If there is one thing that the literature agrees on it is that wicked problems “…are particularly challenging as they transcend the borders of traditional policy domains, involve a wide variety of actors across different scale levels and resist our attempts to solve them”.

The Coalition’s response to this year’s election result highlights why wicked problems seem so intractable. In response to the result, Liberals argued that their values support the basic freedoms of parliamentary democracy freedom of thought, worship, speech and association. [we believe] In a just and humane society in which the importance of the family and the role of law and justice is maintained. In equal opportunity for all Australians; and the encouragement and facilitation of wealth so that all may enjoy the highest possible standards of living, health, education and social justice.

Most Australians would have little difficulty with their values. Nor are these values inconsistent with the ALP: The Australian Labor Party has the objective of the democratic socialisation of industry, production, distribution and exchange, to the extent necessary to eliminate exploitation and other anti-social features in these fields. To achieve the political and social values of equality, democracy, liberty and social co-operation.

The significant distinction between the two parties concerns the role of private enterprise. Whereas the ALP was formed in part as a reaction to the way private enterprise was limiting equal opportunity, the Liberal Party saw private enterprise as the way equal opportunity could be realised. The Liberal view is a form of cherry picking those Liberal thinkers such as John Stuart Mill and John Rawls who saw unfettered capitalism as an obstacle to creating a truly liberal society. The failure to resolve to address the role of private enterprise has given rise to wicked problems.

In the Flinders Survey of Wicked Problems, 30,000 Australians identified a set of 15 wicked problems. These were, in order of priority: Cost of Living, Housing Unaffordability, Crime and Safety, Access to Quality Healthcare and Community Care, The Environment, Family, Domestic and Sexual Violence, Trust in Government and Public Institutions, Global Crises, Misinformation and Digital Safety, Child Safety and Protection, Unemployment and Job Security, Education, Infrastructure and Transport, Lack of Community and Social Connection, Inequities Experienced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People.

These 15 problems have one thing in common: each of them is a product of human activities – and all of them are underpinned by competing aspirations of what, in an ideal world, would be a solution to these various problems. However, if we are wedded to a political system where the two major parties have a fundamental disagreement about the role the private enterprise should play in addressing these problems, then solutions become impossible.

The 2025 Australian election underscored the need for a paradigm shift in the way we, and the world more generally, think about democracy. The government has secured an overwhelming majority. While the Liberals, Nationals, Greens and One Nation are busy picking up the pieces of their shattered dreams, the ALP is basking in the glory of a massive majority. There is, however, little evidence that our politicians are ready to acknowledge that there is a growing awareness that the electorate has become disenchanted with politics as a zero-sum game.

Piketty argues that “Every human society must justify its inequalities, unless reasons for them are found the whole political and social edifice stands in danger of collapse”. When we look at the set of wicked problems that 30,000 Australians identified, we can readily see that many of them impact on the quality of life that many Australians have come to expect.

This is not unique to Australia. Nearly all polities are struggling with a similar set of wicked problems. We saw in the thirties how vulnerable democracies are to an authoritarian takeover. Both Hitler and Mussolini gamed their respective democracies to establish authoritarian regimes. The pattern is by now well established. Charismatic leaders promise the world. They offer simplistic solutions to complex problems and, above all, blame some shadowy third party for their problems. We saw that with the way Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage conducted the Brexit campaign. Likewise, Donald Trump acknowledges that wicked problems are making people’s lives difficult; he reassures the voting public that only he can solve these problems but to do that he needs to be given absolute authority to address the problems.

Australia is not immune from an authoritarian takeover. This should not come as a surprise. Anyone born after 1970 has grown up in a political environment where neoliberalism was the political norm. Hence, both voters and politicians expect policy to align with neoliberal ideas. The challenge facing Australia is that neoliberalism creates a policy straitjacket. The wicked problems we face require us to remove that straitjacket.

Removing that straitjacket is risky. Unless the voters see policies as reflecting Australia’s interests, then it is likely that the party promoting those policies will be rejected. There are those who argue that given Labor’s substantial majority, there is little risk in pursuing radical change. To be comforted by that view would be a mistake. Removing the neoliberal straitjacket requires voters to accept the proposition that neoliberal ideas can be a threat to our ability to deal with these wicked problems. Thus any government needs to move cautiously; to move too fast will only frighten the horses.

On the whole, politicians are better informed than the voters about the existential threats that face Australia. In addressing these threats, we need to be clear about the distinction between public goods and private goods. Governments are responsible for delivering public goods, private enterprise delivers private goods. In some instances there are hybrid solutions – the public interest may well be served by private enterprise delivering some public goods. However, we are living in a world where the default position seems to be that private enterprise is naturally superior to the public sector. But given that many of the existential threats we face extend across generations, the private sector may not be best placed to deal with those threats. Equally, given that governments are elected for three-year terms, they likewise are poorly placed to deal with generational problems.

Australia is well placed to break the gordian knot of developing long-term policy objectives that become an integral part of our political culture. The feature of wicked problems is that they are contested ideas. The Irish have shown us how contested ideas can be resolved. In Catholic Ireland, they used citizen juries to give politicians the courage to vote in favour of decriminalising abortion. If the government introduces legislation to enable the Australian Electoral Commission to administer processes that place contested ideas out of the realm of partisan politics, then there would be the opportunity for all Australians to be aware of the way the wicked problems may be addressed.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.