Throughout the 90s and 2000s, governance was largely on easy mode. You didn't need to be a great leader or especially competent to achieve some at times brilliant outcomes. The likes of Hawke, Keating and Howard are put forward as great stewards of economic management. But when you look at the data from across the Western world, it swiftly becomes clear that they were also riding a broader wave of prosperity that had little to do with them. It didn't matter if a government was left or right, good or subpar, surpluses and strong per capita growth as achieved. Incremental changes, while positive in some instances have often been seen as groundbreaking or highly positive, without them being fully understood as part of a broader positive trend playing out elsewhere or the local cyclical drivers powering them. So we now live in a world of incrementalism, where a great many people believe that these small changes can adequately do the job. They can't. They never could, not alone. Even when you read some of the papers and reports suggesting these changes, which some of the proponents claim will be transformative, even the actual forecasts suggest the impact would be mild or to continue the theme, incremental. Yet we no longer live in a world where incremental change is enough. Instead far greater reform is required, the equivalent of swapping the engine out of a car, rather than simply changing the oil. But that would mean acknowledging the true scale, origins and duration of the problems we face, and few in politics aside from those who are not part of the existing political establishment even want to consider that.