Other sections of the constitution no longer apply, as Clive Palmer found out with his failed legal challenge to border closures. Palmer argued section 92 of the constitution ("trade, commerce, and intercourse among the states ... shall be absolutely free") meant that the border closures in Western Australia were unconstitutional. The High Court ruled against him in November last year, and last week released its judgement, finding while the restrictions concerned "did impose a burden on interstate intercourse" the "burden was justified ... at least in their application to an emergency constituted by a hazard in the nature of a plague..."

Although the COVID-19 pandemic is a case study of how our constitution does not cope with the times, it is only one instance among many.

The lack of acknowledgment or recognition of Australia's First Nations in the constitution is a major issue for many Australians and continues to be unresolved and contentious. Until there is some movement on the question there will be an ongoing barrier to reconciliation and a sense of grievance among First Nations peoples.

While the Commonwealth is not undertaking one of its constitutional responsibilities - quarantine - on the other hand it is doing numerous tasks that constitutionally rest with the states and territories (such as aged care, health and education). This is not due to some power grab or hubris on the part of the Commonwealth - it is because the public has demanded it. The scope of Commonwealth policy and programs has grown incrementally over the past half-century, a trend that continues today (with the notable exception of COVID-19 quarantine). The Prime Minister copped criticism during the catastrophic bushfires last year for saying they were a state responsibility - but he was constitutionally absolutely right. There was no role for the Commonwealth. However, the public demanded one. So the military (the armed services are clearly a Commonwealth responsibility) was deployed - a clumsy workaround for a constitutional problem, and one that sets a dangerous precedent for future use of the military to address civilian problems.

The constitution has a massive chapter on the Parliament (sections one through to 60) but provided zero guidance in relation to an issue at the fore in recent weeks - the culture and conduct of parliamentarians. That issue was raised initially in the context of the alleged rape of ministerial staffer Brittany Higgins but since expanded into a more fundamental questioning of how the Parliament works. A constitution, the national rulebook on governance, ought to be of some use in addressing the bigger questions. Not so here. It has not been referred to in any of the debate.

That the Australian constitution fails to address contemporary concerns is hardly surprising. It was drafted not last century but the century before. It was the product of the deliberations of a group of wealthy, white, male, mostly English colonists from the Australian colonies and New Zealand.

They got together at a federation conference in 1890 and federal constitutional conventions in 1891 and 1897-98. Referendums in each colony followed. The draft constitution was approved by white, mostly male voters (South Australia gave women the vote in 1895, and Western Australia in 1899 - just in time for federation - but neither were so radical as to enfranchise Indigenous Australians). The constitution became an Act of the British Parliament in 1900. New Zealand declined to join for a raft of reasons, and Western Australia only reluctantly.

As with all historical documents, the Australian constitution was a product of its times. The concerns it embodies, even the language it uses (including excessive deference to the English monarch) seem quaint and archaic today. But that's not the only reason why the constitution fails to meet contemporary challenges. If being old fashioned were the only problem, there are ways to deal with it. The High Court has been adept at interpreting constitutional provisions to fit emerging challenges. State and Commonwealth governments have adapted their operations to in effect work around the constitution - notably, in the agreement reached between the different levels of government after World War II that gave the Commonwealth the bulk of taxation powers and allowed it to finance post-war reconstruction.

The more fundamental problem is in relation to the essence of a constitution - a rational set of rules for how a nation should be governed. Constitutionalism is a product of what in Europe and the United States was called the enlightenment: a flourishing of thinking based on concepts of reason, rationality, knowledge and freedom.

Just as with Australia, predating it by 100 years, the US constitution was framed at a convention (held in Philadelphia in 1787), then ratified progressively by states. It embodies ideas from enlightenment thinkers including those from Europe such as Locke, Voltaire, Rousseau and Montesquieu, and its own, such as Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Jefferson and James Madison. US constitutionalism was a major influence on the framing of the Australian constitution. Many of the same concepts - in particular, the separation of powers doctrine and the division of responsibilities between the national and state levels - are closely paralleled in both constitutions.

These documents are based on a fundamental assumption that the people who govern us will behave in a rational manner. Reason is the foundation of the enlightenment approach. The people who developed both the United States' and the Australian constitutions, whether consciously or implicitly, believed in the power of logic, facts and evidence - the power of rationality - to deliver good governance and foster the welfare of citizens.

That fundamental is now a disposable value in a post-enlightenment world. We see it most in evidence in the workings of the Donald Trump presidency in the United States. President Trump openly dismissed the parts of the constitution that did not suit him. The Los Angeles Times headlined his attitudes to the Congress as creating the worst constitutional crisis in 150 years. His approach to governance was not based on rationality - it was about affect and appearance.

The "covfefe" incident summed it up. What is a covfefe? Nobody knows. It appeared in a Presidential tweet at 12.06 am on May 31, 2017: "Despite the constant negative press covfefe." It's obviously a typo (probably for "coverage") - but the White House did not clarify or explain, it was allowed to stand, and it thus generated debate for weeks after. What Donald Trump understood - and people stuck in a rationality paradigm don't - is that for a sizeable chunk of the voting population things don't have to make sense. Logic is not a key driver. It is about grabbing attention, then moving on. It's the world where Kardashians are superstars despite lacking any redeeming features.

Our constitutions, because they are based on a fundamental belief that people in government will behave according to reason, are not coping. Both the Australian High Court and the US Supreme Court are holdouts of enlightenment thinking among our modern institutions. Public opinion is not with them. No matter what a constitution says, people want governments to respond to problems with what feels right at the time.

So where does this leave us? Our rulebook for governance is failing us due not simply to being out of date but also philosophically at odds with how a majority of voters now see the world. We need a new constitutional convention to work out a new set of rules.