Australia is a quarter of the way into the twenty-first century and stuck on a trajectory that cannot last.

Endless growth, free-market dogma, dependence on the US for security, a property and resource-driven economy, and a media sphere dominated by News Ltd: these are the foundations of our politics. They were already brittle in the 20th century. In the 21st, they are a recipe for decline.

We live in an age where ecological collapse is not a risk but a reality. Where inequality, insecurity and social fragmentation grow even in wealthy nations. Where alliances once thought unshakeable are unravelling. Where the global system itself is shifting from US primacy to multipolar disorder. Australia, sitting on the edge of Asia, faces all these pressures at once.

The Coalition cannot respond to these realities; its very DNA is locked into the interests and habits of the past. Which leaves the scale and pace of change required to Labor or better. And for the first time in 50 years, Labor has a parliamentary majority large enough to govern with radical purpose. It is, in theory, a left-leaning government. However, in practice, it remains hesitant, even timid.

This is Labor’s crossroads. It can keep patching the status quo. Or it can admit that the status quo is collapsing and that only bold choices can prevent Australia becoming a stranded nation: less wealthy, more unequal, more dependent and more irrelevant.

Breaking with the myths

A decisive break is needed from the myths that have paralysed us:

• Endless growth as the only measure of progress. On a heating planet with fragile ecosystems, growth without limits is not prosperity, it is suicide.

• Free markets as the guarantor of efficiency. In reality, unregulated markets have not invested in a value-adding future and have hollowed out housing, health, education, child care, age care and energy security.

• Dependence on the US alliance as the bedrock of safety. It now risks drawing us into wars over Taiwan or the South China Sea that could devastate our own security.

• Property developers and resource companies as the engines of national wealth. They deliver short-term rents, not long-term value.

• News Ltd as the gatekeeper of political debate. Its distortions have shrunk the space for imagination and bludgeoned every government back toward orthodoxy.

A new trajectory

Australia’s renewal requires five decisive shifts:

• Demography: Manage population and settlement in line with ecological and social limits, not just the demands of developers or universities hungry for fee-paying students.

• Economy: Break dependence on resources and property speculation; invest in industries that add value, innovate, and sustain.

• Ecological security: Treat climate and biodiversity collapse as existential threats on par with military security, not as side projects.

• Defence: Build sovereign capability for the defence of Australia itself, not the wars of others.

• First Nations justice: Put truth, treaty, and genuine power-sharing at the centre of national renewal. Without this, there is no legitimacy.

The politics of courage

This is not an argument for utopia. It is an argument for survival. If Labor believes it can simply ride out its majority, talk green while expanding gas and nod to fairness while protecting the property bubble, it will waste its moment. And worse: it will entrench a trajectory that leaves Australia weaker and more exposed.

The politics of courage is not about slogans. It is about telling Australians the truth: that the old order is finished, that climate breakdown and multipolar disorder are here, and that we must build a society capable of weathering them. That means rejecting capture by property and fossil fuel lobbies, confronting media distortion, and daring to govern for the long term.

A narrow window

History rarely offers generous windows. Labor has one now. It can step beyond the small-target caution that has defined and confined it for decades. Or it can squander the chance, governing as if nothing has changed until it is too late to change.

This is the brief moment. The choice is simple: break the spell of the old myths and build a different trajectory, or watch Australia sink deeper into decline.

The crossroads is here now. Labor will not have such an opportunity for some time.

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