Building a mandate for reform in an age of policrastination

Drinks with Clare Beaton-Wells

Hosted by Dr Marianne Broadbent

We are delighted to welcome Clare Beaton-Wells, Strategic Policy Advisor and Fellowship Lead at Foundations for Tomorrow (FFT) to Melbourne Forum.

Clare will lead a forward-looking conversation on policrastination: a term coined by FFT to describe democracy’s structural tendency to defer difficult long-term decisions until they become crises. While the challenge itself is widely recognised, shared language and collective frameworks for responding to it remain underdeveloped. Rather than focusing on diagnosing democratic shortcomings, this conversation will centre on practical pathways for building the civic mandate and institutional capability required to act on good policy ideas. Drawing on experience from shaping FFT's work across long-term governance initiatives, Clare will explore:

• Why societies that generate strong policy ideas often struggle to translate them into sustained reform
• How public mandate, civic infrastructure and shared frames of understanding shape what governments are able to do
• What solution-oriented democratic renewal can look like in practice, including initiatives such as the Australian Parliamentary Group for Future Generations, the Intergenerational Fairness Coalition, and the National Conversation Development Lab
• How collective agreement on how we move forward may matter more than agreement on any single reform pathway.

The conversation will invite participants to reflect on one central question: what does it take to build a durable public mandate for long-term reform in Australia, one that can hold across generations, communities, regions and electoral cycles?

At 22, Clare Beaton-Wells is a distinctive emerging voice on Australia's work on democratic renewal. She specialises in long-term governance, systems change and intergenerational leadership, and has been a co-author of the backbone report for Australia’s Wellbeing of Future Generations Bill and a lead drafting partner on the legislation itself. Clare has spoken internationally on long-term governance at high-level forums including the UN Summit of the Future, is a 2026 Next Generation Foresight Practitioner Fellow with the School of International Futures, and has held governance roles across national organisations including UN Youth Australia and Headspace. She has also worked as a Federal Electorate Officer, including during the 2023 Voice to Parliament referendum.

Please join emerging voice, Clare Beaton-Wells, as she invites you to reflect on what will it take to build a lasting public mandate for long-term reform in Australia.