easy. It is a more demanding politics, requiring millions more citizens to take responsibility for day-to-day decisions in a way that many haven’t for generations.

But the chance exists in this country in a way that it currently doesn’t almost anywhere else. If the parties looked to the horizon, then a new democratic experiment could offer a way for Australia to lead the world.

Marc Stears is the new director of the Sydney Policy Lab at the University of Sydney. He will launch the lab’s activities with an inaugural public lecture on Thursday 4 October, titled How can Australia save democracy for the world?



