Richard Denniss is the Executive Director of The Australia Institute. [1] He is a prominent Australian economist, author and public policy commentator, and a former Associate Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. [2] Denniss was described by Mark Kenny in the Sydney Morning Herald as "a constant thorn in the side of politicians on both sides due to his habit of skewering dodgy economic justifications for policy". [3] In October 2018, The Australian Financial Review listed Denniss and Ben Oquist of The Australia Institute as equal tenth-place on their 'Covert Power' list of the most powerful people in Australia. [4]
Prior to his appointment at The Australia Institute, Denniss was Senior Strategic Advisor to Australian Greens Leader Senator Bob Brown and was also Chief of Staff to Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, former Leader of the Australian Democrats. [1] Denniss also worked as a researcher at the H.V. Evatt Memorial Foundation (the 'Evatt Foundation'), a public policy organisation with strong links to the Australian Labor Party.[ citation needed ] His academic work has resulted in publications in various peer-reviewed journals, and he has lectured in Economics at the University of Newcastle. [5]
During the 2000s Denniss' research focused on climate change policy [6] and tax policy. [7] He also worked on a number of projects aimed at improving the measurement of government and economic performance including the 'Genuine Progress Indicator' (GPI), [8] the 'Wellbeing Manifesto', [9] and the state of Australian Government.
666 ABC Canberra produced and broadcast "An occasional series with 'The Moral Economist'" podcast starring Richard Denniss, in 2013. The series discussed economic issues from the dollar cost of a human life to preventative health care to who deserves welfare. [10]
In 2015 Denniss delivered the 16th Manning Clark Lecture at The Australian National University. The speech drew from Clark's writings, identifying 'enlargers' and 'punishers' in Australian cultural, economic and political history. [11]
Australian Labor Party MP Andrew Leigh is quoted as saying, "I think of Richard as being kind of a mirror image of [free-market economist and former Reserve Bank board member] Warwick McKibbin." [12]
Denniss is the co-author (with Clive Hamilton) of best-selling book Affluenza: When Too Much is Never Enough [13] and An introduction to Australian Public Policy (with Sarah Maddison). He co-authored Minority policy: rethinking governance when parliament matters with Brenton Prosser, a book that examines the operations of minority government and implications for public policy in Westminster systems. In 2016, his book Econobabble was published by Black Inc and Redback. [14] Most recently, Denniss has published Curing Affluenza, a followup to Affluenza: When too Much is Never Enough, and is the author of the June 2018 Quarterly Essay, Dead Right: How Neoliberalism Ate Itself and What Comes Next.
Denniss is a regular contributor to The Monthly [15] and Quarterly Essay, as well as producing columns in The Canberra Times [16] and The Australian Financial Review. [17]
Clive Charles Hamilton AM FRSA is an Australian public intellectual currently serving as Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE) and the Vice-Chancellor's Chair in Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University. He is a member of the board of the Climate Change Authority of the Australian Government, and is the founder and former executive director of The Australia Institute. He regularly appears in the Australian media and contributes to public policy debates. Hamilton was granted the award of Member of the Order of Australia on 8 June 2009 for "service to public debate and policy development, particularly in the fields of climate change, sustainability and societal trends".
Affluenza describes the psychological and social effects of affluence. It is a portmanteau of affluence and influenza, and is used most commonly by critics of consumerism. Some psychologists consider it to be a pseudo-scientific term, however the word continues to be used in scientific literature.
The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) is a conservative non-profit free market public policy think tank, which is based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It advocates free-market economic policies, such as privatisation, deregulation of state-owned enterprises, trade liberalisation, deregulation of workplaces, abolition of the minimum wage, criticism of socialism, and repeal of Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. It also rejects large parts of climate science.
Charles Albert Eric Goodhart, is a British economist. He worked at the Bank of England on its public policy from 1968–1985, and worked at the London School of Economics from 1966–1968 and 1986–2002. Charles Goodhart's work focuses on central bank governance practices and monetary frameworks. He also conducted academic research into foreign exchange markets. He is best known for formulating Goodhart's Law, which states: "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."
The Australia Institute is an Australian public policy think tank based in Canberra, with offices also in Hobart and Adelaide. Since its launch in 1994, it has carried out research on a broad range of economic, social, and environmental issues.
Helen Dolly Hughes was an Australian economist. She was Professor Emerita at the Australian National University, Canberra, and Senior Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies, Sydney. Hughes has been described as Australia's greatest female economist.
The National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR), established in 1938, is Britain's oldest independent economic research institute. The institute is a London-based independent UK registered charity that carries out academic research of relevance to business and policy makers, both nationally and internationally.
Des Moore was an Australian economist and political commentator.
Andrew Keith Leigh is an Australian politician, author, lawyer and former professor of economics at the Australian National University. He currently serves as the Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities and Treasury as well as the Assistant Minister for Employment. He briefly served as the Parliamentary Secretary to Prime Minister Julia Gillard in 2013 and then served as Shadow Assistant Treasurer from 2013 to 2019. He has been a Labor member of the Australian House of Representatives since 2010 representing the seat of Fraser until 2016 and Fenner thereafter. Leigh is not a member of any factions of the Labor Party.
Ross Gregory Garnaut is an Australian economist, currently serving as a vice-chancellor's fellow and professorial fellow of economics at the University of Melbourne. He is the author of numerous publications in scholarly journals on international economics, public finance and economic development, particularly in relation to East Asia and the Southwest Pacific.
Richard Arthur Woolcott was an Australian public servant, diplomat, author, and commentator.
Affluenza: When Too Much is Never Enough is a book written by Professor Clive Hamilton and Richard Denniss, and was published in 2005. According to the book, Western society is addicted to overconsumption and this situation is unique in human history. Hamilton and Denniss argue that overconsumption is driven by aspiration, in an effort to emulate the lifestyles of the rich and the famous through the identities and fulfilments that commodities are supposed to, but do not necessarily, deliver. Rates of stress, depression and obesity are high as people try to cope with the emptiness and disappointments of consumer life.
Crawford School of Public Policy is a research-intensive policy school within the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific at The Australian National University which focuses on Australia and the Asia-Pacific region. The school was named after Sir John Crawford, and its current director is Professor Helen Sullivan.
Anne Elizabeth Henderson, is an Australian writer, deputy director of The Sydney Institute, editor of the institute's The Sydney Papers and co-editor of The Sydney Institute Quarterly.
Colm Kearney (1954–2018) was an Irish economist and academic, who was dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia, until 2017, shortly before his death on 28 March 2018.
Thomas MacGillivray Humphrey was an American economist. Until 2005 he was a research advisor and senior economist in the research department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond and editor of the bank's flagship publication, the Economic Quarterly. His publications cover macroeconomics, monetary economics, and the history of economic thought. Mark Blaug called him the "undisputed master" of British classical monetary thought.
Benjamin Richard "Ben" Oquist is a policy analyst, commentator and political and communications strategist.
Laura Margaret Tingle is an Australian journalist and author.
Gabriel Zucman is a French economist who is currently an associate professor of public policy and economics at the University of California, Berkeley‘s Goldman School of Public Policy, Chaired Professor at the Paris School of Economics, and Director of the EU Tax Observatory.
Saul Eslake is an Australian economist, commentator, and public speaker. "He has a knack for explaining economics in terms mere mortals can understand, which is why he's always in such high demand as a speaker and commentator." He is the principal of Corinna Economic Advisory, and previously was the Chief Economist at the Australia & New Zealand Banking Group between 1995 and 2009, and the Chief Economist for Bank of America Merrill Lynch between 2011 and 2015. He has been a Vice Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Tasmania since 2016.