As part of Crikey's Democracy Lost series, Crikey's political editor Bernard Keane conducted an extended discussion with Nicholas Gruen on Christmas Eve. Nicholas is one of Australia's finest public policy intellectuals and has written on an extraordinary array of issues while working as a ministerial adviser, Productivity Commissioner, academic and investor. He is also an advocate for citizens' assemblies, and argues that they offer a solution to some of the complex problems besetting our democracy, as well as overcoming the opposition of vested interests to much-needed reforms. He explains why in nearly an hour of free-wheeling discussion.