As I begin this review sitting in a Canberra cafe, there are two blokes on the next table complaining about the present federal election campaign’s lack of substance. The complaints of one of them about the Coalition’s fuel excise cut were the first to catch my ear, but it was soon clear enough that they didn’t think much of either party’s policy performance.

It was a very Canberra moment. I suppose that if I were eavesdropping in Melbourne, I would hear about football and in Sydney, property prices. But the opinions of these Canberra folk would not be unusual outside the capital’s inner north.

All of this is a roundabout way of saying any think tank devoted to promoting ideas that are not simply about getting one of Australia’s political parties over the line on May 3 is doing a public service.

Review: What’s the Big Idea? 32 Ideas for a Better Australia – edited by Anna Chang and Alice Grundy (Australia Institute Press)

What’s the Big Idea? marks the 30th anniversary of the Australia Institute, a Canberra-based think tank that has become part of the nation’s policy architecture and media culture. Its executive director Richard Denniss recently appeared on the ABC’s Q A, where his gifts as a public communicator were on full display. This is an outfit willing to get out and about. There is no ivory tower here.

If there is a Darwinian survival of the fittest at play in the world of think tanks, as there surely is, the Australia Institute must be one of the success stories of the present century. It attracts impressive thinkers and good communicators, and it manages to find enough money to pay them.

It also has a good claim to having exercised clout – in recent times, over Labor’s redesign of the stage-three income tax cuts that redirected benefits to low- and middle-income earners. The Australia Institute was relentless in advocating for this change. It would be unfair, and probably inaccurate, to deny it a share of the credit.

The Australia Institute is not afraid to get into the political wrestling ring, unlike the stereotype – and to be frank, a good deal of the reality – of Australian academia. Bill Browne, director of the institute’s

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