Melbourne Institute Conference booklet by SCDesign

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Economic Social outlook conference Melbourne Institute and The Australian present

Melbourne Institute and The Australian present

2015 rebuilding foundations for reform

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Economic Social outlook conference

CONTENTS Welcome 5 Conference venue

General information

Conference dinner

Take the conversation online

Previous conferences

Cohost Information

Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research

The Australian 11 Sponsors 13 The University of Melbourne

The Faculty of Business and Economics

Productivity Commission

Speaker Biographies

Conference Sessions

Session 1: Opening

Session 2: Making a difference

Session 3: Why budget is so hard to fix?

Lunch Day One

Session 4A: Driving economic growth

Session 4B: Competition policy

Session 4C: Inequality

Session 5: Is the social welfare system sustainable? 59 Conference Dinner

Session 6: The Federation

Session 7A: The political economy of tax reform

Session 7B: Retirement policy

Session 7C: Innovation

Lunch Day Two

Session 8A: Higher education

Session 8B: Trade and investment

Session 8C: Industry/political advice

Session 9: Policy and practice

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welcome The Melbourne Institute and The Australian welcome you to “Rebuilding Foundations for Reform”, our tenth Economic and Social Outlook Conference. Your engagement in the ideas and debates of this conference and that of your fellow participants help to make this the nation’s premier public policy forum. The Melbourne Institute and The Australian welcome you to “Rebuilding Foundations for Reform”, our tenth Economic and Social Outlook Conference. Your engagement in the ideas and debates of this conference and that of your fellow participants help to make this the nation’s premier public policy forum. The starting point for this year’s conference is that reform is as difficult as it is needed. It is not enough to simply know what to do, you have to, as the European Commission president Jean Claude Junker has famously said, know how to get re-elected after you’ve done it. The agenda of policy issues where there is bilateral agreement that reform is urgently needed is long, but agreement on how to proceed is short.

We trust you find the next two days stimulating and thought provoking, and look forward to your contributions to discussion. Our thanks go to our sponsors, speakers, session chairs and to you, our participants, who make this such a significant public policy event. With regards,

Deborah Cobb-Clark Director and Ronald Henderson Professor Melbourne Institute

With an election due in less than a year, both sides of politics are developing the policies they will take to the voters. Some of their thinking will be revealed over the next two days. We have assembled panels of speakers drawn from the highest levels of government and opposition, and from leading policy thinkers and practitioners from both public and private sectors to explore the ingredients of successful social and economic policy reform.

David Uren Economics Editor The Australian

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Conference venue Conference venue: Grand Hyatt Melbourne, Level 8, 123 Collins Street, Melbourne

All plenary sessions will be held in the Savoy 1

Concurrent sessions will be held in:

Savoy 1

Savoy 2

Savoy 3

Lunch venue:

Mayfair Ballroom, Level 8, 123 Collins Street, Melbourne

Mayfair 3

Mayfair Ballroom

Lifts Mayfair pre-function area

Mayfair 2

Lifts Savoy pre-function area

Grosvenor 2 Foyer

Grosvenor 1

Connaught

Lobby

Savoy 2

Escalators Registration area

Women

Savoy 1

Bristol 1

Savoy 3 Bristol 2 Dressing Room Men

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Economic Social outlook conference

General Information Registration Desk

Photography and Filming

The Registration Desk will be attended for both days of the Conference, from 8.15am until 5.30pm.

Please note that there will be representatives from the media present at the conference, including photographers and television cameras recording and filming conference sessions.

Please direct any questions you have regarding the conference, sessions or conference dinner to the staff at this desk. A cloakroom will be located on Level 8 and will be staffed for the duration of the conference.

Name Badges All delegates will be issued with name badge upon registration. Name badges must be clearly visible at all times during the conference for security reasons. If you misplace your name badge, please go to the conference registration desk and the staff will provide you with another.

We would prefer if delegates did not use recording devices in the conference sessions, as all recordings will be made available to delegates after the conference.

Catering and Dietary Requirements Morning tea and afternoon tea will be served each day in the foyer of Level 8. The conference lunches will be held in the Mayfair Ballroom.

Please be aware that if you are not wearing a name badge, you may be denied entry to conference sessions.

Caterers have been advised of any special dietary requirements. Please make yourself known to either catering or conference staff.

Mobile Phones

Conference Presentations and Recordings

As a courtesy to the speakers and other delegates, please ensure that all mobile phones are turned off or in silent mode during all conference sessions.

Should they be available, the presentations and recordings from the sessions of the conference will be available for download following the conference from the Melbourne Institute website www.melbourneinstitute.com.

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conference dinner Conference Dinner Venue: Myer Mural Hall 6/314 Lonsdale Street, Melbourne Postal Lane Entrance Postal Lane is used as an exclusive entrance for guests to use when the Myer store is closed. To access Postal Lane, please walk along Little Bourke Street which can be accessed from either Elizabeth or Swanston Streets. Pre-dinner drinks will commence at 7.00pm. Dress is business suit.

take the conversation online The social media associated with the Economic and Social Outlook Conference is focused on discussing the themes and ideas raised during the conference and starting conversations. You will find us on Twitter at @MelbInstUoM. The hash tag for this yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s conference is #ESOC2015.

previous social and economic outlook conferences July 2014

November 2006

Pathways to Growth: The Reform Imperative

Making the Boom Pay: Securing the Next Generation of Prosperity

November 2012 Securing the Future: How Australia Can Thrive in a Volatile World June 2011

Sustaining Prosperity: New Reform Opportunities for Australia

Growth Challenge: Riding the Resources Boom to Lasting Prosperity

November 2003

November 2009

April 2002

The Road to Recovery: Restoring Prosperity after the Crisis

Towards Opportunity and Prosperity Conference

March 2008 New Agenda for Prosperity

April 2005

Pursuing Opportunity and Prosperity Conference

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co-host information

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Established in 1962, the Melbourne Institute was the first research institute of its kind in Australia. Over its long history, it has enhanced the wellbeing of all Australians by delivering high-quality, independent research that makes a sustained contribution to economic and social policy development. The Melbourne Institute is now firmly established as one of the world’s leading economic and social policy research institutes – and we look forward to continuing to contribute to economic and social policy for the benefit of all Australians.

In addition, the research is underpinned by surveys housed in the Melbourne Institute. These are:

The Melbourne Institute undertakes research across six areas. Four of these – socio-economic disadvantage, public sector performance, productivity and living standards, and health and wellbeing – are focused upon building the evidence base for reform and contributing to public policy. The other two – the collection and analysis of survey data, and measuring economic and social outcomes – give us and other organisations the tools and data we need to help shape policy.

• the Medicine in Australia: Balancing Employment and Life (MABEL) longitudinal survey of doctors – this longitudinal survey of over 50,000 Australian doctors seeks to improve our understanding of how changes in the working lives of Australian doctors influence the provision of healthcare, and

This research is conducted by six key research programs: • labour economics and social policy • health economics • economics of education • economic and social disadvantage • HILDA Survey • macroeconomics

• the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey – this is Australia’s only nationally representative household panel study

• CASiE (Consumer Attitudes, Sentiments and Expectations), a monthly survey of 1,200 Australian consumers. The Melbourne Institute also supports postgraduate education at the PhD level. Further information is available from www.melbourneinstitute.com

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For more than half a century, The Australian has led the reporting and analysis of the key issues and challenges confronting the nation Australiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s daily newspaper sets the agenda around the national debates of government, business, economics, social issues, education, information technology and indigenous affairs. www.theaustralian.com.au

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Sponsors

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The national conversation around public policy priorities is a key focus for leading research universities. In this, the University of Melbourne is no exception, and accordingly we are delighted to be a major host and supporter of the annual Economic and Social Outlook Conference. This yearâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s theme is Rebuilding Foundations for Reform. With both economic and social priorities in Australia as hotly contested as they have ever been, this theme is a valuable reminder of a course the nation needs to steer. To set us on the right path, the University looks forward to much enriching expert guidance and stimulating policy discussion from government and opposition leaders, some of the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s leading policy experts from academia, and representatives from key sectors of the Australian economy. The University of Melbourne warmly welcomes all participants and speakers to the 2015 Economic and Social Outlook Conference: Rebuilding Foundations for Reform.

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The Faculty of Business and Economics provides world class education and is renowned for scholarly teaching, the productive exchange of knowledge and excellence in research and research training. Over 40,000 students have graduated from the Faculty since it was created in 1924. Our alumni are now prominent leaders in business, academia, politics and the public service and enjoy a continued relationship with the Faculty as members of our extensive alumni network. We maintain close and mutually beneficial relationships with business, government, and the not-for-profit sector. Our academics consult to leading global organisations and are active in shaping public policy, providing expert advice to the highest levels of industry and government. The quality of business and economics education at the University is consistently affirmed by our international rankings: 14th globally for Accounting and Finance; and 24th for Economics and Econometrics (QS World University Rankings by Subject 2015-16), and the Faculty is ranked No. 19 globally (under the Social Sciences subject rankings, Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2015-2016).

Offering a comprehensive portfolio, including the flagship MBA, our programs are targeted at business professionals at critical stages of their careers. Students enjoy a genuine cohort experience where academic rigour and the relevance of the business world come together to equip them with the knowledge, research insights and skill to lead and make an impact.

Research Our Faculty is home to a wide range of specialist research centres spanning the disciplines of actuarial studies, economics, finance, management and marketing. The University of Melbourne is a leading research-based institution, endorsed time and time again by the Australian Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA) rankings and leading international rankings and accreditation.

The Faculty of Business and Economics is accredited by the Association to Advance Collegiate Business Schools International (AACSB).

Our bilateral agreements with institutions in 35 countries mean that prominent international academic researchers regularly visit and teach at the University. These agreements enable critical international and inter-disciplinary collaboration and access that is essential to early career researchers.

Graduate

Executive Education

As a result of the collaboration between the Faculty and Melbourne Business School, Melbourne now boasts one of Asia Pacificâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s most comprehensive business education precincts with a reputation as the home of the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s outstanding graduate business and economics programs.

Our range of innovative Executive Education programs includes Executive Education Degrees, Open and Custom Programs.

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The Productivity Commission is the Australian Government’s independent research and advisory body on a range of issues affecting the welfare of Australians. Its role, expressed most simply, is to help governments make better policies, in the long-term interest of the Australian community. The Commission’s public inquiry and research reports contribute to public debate and policy development across a range of complex and often contentious issues. These generally have a significant economic component, but also can have important social dimensions or environmental implications. In addition, the Productivity Commission provides secretariat services to the COAG Steering Committee that monitors the performance of government services and indicators of Indigenous disadvantage. The Commission also has a mandate to conduct self-initiated research. Further information on the Commission’s activities and publications is available from the Commission’s website www.pc.gov.au Current Commissioned Inquiries and Studies (October 2015) Intellectual Property Arrangements Workplace Relations Framework Migrant Intake Into Australia Services Exports Public Safety Mobile Broadband Business Set-up, Transfer and Closure Current Self-Initiated Research Projects (October 2015) Developments in Anti-Dumping Arrangements Housing Decisions of Older Australians Indigenous Primary School Education Outcomes: Key Contributors Developing a Behavioural Microsimulation Model

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speaker biographies

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Mr Geoff Allen AM

Dr Francisco Azpitarte Raposeiras

Chairman, The Centre for Corporate Public Affairs

Ronald Henderson Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute, The University of Melbourne

Geoff Allen has been senior advisor to the Treasurer and Leader of the Opposition. He was co-founder, and foundation CEO of the Business Council of Australia. He has chaired a number of Australian Government advisory councils including its Trade Development Council, Trade Negotiations Advisory Group, and currently Australian Statistics Advisory Council; Member of the Foreign Affairs Council and Prime Minister’s Business-Community Partnership. He was National Chairman of the Committee for Economic Development of Australia and Director of a number of Australian public companies. Founder of Australia’s largest independent public policy and economics consultancy and the Centre for Corporate Public Affairs. Pioneered teaching of business government relations in Australia as senior research fellow and subsequently adjunct professor at the Melbourne Business School. Consultant to boards and senior managements of major companies and governments, including personal assignments for the Australian Prime Minister. Member of the Order of Australia for services to business government relations and public affairs.

Francisco is the Ronald Henderson Research Fellow at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research and the Brotherhood of St Laurence. Francisco holds a Masters in Economic Analysis from the Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona and completed his PhD in Economics at the Universidad de Vigo in 2009. After finishing his Postdoctoral studies at the London School of Economics and Social Sciences in 2011, he was appointed in the Ronald Henderson Research Fellow position at the Melbourne Institute. Francisco’s research interests are poverty, economic inequality and the impact of poverty on children’s cognitive and non-cognitive development. Despite being an early career researcher, Francisco has already published in highly regarded journals in the field including the Review of Income and Wealth and the Journal of Economic Inequality.

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Senator the Hon Simon Birmingham

The Hon Chris Bowen MP

Minister for Education and Training

Shadow Treasurer

Simon Birmingham has served as a Liberal Party Senator for South Australia since May 2007 and in September 2015 was appointed to position of Minister for Education and Training.

Chris Bowen was elected to the Federal Parliament as Member for Prospect in October 2004.

Simon grew up near Gawler in Adelaide’s north on his family’s small horse agistment property. Simon was educated at government schools before going on to study at the University of Adelaide where he completed a Masters of Business Administration. Prior to entering the Senate, Simon worked for a number of industry bodies, establishing particular experience in the wine, tourism and hospitality sectors – industries that are critical to South Australia’s prosperity. After less than three years in the Senate Simon was appointed to the Shadow Ministry, serving as Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Murray-Darling Basin and the Environment until the 2013 election. Following the change of government in 2013 Simon served as Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment, with responsibility for water policy, including the Murray-Darling Basin, National Parks and the Bureau of Meteorology. In 2014 Simon was appointed to serve as the Assistant Minister for Education and Training in the Abbott Ministry, with specific responsibility for vocational education, apprenticeships, training and skills. He is married to Courtney and has two young daughters, Matilda and Amelia. Simon is an active supporter of the Parliamentary Association for UNICEF and a proud, but sometimes frustrated, Adelaide Crows fan.

Chris was educated at Smithfield Public School and St Johns Park High School. He graduated from the University of Sydney with a Bachelor of Economics and won the Australian Transport Officers Federation Prize for the best industrial relations student at the University. He joined the Labor Party in 1988 and has held many honorary positions in the party. He was elected to Fairfield Council in 1995 and has been Chairman of the City Outcomes Committee, the Fairfield Town Centre Management Committee and the Community, Recreation and Development Committee. Chris was elected Mayor of Fairfield for 1998 and 1999, and became President of the Western Sydney Regional Organisation of Councils from 2000 to 2002. Immediately before being elected to Parliament, Chris was Chief of Staff to Hon. Carl Scully, NSW Minister for Roads, Housing and Leader of the House. Since being in Parliament, Chris has been elected as Deputy Chair of the House of Reps Standing Committee on Economics, Finance and Public Administration. He was also a member of the Joint Committee on Corporations and Financial Services. In December 2006, Chris was appointed to the Federal Labor Party’s frontbench as the Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Shadow Minister for Revenue & Competition Policy. Following the historic election of the Labor Government in 2007, Chris was appointed to the new Ministry. Chris took on two portfolios as Assistant Treasurer, and Minister for Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs. In June 2009, Chris was elevated to Cabinet as Minister for Human Services. He also served as Minister for Financial Services, Superannuation and Corporate Law. Following the re-election of the Labor Government in 2010, Chris was appointed as Minister for Immigration and Citizenship. In February 2013 Chris was appointed Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research and Minister for Small Business. In June of the same year, Chris was appointed Treasurer by Prime Minister Kevin Rudd. Following the 2013 election, he served as Interim Labor Party Leader and Leader of the Opposition while the Labor leadership ballot was underway. He was later appointed Shadow Treasurer by Bill Shorten.

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The Hon John Brumby

Dr Matthew Butlin

Former Premier of Victoria and Professorial Fellow, The University of Melbourne and Monash University

Red Tape Commissioner

The Hon John Brumby was the former Premier of Victoria (2007 – 2010) and has immense experience in public life serving for more than 10 years as Treasurer and then Premier of Victoria, 6 years as Leader of the Victorian Opposition and 7 years as Federal MHR for Bendigo during the period of the Hawke Government. Since retiring from politics, Mr Brumby has accepted an appointment as a Professorial Fellow at both the University of Melbourne and the Monash University. He is also the Chairman of the Motor Trades Association of Australia (MTAA) Superannuation Fund, Deputy Chair of Industry Super Australia, an Independent Director of Huawei Technologies (Australia) Pty Limited and Chair of Citywide Solutions Pty Ltd. During his time as Treasurer and then Premier, Mr Brumby forged closer links with China, releasing Victoria’s first ever China Strategy, visiting China on numerous occasions and opening new trade and investment offices in Nanjing and Shanghai. Mr Brumby is also a regular speaker at forums in Australia, New Zealand, China and the United States of America on issues such as the global economy, innovation, superannuation and regional development. Mr Brumby is also involved in a range of other organisations. He is National President of the Australia China Business Council, Chair of the Olivia Newton-John Cancer Research Institute, a Director of the Fred Hollows Foundation, Chair of the Advisory Board of the National Centre for Workplace Leadership at the University of Melbourne and a Director of the United States Studies Centre Ltd at the University of Sydney.

Dr Matthew Butlin was elected President of the Economic Society of Australia in 2013 and is the Red Tape Commissioner at the Department of Treasury and Finance. Prior to his appointment as Red Tape Commission on 22 September 2015, he was the Chair of the Victoria Competition and Efficiency Commission. At VCEC he personally led many public inquiries, including into environmental regulation, local government regulation, Victoria’s regulatory system and school devolution and accountability. He was a Commissioner of the Productivity Commission and has been a senior executive in the Departments of Prime Minister and Cabinet and Employment, Education and Training, CRA Limited (now Rio Tinto) and Newcrest Mining. He is a member of the Council of Leadership Victoria and the Chair of the Advisory Board of the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research. He has published in the fields of economics, management theory and practice, innovation, and economic history. He is a graduate of the ANU and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (PhD).

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Mr Rowan Callick

Professor Bruce Chapman

Asia Pacific Editor, The Australian

Director, Policy Impact, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University

Mr Rowan Callick has been Asia-Pacific Editor for The Australian newspaper since 2009. Mr Callick joined The Australian at the start of 2006, as China Correspondent. He worked for almost 20 years for The Australian Financial Review as China Correspondent and then as Asia-Pacific Editor. From 1990-1992 he was a senior writer with Time magazine. Mr Callick was a Member of the Foreign Minister’s Foreign Affairs Council from 2003-2006. He is a member of the Advisory Boards of Deakin University’s Deakin Foundation and of Melbourne University’s Asian Law Centre. He was appointed in 2013 a Fellow of the Australian Institute of International Affairs. He won the Graham Perkin Award for Journalist of the Year for 1995, and two Walkley Awards, for Asia-Pacific coverage, for 1997 and 2007. He was awarded an OBE on recommendation of the Papua New Guinea Government in 2014. He is the author of “Comrades & Capitalists: Hong Kong Since the Handover” (1998) and “Party Time: Who Runs China and How” (2013).

Bruce Chapman is an economist and has worked at The Australian National University since 1984. He has extensive experience in public policy, including: the motivation and design of the Higher Education Contribution Scheme (the first national income contingent loan scheme using the income tax system for collection) in 1989; engagement with the empirical and conceptual basis related to long-term unemployment leading to the Working Nation program in 1994; as a senior economic advisor to Prime Minister Paul Keating, 1994-96; as a higher education financing consultant to the World Bank and the governments of Thailand, Papua New Guinea, Mexico, Canada, the UK, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Malaysia, Colombia, the US, Chile and China, 1996-2013; as a consultant to the Bradley Review of Australian Higher Education on student income support, 2008; and as a consultant to the Australian Government’s Base Funding Review, 2011. He has published over 200 papers on a range of issues, including income contingent loans, long-term unemployment, the meaning of job flows data, the economics of crime, the economics of cricket, fertility, marital separation and government as risk manager. Over the last several years he has convened conferences, and written extensively, on the application of income contingent loans to a host of social and economic reform issues, such as for the financing of drought relief, low level criminal fines, elite athlete training, paid parental leave, white collar crime, community based investment projects, Indigenous business investment, and for taxing the brain drain. He was elected to the Academy of the Social Sciences of Australia in 1993, received an Order of Australia in 2003 for contributions to economic policy, and was elected President of the Australian Society of Labour Economics (2004-07) and President of the Economics Society of Australia (2007-13). In 2015, he was given the Economic Society of Australia’s Distinguished Fellow Award. He is quite friendly, excessively modest and is a tenacious, fanatical and mediocre bridge player.

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Dr Andrew Charlton

Ms Karen Chester

Director, Sydney, alphaBeta

Commissioner, Productivity Commission

Andrew has senior experience in business, government and international institutions. After commencing his career with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), he received a Doctorate and Masters in Economics from the University of Oxford, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. From 2008-2010, through the period of the global financial crisis, he served as senior economic advisor to the Prime Minister of Australia and Australia’s senior government official to the G20 economic summits. He was the prime minister’s representative to conferences of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate (MEF). From 2010-2014 he worked for Australian conglomerate Wesfarmers, including two years in corporate strategy (M&A and major group projects) and two years in operational roles (divisional Chief Financial Officer and General Manager). His academic research covering international economics, trade and development has been published in leading international journals including the American Economic Review, World Trade Review and World Economy. He is the author of two books, Ozonomics (2007) and Fair Trade for All (2005), co-written with Nobel laureate Joseph Stiglitz. In 2011 he was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

Karen Chester was appointed a Commissioner with the Productivity Commission in December 2013.

Andrew was one of the few economists in Australia who foresaw the slowing in China’s economy and the impact on commodity prices. In 2011 he questioned the mainstream consensus view that China could sustain double-digit economic growth rates and that Australia would benefit from a prolonged ‘commodity supercycle’. He publicly warned of the weaknesses in China’s economic model and advised businesses to protect themselves from falling commodity prices. In 2014 his Quarterly Essay (Dragon’s Tail: The Lucky Country After the China Boom) forecasted the subsequent fall in commodity prices, writing that the China “exhibits many of the characteristics of an emerging economy heading into a debt problem: a period of excessive investment; capital allocation sometimes influenced by political rather than commercial criteria; and heavy debt.” The Australian Financial Review wrote “[Charlton] cleverly summarises Australia’s economic history and explains how, for the foreseeable future, our feet are dangling over the edge of a Chinese cliff.”

Prior to her appointment, Karen was a Partner in Mercer’s Investments business and Global Head of Infrastructure. Before joining Mercer, Karen was a Partner at Access Capital Advisers and held directorships on several Australian infrastructure company boards. Prior to Access Capital Advisers, Karen was the CEO of its predecessor, Access Economics. Before her move to the private sector, Karen held senior roles in key economic policy areas of the Commonwealth Treasury and the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet. Karen has a first class honours degree in economics from the University of Queensland and is a graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. Karen is currently a Commissioner on the Intellectual Property Arrangements inquiry and a report on the Housing Decisions of Older Australians. Karen was also recently appointed by the Government to Chair an Expert Panel to undertake a capability review of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).

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Professor Deborah Cobb-Clark

Mr Simon Cowan

Ronald Henderson Professor and Director, Melbourne Institute, The University of Melbourne

Research Fellow, The Centre for Independent Studies

Professor Deborah Cobb-Clark is the Director and Ronald Henderson Professor at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research. Prior to joining the Melbourne Institute, Professor Cobb-Clark held positions at the Australian National University, Illinois State University, and the US Department of Labor.

Simon is a Research Fellow in the economics program, and Director of the CIS TARGET30 program which aims to reduce government spending to less than 30% of GDP over the next 10 years. He is a leading media commentator on policy and politics, frequently appearing on the Sky network, ABC television and commercial radio. He has also written on government industry policy, defence and regulation and appeared before the Australian Senate discussing the budget and health policy.

Professor Cobb-Clark has a PhD in economics from the University of Michigan (1990). She is the founding director of The Social Policy Evaluation, Analysis and Research (SPEAR) Centre, a former co-editor of the Journal of Population Economics, and an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia. Professor Cobb-Clark is a Chief Investigator and Program Leader in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course.

He co-authored the leading CIS research report on pensions and retirement policy, released in May 2015, The Age Old Problem of Old Age: Fixing the Pension.

Professor Cobb-Clark’s research agenda centres on the effect of social policy on labour market outcomes including immigration, child development, health, education and youth transitions. In particular, she leads the innovative Youth in Focus Project which is analysing the pathways through which social and economic disadvantage is transmitted from parents to children in Australia. She has published approximately 70 academic articles in leading international journals.

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Professor John Daley

Mr Peter Davidson

Chief Executive Officer, Grattan Institute

Senior Adviser, Australian Council of Social Service

John Daley has been CEO of Grattan Institute since its inception in 2009. Grattan Institute’s work is independent, rigorous, and practical and fosters informed public debate on the key issues for Australia, through both private forums and public events, engaging key decision makers and the broader community. At Grattan Institute, John has published extensively on economic reform and budget reform. He has a particular interest in the prioritisation of policy reform.

Peter Davidson is Senior Adviser with the Australian Council of Social Service, specialising in tax, superannuation, employment, and social security policies. In his work for ACOSS over 20 years he has analysed and influenced Australian Government policies in these areas. This includes participation in the ‘’Henry Tax Review’’ and the 2010 Tax Reform Forum.

He has 25 years’ experience spanning policy, academic, government and corporate roles at the University of Melbourne, the University of Oxford, the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet, consulting firm McKinsey and Co, and ANZ.

Peter has written many publications on superannuation and social security policies and engaged in dialogue with superannuation stakeholders, business, unions and civil society organisations in the unending search for political consensus on superannuation reform.

John graduated from the University of Oxford in 1999 with a DPhil in public law after completing an LLB (Hons) and a BSc at the University of Melbourne in 1989. John is also a keen amateur pianist and gardener.

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Professor Glyn Davis AC

Mr David Dyer

Vice-Chancellor, The University of Melbourne

Principal, McKinsey & Company

Professor Glyn Davis has been Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Melbourne since January 2005, and is Professor of Political Science in the Faculty of Arts. Professor Davis holds first class honours from the University of New South Wales and a Doctorate of Philosophy from the Australian National University. He undertook postgraduate appointments as a Harkness Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, the Brookings Institution in Washington and the John F Kennedy School of Government, Harvard.

David Dyer is a Partner with McKinsey & Company, a global management-consulting firm. David leads McKinsey’s work in Asia on reputation, government and regulatory strategy, helping clients identify emerging policy issues, develop strategies and engage with stakeholders to achieve sustainable returns. He advises private sector clients on how to shape their strategy and improve productivity to capture the opportunities created by rapidly emerging economies. In his work with public sector clients, he focuses on helping government departments implement major reforms and policy initiatives.

Alongside an academic career starting in 1985 at Griffith University, Professor Davis has worked in government. He served as Queensland’s most senior public servant, Director-General of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, before returning to Griffith as Vice-Chancellor in early 2002. This involvement with the public sector continued through a role as the Foundation Chair of the Australia and New Zealand School of Government, and recognition as a National Fellow with the Institute of Public Administration Australia. From 2010 until 2012, Professor Davis was Chairman of Universitas 21, a global network of leading international universities, and a Director of the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies at King’s College London. Professor Davis presented the 2010 Boyer lectures. The Republic of Learning: higher education transforms Australia is published by ABC books. Alongside his role as Vice-Chancellor, Professor Davis also served as chair of Universities Australia, the peak body representing public and private universities across the nation, from May 2011 to May 2013. Professor Davis is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, a Companion in the Order of Australia, and a Director of the Melbourne Theatre Company, the Grattan Institute, the LH Martin Institute and Asialink.

David is the author of McKinsey’s recent report with the Business Council of Australia, Compete to Prosper: Improving Australia’s global competitiveness, which found there are enormous opportunities for Australia to grow through trade, and increase income and employment levels, thereby raising living standards and promoting social inclusion. But to do so, Australia needs to address a pervasive competitiveness problem – with many sectors of the economy lagging behind international benchmarks – at a time when major disruptions are reshaping the global economy. Australia needs to play to its comparative advantages – natural resource endowments and a highly skilled workforce – as well as raising productivity and increasing innovation to seize the opportunity. David has a Master’s degree in Economics from Oxford University, and degrees in Commerce and Law from the University of Melbourne. He lives in Melbourne, with his wife and two sons.

The University of Melbourne was founded in 1853. It is a research-intensive comprehensive institution of 47,000 students, ranked by the Times Higher Education Supplement as first in Australia and number 33 in the world.

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Mr John Fraser

Professor John Freebairn

Secretary, Department of the Treasury

Ritchie Chair in Economics, Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne

Mr Fraser was appointed Secretary to the Treasury effective 15 January 2015. John was Chairman and CEO of UBS Global Asset Management from late 2001 to 2013 based in London. During this time, John was also a member of the UBS Group Executive Board and Chairman of UBS Saudi Arabia. In 2014, John remained as Chairman of UBS Global Asset Management, Chairman of UBS Saudi Arabia and Chairman of UBS Grocon Real Estate. Other recent appointments have included MSCI Editorial Advisory Board, the Investment Advisory Board of Fedesa SAM (Monaco) and the AccountAbility Advisory Council (New York). John was Chairman of Victorian Funds Management Corporation from 2009 to early 2015. Prior to joining UBS and its predecessor organisations in 1993, John served for over twenty years with the Australian Treasury including appointment as Deputy Secretary (Economic) from 1990-1993 and postings at the International Monetary Fund (1978-1980) and as Minister (Economic) at the Australian Embassy in Washington DC (1985-1988). In 1996, John was a member of the Australian Governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Audit Commission into public sector finances. John was also a Board member of the Audit Committee of the Australian Stock Exchange (1997-2003) and a Governor of Marymount International School for girls at Kingston-upon-Thames in the United Kingdom (2007-2012). John graduated from Monash University, Melbourne, in 1972, with a first-class honours degree in economics and, in 2013, was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Laws by the University. John is Deputy Chairman of the Monash-Warwick University Alliance Circle. He was awarded a Centenary medal by the Commonwealth Government in 2001 for service to Australian society through business and economics.

After graduating with a PhD from the University of California (Davis) in 1972, John Freebairn worked at the NSW Department of Agriculture until 1974 where he was senior economist. John became a Research Fellow at the Research School of Social Sciences at ANU in 1974 before moving as a Professor of Agricultural Economics at La Trobe University from 1977 until 1984. From 1984 until 1986 John took over the responsibilities of Research Director at the Business Council of Australia. John joined Monash University in 1986 as Deputy Director in the Centre of Policy Studies. In 1991 he moved to the Department of Economics at Monash and at various times was Chairman of the Department and Deputy Dean and Dean of the Faculty. John joined The University of Melbourne in 1996. He was Head of Department from 1997-2002 and Director of the Melbourne Institute from April 2005 to April 2007. In 2008 Professor John Freebairn has been appointed as the Ritchie Chair. â&#x20AC;&#x192;

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Economic Social outlook conference

The Hon Josh Frydenberg MP

Professor Ross Garnaut AO

Minister for Resources, Energy and Northern Australia

Professorial Research Fellow, Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of Melbourne

Josh Frydenberg is the Federal Member for Kooyong and the Minister for Resources, Energy and Northern Australia. He was elected to the Australian House of Representatives at the 2010 federal election and re-elected in 2013. He is the seventh person since Federation to hold this seat.

Professor Ross Garnaut AO is a Professorial Research Fellow in Economics at the University of Melbourne (since 2008). Earlier at the Australian National University he was Distinguished Professor of Economics (2007-2013) and before that longstanding Head of the Division of Economics in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies. He has been awarded the degrees honoris causa of Doctor of Letters from the Australian National University and Doctor of Science from the University of Sydney. He is an Honorary Professor of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and of Renmin University, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, a Distinguished Fellow of the Australian Economics Society and a Distinguished Life Member of the Australian Agricultural and Resource Economics Society. Professor Garnaut has been Chairman of the Australian Centre for International Economic Research (1994-2000) and Trustee (2003-2006) and Chairman (2006-2010) of the International Food Policy Research Institute. He was the senior economic policy official in Papua New Guinea’s Department of Finance in the years straddling Independence in 1975, principal economic adviser to Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke 1983-1985, and Australian Ambassador to China 1985-1988.

As a primary school student Josh attended Bialik College in Hawthorn and then completed his secondary schooling at Mt Scopus College in Burwood. He currently lives with his family, in Hawthorn. Josh has Law and Economics degrees both with Honours from Monash University and completed his articles of clerkship at Mallesons Stephen Jacques. He went on to graduate with a Masters in International Relations from Oxford University where he attended on a Commonwealth Scholarship and a Masters in Public Administration from Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. Josh has a keen interest in public policy debates having been interviewed on radio and television as well as writing a number of opinion editorials for publications including The Age, The Herald Sun, The Australian and The Australian Financial Review. During his first term in parliament, Josh was appointed a member of the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit and the Joint Select Committee on Gambling Reform. He was a co-deputy chair of the Coalition’s Productivity Priorities Working Group, and a member of a committee established by Tony Abbott to advise him on the re-establishment of the Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC). In September 2013, Prime Minister Tony Abbott appointed Josh to the government’s front bench as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister, with specific responsibility for implementing the Coalition’s deregulation agenda. In December 2014, Josh was appointed to the ministry as Assistant Treasurer. In September 2015, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull appointed Josh to the Ministry as Minister for Resources, Energy and Northern Australia. Away from politics Josh remains an avid tennis player, and has developed an interest in photography having held his first exhibition in 2008 at a gallery in Richmond.

Professor Garnaut is the author of numerous books, monographs and articles in scholarly journals on international economics, public finance and economic development, particularly in relation to East Asia and the Southwest Pacific. Recent books include The Great Crash of 2008 (with David Llewellyn-Smith, Melbourne University Publishing 2009) and Dog Days: Australia After the Boom (BlackInc 2013). He is the author of a number of influential reports to Government, including Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendancy (Australian Government Publishing 1989), The Garnaut Climate Change Review (Cambridge University Press 2008) and The Garnaut Review 2011: Australia and the Global Response to Climate Change (Cambridge University Press 2011). Professor Garnaut chaired the boards of major Australian and international companies continuously from 1988 to 2013, including Lihir Gold Ltd (1995-2010); Bank of Western Australia Ltd (1988-1995); Primary Industry Bank of Australia Ltd (1989-1994); Papua New Guinea Sustainable Development Limited Pty Ltd (2002-2012) and its subsidiary Ok Tedi Mining Limited; Lonely Planet Pty Ltd; Aluminium Smelters of Victoria Ltd.

2015 rebuilding foundations for reform

Dr David Gillespie MP

Professor Bob Gregory AO

Member for Lyne

Professor of Economics, Research School of Economics, The Australian National University

David was elected to the Australian Parliament on 7 September 2013, representing The Nationals – which he joined in 2008. David stood for the Federal seat of Lyne in 2010 and although unsuccessful, recorded a 12% swing at that election against the incumbent Member and won 15 polling booths. David stood successfully in 2013 to win the seat with nearly 65% of the vote. David and his wife Charlotte married in 1990 and have three children: Isabelle 22, Oliver 20 and Alice 17. David and Charlotte have raised their family on their farm in the Hastings Valley, on which they run grass-fed Angus beef for the export market. David graduated MB BS from University of Sydney in 1981 and Fellow of Royal Australasian College of Physicians (FRACP) in 1991. As an undergraduate, he gained experience training both in Papua New Guinea and British Columbia. David’s post graduate specialist training included stints at hospitals at Bathurst, Orange and Dubbo while based at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital (RPAH) in Sydney (1981-1982 and 1987-1990). David also gained two years of paediatric experience at Royal Alexandra Hospital for Children (RAHC) Camperdown (1983-84), St George Hospital (1991) and at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital (1992). David obtained a Diploma of Anaesthetics (London) and Diploma of Child Health (UK) in 1986 after working in the UK NHS (1985-6). Before entering Federal Parliament, David had 33 years of medical practice, including 21 years as specialist Gastroenterologist and Consultant Specialist Physician in Port Macquarie (1993 -2013). David was active in Postgraduate Medical Training as Director of Physician training at Port Macquarie Base Hospital (1995-2009). David and Charlotte built, licensed and ran the free standing Hastings Day Surgery in Port Macquarie for 12 years. During this period, David also lectured and tutored at UNSW Rural Medical School since its inception. David uses his first-hand experience in public and privately managed health delivery and small business to ensure Australia’s health system delivers high quality cost-effective care in an affordable and fiscally sustainable manner. David wants to see Australian business, particularly small business, released from unnecessary government red-tape and green-tape at federal, state and local levels of government. David understands the complexity and pressures of primary production in Australia and works to ensure primary producers and processors receive equitable treatment by retailers under Australia’s consumer and competition laws.

Professor Gregory is currently Professor Emeritus at the Research School of Economics at the Australian National University. He has held positions at the University of Melbourne, London School of Economics, Australian National University, Industries Assistance Commission, Northwestern University, and visiting positions at The Board of Governors, Federal Reserve System, Washington, Harvard University, University of Chicago, Hitotsubashi University and University College, London. He was Head of the Economics Department, RSSS, ANU from 1986-2006. He has been closely involved in the analysis and development of Australian economic policy; a member of the Board of Management at the Australian Institute of Family Studies, author of a series of government Aged Care Reviews, member of the committee that recommended the introduction of student income contingent loans, member of the Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia and the Australian Sciences and Technology Council. Professor Gregory has been awarded the Order of Australia Medal and has an honorary doctorate from the University of Melbourne. He has long term research interests in the labour market in China, immigration, the impact of the mining boom on the Australian economy and evolving economic effects of the Australian welfare system.

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Economic Social outlook conference

The Hon Peter Gutwein MP

Professor Ian Harper

Treasurer of Tasmania and Minister for Planning and Local Government

Partner, Deloitte Access Economics

Peter was first elected to the Tasmanian Parliament for the seat of Bass in Northern Tasmania in 2002, was re-elected in 2006, 2010 and again in 2014.

Ian Harper is one of Australia’s best known economists. He has worked closely with governments, banks, corporates and leading professional services firms at the highest level.

Peter is a qualified Financial Adviser who also holds Post Graduate qualifications in Business Administration.

He recently chaired the Abbott Government’s Competition Policy Review, a “root and branch” review of Australia’s competition policy, laws and regulators, and is often asked to comment on economic and financial issues in the media.

He enjoyed a successful career in financial services working in senior management positions both in Australia and in Europe and for a period of two years also worked as an adviser to a senior Federal coalition cabinet Minister.

In March 2011 Ian joined Deloitte Access Economics as a Partner, following a 25-year academic career including 16 years in various roles at the Melbourne Business School. Ian was elected Emeritus Professor of the University of Melbourne on his departure.

Peter is married to Amanda and spends his time now between Hobart, Launceston and Bridport. They have 2 children, a daughter Millie and a son Finn.

From December 2005 to July 2009, Ian Harper served as inaugural Chairman of the Australian Fair Pay Commission, an independent statutory body whose role was to set and adjust minimum wages in Australia. From January 2011 to February 2012, he was one of three panellists chosen to review Victoria’s state finances.

He is currently the Treasurer and Minister for Planning and Local Government.

Peter likes to keep fit, runs 3-4 times a week, completing his first marathon and is also a qualified black belt instructor in the Korean Martial Art of Tae Kwan Do. In his spare time he enjoys reading, movies and spending time with his family.

Ian is currently a member of the Australian Advisory Board of Bank of America Merrill Lynch. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia in 2000 and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors in 2009.

2015 rebuilding foundations for reform

Mr Peter Harris AO

Ms Lin Hatfield Dodds

Chairman, Productivity Commission

National Director, UnitingCare Australia

Peter Harris is Chairman of the Productivity Commission. Mr Harris has previously served as Secretary of the Commonwealth Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, and the Victorian Government agencies responsible for Sustainability and the Environment; Primary Industries; and Public Transport.

Lin Hatfield Dodds, one of Australia’s leading social justice advocates, is the National Director of UnitingCare Australia. A recognised expert on social policy and community services, she has served on a wide range of boards and government advisory bodies, and is a frequent media commentator and respected conference speaker.

He has worked for the Ansett-Air New Zealand aviation group and as a consultant on transport policy. He has also worked in Canada on exchange with the Privy Council Office (1993-1994). His career with the government started in 1976 with the Department of Overseas Trade and included periods with the Treasury; Finance; the Prime Minister’s Department and Transport; and he worked for two years in the Prime Minister’s Office on secondment from the Prime Minister’s Department as a member of the then Prime Minister Bob Hawke’s personal staff.

Lin chairs the boards of The Australia Institute and UnitingCare Kippax, and serves on the board of the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture. She is past Chair of the Australian Social Inclusion Board, past President of the Australian Council of Social Service, and chaired the ACT Community Inclusion Board for four years.

In 2013, he was made an Officer of the Order of Australia ‘for distinguished service to public administration through leadership and policy reform roles in the areas of telecommunications, the environment, primary industry and transport’. He has a degree in Economics from the University of Queensland (1975) and is married with two children.

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Economic Social outlook conference

Professor Paul Jensen

Ms Patricia Karvelas

Acting Director and Professorial Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute, The University of Melbourne

Presenter, Radio National Drive, ABC Radio National

Paul H. Jensen is the Chair in Public Policy & Engagement and Acting Director at the Melbourne Institute, University of Melbourne.

Patricia Karvelas is the presenter of RN Drive has been a prominent senior journalist in the Australian media for 15 years, beginning her professional career in broadcast journalism at the ABC and SBS as both a producer and presenter.

His work relates to solving real-world problems and improving productivity via better public policy. He is a Research Fellow of the Intellectual Property Research Institute of Australia (IPRIA) and the Oxford Intellectual Property Research Centre (OIPRC) at Oxford University, and is Co-Editor of the Australian Economic Review. Professor Jensen is an important contributor to Australian policy debates as well as an internationallyrecognised scholar. He publishes regularly in the top domestic journals – including The Economic Record – and in outstanding A*-ranked international journals such as The Review of Economics and Statistics and RAND Journal of Economics and Strategic Management Journal.

She has worked for The Australian newspaper since 2002 covering federal politics, most recently working as the Victorian Bureau Chief and Editor and Senior National Affairs Journalist. Patricia specialised in Indigenous affairs reporting for more than 10 years. Patricia has been a regular fill-in presenter on 774 ABC Melbourne, and frequently appears on a range of television and radio programs including RN’s Sunday Extra and ABC TV’s The Drum.

2015 rebuilding foundations for reform

Mr Paul Kelly

Professor Paul Kofman

Editor-at-Large, The Australian

Dean, Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of Melbourne

Paul Kelly is Editor-at-Large on The Australian. He was previously Editor-in-Chief of the paper and he writes on Australian politics, public policy and international affairs. Paul has covered Australian governments from Gough Whitlam to Malcolm Turnbull and is a regular television commentator. He is the author of eight books including The Hawke Ascendancy, The End of Certainty, November 1975, March of the Patriots and in 2001 he presented the five part television documentary for the ABC ‘100 Years – The Australian Story’ and wrote a book under the same title. His latest book is Walkley Award-winning Triumph and Demise, in which he analyses the RuddGillard-Rudd government from 2007 to 2013. In 2003 Paul co-edited with Peter Dawkins, a former Director of the Melbourne Institute, the book Hard Heads, Soft Hearts on a new domestic reform agenda for Australia. Paul was Graham Perkin Journalist of the Year (1990). He holds a Doctor of Letters from Melbourne University and in 2010 was a Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at Melbourne University. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and in 2006 was a Visiting Fellow at the Lowy Institute for International Policy. Paul is a long-standing participant in Australian-American Leadership Dialogue. He has been a Fellow at the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and a visiting lecturer at the Weatherhead Center for International Affairs at Harvard.

Professor Paul Kofman holds a PhD in Economics (1991) from Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Netherlands. He came to Australia in 1994 as a Lecturer in Econometrics at Monash University. After subsequent positions at UNSW and UTS, he was appointed as Professor of Finance at The University of Melbourne in 2001. He was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics in May 2012. Professor Kofman currently holds the Sidney Myer Chair of Commerce. His main research interest is in quantitative finance and the ethics of finance, but he has also published papers in international trade, econometrics, and actuarial journals. He has received numerous research grants and has consulted for various financial institutions and financial markets.

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Economic Social outlook conference

The Hon Dr Andrew Leigh MP

Professor Shelley Mallett

Shadow Assistant Treasurer

Professorial Fellow, Social Policy, School of Social and Political Studies, The University of Melbourne and General Manager, Research and Policy, Brotherhood of St Laurence

Andrew Leigh is the Shadow Assistant Treasurer and Federal Member for Fraser in the ACT. Prior to being elected in 2010, Andrew was a professor of economics at the Australian National University. Andrew holds a PhD in public policy from Harvard, having graduated from the University of Sydney with first class honours in Law and Arts. He has previously worked as a lawyer and as a principal adviser to the Australian Treasury. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences, the only parliamentarian to be a fellow of one of the four national academies. In 2011, he received the ‘Young Economist Award’, a prize given every two years by the Economics Society of Australia to the best Australian economist under 40. His books include Disconnected (2010), Battlers and Billionaires (2013), The Economics of Just About Everything (2014) and The Luck of Politics (2015).

Shelley Mallett is the Professorial Fellow in Social Policy in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne and General Manager Research and Policy at the Brotherhood of St Laurence (BSL). Her research interests are broad including gender and health inequities, and youth transitions. Shelley is the author of two books and the recipient of several research awards, including the DM Myers award, and the VicHealth Public Health Research award. Shelley is currently supervising two BSL research projects into disability inclusion in local communities.

Andrew is the father of three sons, Sebastian, Theodore and Zachary, and lives with his wife Gweneth in Hackett. He has been a member of the Australian Labor Party since 1991.

2015 rebuilding foundations for reform

Mr Jim Middleton

Mr Scott Morrison MP

Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow, Centre for Advancing Journalism, The University of Melbourne

Treasurer

Jim Middleton has been reporting national and international affairs since 1970, first for the ABC and now as a correspondent for Sky News. For two decades he was ABC Political Editor in Canberra covering Prime Ministers Hawke, Keating and Howard. He was ABC North America correspondent in New York and Washington from 1980-1986. He has reported from every country in North, South and Southeast Asia, except North Korea. From 2008 until 2014 he presented Newsline and The World, broadcasting to and from Asia on Australia Network. From 2008 until this year he was a member of the board of the Australia-Thailand Institute for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. He is a Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Melbourne.

The Hon. Scott Morrison MP was sworn in as Treasurer on 21 September 2015 and serves on both the Expenditure Review Committee and National Security Committee of Cabinet. Mr Morrison was first elected to the House of Representatives as the Federal Member for Cook, in southern Sydney in NSW in November 2007. Immediately prior to becoming Treasurer, Mr Morrison was Minister for Social Services where he served on the Expenditure Review Committee of Cabinet and drove major budget reforms. This followed his role as Minister for Immigration and Border Protection where he implemented the Government’s highly successful border protection policies and served on the National Security Committee of Cabinet. In opposition Mr Morrison served in various portfolios including Immigration, Citizenship, Productivity, Population, Infrastructure, Housing and Local Government. Prior to entering politics, Mr Morrison worked as a CEO and senior executive in various industry bodies and government agencies, including Managing Director of Tourism Australia, State Director of the Liberal Party in NSW and National Policy and Research Manager for the Property Council of Australia. Minister Morrison holds an Honours degree in Applied Economic Geography from the University of NSW. Minister Morrison is married to Jenny. They have two young daughters, Abbey and Lily, and they live together in Sydney’s Sutherland Shire.

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Economic Social outlook conference

Mr Andrew Norton

Professor Janine O’Flynn

Program Director, Higher Education, Grattan Institute

Professor of Public Management, Melbourne School of Government, The University of Melbourne

Andrew Norton is the Higher Education Program Director at the Grattan Institute, a position he has held since 2011. He is also an Honorary Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne. Before joining Grattan, he was a higher education policy adviser to three University of Melbourne vice-chancellors between 2000 and 2011. In the late 1990s he was higher education adviser to the then Minister for Education, the Hon. Dr David Kemp. With Dr Kemp, he was the government-appointed co-reviewer of the demand driven system. The Review of the Demand Driven System Final Report was released in April 2014. Mr Norton is the author of many other articles, reports and other publications on higher education issues. These include a widely-used reference report on higher education trends and policies, Mapping Australian higher education, The online evolution on how technology will affect higher education, Taking university teaching seriously on the need to improve higher education teaching, and Doubtful debt: the rising cost of student loans.

Janine O’Flynn is Professor of Public Management at the University of Melbourne and her expertise is in public sector reform and relationships. Her co-authored book Rethinking Public Service Delivery: Managing with External Providers received the 2013 Best Book Award (Public Non Profit) at the 2014 US Academy of Management. She is an editor of Australian Journal of Public Administration and sits on the boards of Public Administration Review, Public Administration, Teaching Public Administration, Canadian Public Administration, and Journal of Management and Organization. Professor O’Flynn is an elected member of Executive Board the International Research Society for Public Management and a Fellow of the Institute of Public Administration Australia (Victoria). She has provided advice for governments in Australia and abroad on topics such as contestability, strategic government, performance management, collaboration between government organisations, service delivery, and valuing the community sector.

In 2013 he was a co-editor of and a contributor to The Dawkins Revolution 25 Years On, an evaluation of the long-term impact of higher education reforms announced in the late 1980s.

2015 rebuilding foundations for reform

Mr Alan Oxley

Mr Nicholas Reece

Managing Director, ITS Global

Director Strategy, Chancellery and Principal Fellow, Melbourne School of Government, The University of Melbourne

Alan Oxley is one of Australia’s most authoritative advisers on international trade. He has an enormous depth and spread of experience, drawing on more than 25 years of practice, first in government as a successful trade negotiator and then as an influential adviser to the private sector in the core competences of ITS Global. Before establishing the consultancy in 1989, Alan was a career diplomat. He represented Australia in Singapore, at the United Nations in New York and in Geneva. He transferred to the Trade Department in 1985 and served as Ambassador to the GATT, the predecessor of the World Trade Organization, until 1989. He played a key role in creating the ground-breaking coalition of agricultural exporters, the Cairns Group. He was the first Australian to serve as GATT Chairman. Alan has extensive experience advising government and the private sector on strategy and corporate affairs, managing multidisciplinary projects on trade and economic policy and delivering capacity building programs for developing countries in the Asia Pacific region. Alan is Chairman of the national Australian APEC Study Centre, one of Australia’s leading Asia Pacific Research Centres, based at RMIT University, Melbourne and is the founder and Chairman of World Growth, a free market NGO based in the United States. He is also a Senior Fellow of the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE), Brussels. Alan is a regular commentator in international print and electronic media.

Nicholas Reece is a writer, educator and adviser on all things public policy, political science and public sector management. He is a Principal Fellow at the Melbourne School of Government and Director of Strategy in Chancellery at the University of Melbourne. Nick has written and taught extensively in the fields of innovation policy, public infrastructure, governance and the policy making process, strategic communications and democratic innovation. He has considerable experience in both politics and policy making having worked as Director of Strategy to Prime Minister Julia Gillard and roles including Deputy Chief of Staff and Head of Policy for Victorian Premiers Steve Bracks and John Brumby. He has also served as secretary of the Australian Labor Party in Victoria. Nick is a director of the global men’s health movement Movember and the street newspaper and social enterprise The Big Issue.

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Economic Social outlook conference

Mr Chris Richardson

Mr Phil Ruthven

Partner, Deloitte Access Economics

Founder & Director, IBISWorld

Chris Richardson is a Partner of Deloitte Access Economics and is one of Australia’s best known economists. Chris heads Deloitte Access Economics’ forecasting and modelling unit.

Phil Ruthven is the Founder & Director of IBISWorld, an international corporation providing online business information, forecasting and strategic services. IBISWorld now operates in Australia, the United States (NY and LA), Canada, China, United Kingdom and Indonesia. It plans to add the rest of the European Union, and Japan over the next five years or so. In 2014, Phil became a Member of the Order of Australia, in recognition of his significant service to business and commerce, and to the community.

His comments on trends in the economy and their effect on business regularly appear in daily media coverage.

Phil contributes regularly to radio, TV, newspapers, magazines and documentaries on business, economic and social issues. He continues to be one of Australia’s most frequent and prolific commentators in demand by the media, and is widely considered the nation’s most respected strategist and futurist on business, social and economic matters. He addresses about 70 congresses, seminars and conferences each year and has done so for three decades. His involvement as a communicator takes him around Australia and occasionally overseas. Phil is a science graduate with further studies in management and economics at various universities and institutes, and was a Rotary awardee to the United States in the late 1960s. He spent over 10 years in the food industry, including executive positions in research, production and marketing, before establishing IBIS in 1971. Phil is currently an Adjunct Professor at The University of Technology (Sydney), and a member of the ANU College of Business & Economics Advisory Board. He is a recent past board member of the Melbourne Institute, CEDA and a past Director of Open Family Australia (the charitable foundation aiding street children) where he continues to help as an Ambassador for Whitelion/Open Family. IBISWorld has earned the reputation as an astute forecasting and advisory corporation, based on its unique and comprehensive databases. Its website www.ibisworld. com.au is rated as one of the most sophisticated and powerful industry and marketing websites in the world today. Its foresight and insight of business trends is outstanding, with the most envious record of accuracy among its peers. Their clients include over 1600 of Australia’s large corporations and government authorities, and over 2000 major US corporate and institutional clients. IBISWorld has become the premier provider of industry information in the United States, Canada, Australia, China, the United Kingdom, Indonesia and other nations. It also produces global industry reports on selected industries and markets. It is a privately owned company employing over 300 staff, growing at 15-20% per annum in revenue.

2015 rebuilding foundations for reform

Senator the Hon Scott Ryan Assistant Cabinet Secretary

Laureate Professor Emeritus Cheryl Saunders AO

Senator Scott Ryan was elected to the Senate in 2007 and again in 2013.

Director of Studies, Government Law, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne

In September 2015, Scott was appointed to the first Turnbull Ministry as Assistant Cabinet Secretary. Prior to this appointment, Scott served in the first Abbott Ministry as the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education and Training, and the Shadow Ministry from 2010, as Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition.

Cheryl Saunders is a laureate professor emeritus at Melbourne Law School, where she was the founding Director of the Centre for Comparative Constitutional Studies. She is a Director of Studies in the Melbourne Law Masters in which she teaches a range of subjects including, in 2016, Comparative Federal Constitutional Law (with Professor Vicki Jackson, Harvard).

Scott has previously served on numerous Senate and joint committees, including as chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Finance and Public Administration.

Cheryl Saunders has specialist interests in constitutional law and comparative public law, including federalism and intergovernmental relations and constitutional design and change, on all of which she has written widely. She is the author of The Australian Constitution: A Contextual Analysis (Hart Publishing, 2011) and an editor of Intergovernmental Relations in Federal Countries (OUP, 2015), with Johanne Poirier and John Kincaid.

Scott graduated from St Kevin’s College and went on to complete a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours at the University of Melbourne. Before being elected to the Senate, Scott worked for international pharmaceuticals company, GlaxoSmithKline and as a consultant in the health and insurance industries. He has also served as a Research Fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs, worked as a Senior Adviser to the Leader of the Opposition in Victoria, a speechwriter for Sen the Hon Nick Minchin and in the office of the Victorian Premier, the Hon Jeff Kennett. Scott is married to Helen. They have a son and live in Melbourne. He is a member of the Essendon Football Club, the Institute of Public Affairs, the Centre for Independent Studies and the Samuel Griffiths Society. He is a life member of the Melbourne University Liberal Club and life member and patron of the Australian Liberal Students’ Federation. He is also co-convenor of the Parliamentary Brain Tumour Awareness Group.

Cheryl Saunders is an editor of the Public Law Review and a member of the editorial boards of a range of Australian and international journals, including Publius, Jus Politicum and the Constitutional Court Review, South Africa. She has held visiting positions at the universities of Oxford, Cambridge, Paris II, Georgetown, Indiana (Bloomington), Hong Kong, Copenhagen, Fribourg, Capetown, Auckland and Trento. She is President Emeritus of the International Association of Constitutional Law and the International Association of Centers for Federal Studies and a former President of the Administrative Review Council of Australia. She is a senior technical advisor to the Constitution Building Program of International IDEA. In 1994, Cheryl Saunders was made an officer of the Order of Australia, for services to the law and to public administration. She was awarded a Centenary Medal in 2003, and an honorary doctorate from the University of Cordoba, Argentina in 2005. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of Law.

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Economic Social outlook conference

Ms Deena Shiff

The Hon Bill Shorten MP

Non-Executive Director, The Citadel Group

Leader of the Opposition

Deena Shiff has worked in the telecommunications industry for over 25 years. She served as a Group Managing Director at Telstra between 2005 and 2013, during which time she headed the Wholesale Division, established Telstra Business to support the needs of small business, and was the founding CEO of Telstra Ventures. Deena is currently a Non Executive Director and is on Boards or Advisory Boards of a number of both publicly listed and private companies operating in the areas of communications and technology. She is a former Deputy Chair of Efic, and has also served on the NSW Taskforce on the Digital Economy.

Bill was born and raised in Melbourne, and is a proud Victorian. After completing high school at Xavier College, Bill graduated from Monash University in Arts and Law. Bill also has an MBA from the Melbourne Business School.

Deena is currently a non executive director on the board of Appen Ltd, Chair of the Sydney Writers’ Festival and Chair of the 2015 Regional Telecommunications Independent Review Committee. Deena holds a Bachelor of Science (Economics) from the London School of Economics and Political Science and a Masters of Arts (Law) from the University of Cambridge. She is also a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors.

Becoming involved in the Labor Party at university, Bill worked as a lawyer at the firm Maurice Blackburn Cashman after finishing his studies. Bill joined the union movement in 1994 when he began work at the Australian Workers’ Union as an organiser. Passionate about getting a fair deal for Australian workers, Bill became the AWU’s Victorian Secretary and then National Secretary. Bill was also a director of Australian Super before entering parliament in 2007. His experience in the union movement and with Australian Super have given Bill the belief that Labor can and does deliver for working people. Bill lives in Maribyrnong with his wife, Chloe and their three children. He barracks for Collingwood in the AFL and enjoys taking part in fun runs, reading and spending time with his young family.

2015 rebuilding foundations for reform

Professor Judith Sloan

Mr Greg Smith

Professorial Fellow, Melbourne Institute and Contributing Editor, The Australian

Chairperson, Commonwealth Grants Commission

Professor Judith Sloan, one of Australia’s best-known economists, is a leading figure in academic and business circles and has extensive experience in both the public and private sectors. She is currently an Honorary Professorial Fellow at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne. She is also a director of the Lowy Institute for International Policy and a regular contributor to The Australian newspaper. She has also been a university professor, a commissioner on the Productivity Commission, deputy chair of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and Commissioner of the Australian Fair Pay Commission. Over the years she has sat on several boards, including Santos, Mayne Group, SGIO Insurance and Primelife.

Greg Smith is Chairman of the Commonwealth Grants Commission, a Senior Fellow at the Melbourne Law School, a member of the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute (ANU) advisory committee and a member of the CEDA Council on Economic Policy. He was formerly a head of the Commonwealth Treasury Budget and Revenue Groups, and a member of the ‘Henry’ Future Tax System Review panel.

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Economic Social outlook conference

Mr Glenn Stevens

Professor Gary Sturgess

Governor, Reserve Bank of Australia

NSW Premier’s ANZSOG Chair of Public Service Delivery, The University of New South Wales

Glenn Stevens is Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia. Mr Stevens is a graduate of the University of Sydney and the University of Western Ontario, Canada. He joined the Bank’s Research Department in 1980 and held various senior positions in the 1990s, including heading the Economic Analysis and International Departments. From 1996 to 2001, he was Assistant Governor (Economic), responsible for overseeing economic and policy advice to the Governor and Board of the RBA. He was appointed Deputy Governor and a member of the Reserve Bank Board in December 2001. His appointment as Governor was effective 18 September 2006. Mr Stevens is Chair of the Reserve Bank Board and Payments System Board, and Chair of the Council of Financial Regulators. He is one of two Australian representatives on the Financial Stability Board (FSB), an international body to promote financial stability. He serves on the FSB’s Steering Committee and chairs its Standing Committee on Assessment of Vulnerabilities. In the charitable sphere, Mr Stevens is Chair of the Financial Markets Foundation for Children and a Director of The Anika Foundation.

Professor Gary Sturgess holds the NSW Premier’s ANZSOG Chair of Public Service Delivery at the University of New South Wales, and is also Professor of Public Service Innovation at Griffith University in Brisbane. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, he was DirectorGeneral of the NSW Cabinet Office under Premier Nick Greiner, and among other initiatives, played a major role in the establishment of the Independent Commission Against Corruption and the Independent Pricing and Regulatory Tribunal. From 2000, he spent more than a decade in London as Executive Director of the Serco Institute, a corporate think tank established by the British public service company, Serco Group plc, to study the design and management of public service markets. Since returning to Australia in 2011 to take up the ANZSOG chair, he has been studying the management of front line public services and the commissioning of service delivery from public and private providers.

He has been a visiting scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco and a member of the Advisory Boards of the Hong Kong Institute for Monetary Research, the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne and the Australian School of Business at the University of New South Wales. In June 2014, Mr Stevens was awarded a Doctor of Laws, honoris causa (LLD) by Western University in Ontario, Canada. Mr Stevens is a signatory to The Banking and Finance Oath.

2015 rebuilding foundations for reform

Professor Helen Sullivan

Professor On Kit Tam

Director, Melbourne School of Government, The University of Melbourne

Professor of Finance, RMIT University

Professor Helen Sullivan is Foundation Director of the Melbourne School of Government (MSoG) and a public policy scholar. Her research and teaching explores the changing nature of state-society relationships including the theory and practice of governance and collaboration, new forms of democratic participation, and public policy and service reform. She has published widely on public policy, public governance and public service reform in leading academic journals as well as practitioner media. She is author of a number of books including Working Across Boundaries (2002) and Power, Participation and Political Renewal (2007) and Hybrid Governance in European Cities: Neighbourhood, Migration and Democracy (2013). Helen’s work reflects a long-term commitment to finding new ways to bridge the gap between research and policy; a contribution acknowledged most recently by the award of a Fellowship from the Institute of Public Administration Australia (Victoria) where she is also an Executive Board Member.

Professor On Kit Tam is Professor of Finance at RMIT, Board Member of the Australia China Business Council Victoria, and Director on the Board of Royal District Nursing Services. Professor Tam was previously Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics, and Director of China Research Centre at Monash University. Other previous appointments include executive/academic positions at the Australian Commonwealth Government Department of Treasury, the University of New South Wales, and Phillips Hong Kong. He has held visiting positions with Australian National University, University of California Berkeley, Renmin University of China, Nanjing University, and the University of Hong Kong, as well as being Adjunct Professor of Finance in Beijing’s Central University of Finance and Economics, and Tianjin University. Professor Tam has published extensively on China’s economic and financial reform, foreign investment, and corporate governance. His research has won grants and awards from key Australian and international bodies including the Australian Research Council and the Ford Foundation. Professor Tam has been consultant and adviser for major multilateral organisations (World Bank, Asian Development Bank), Chinese and Australian government organisations, and international corporations (Lend Lease, Rio Tinto, MLC Financial Services), and was an independent director of a joint venture fund management company in China set up by the Commonwealth Bank of Australia.

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Mr Michael Thawley AO

Professor Susan Thorp

Secretary, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

Professor of Finance, The University of Sydney Business School

Michael Thawley was appointed secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) from 1 December 2014.

Susan Thorp researches life cycle finance, particularly individual financial decision making, and financial market integration. She works in cross-disciplinary teams, often using experimental and survey methods. Professor Thorp has published over thirty academic papers in leading finance journals including the Review of Finance and the Journal of Banking and Finance. She is also a regular contributor to pension policy discussions and is a member of the OECD/INFE Research Committee.

From September 2005 until November 2014, he was a senior executive at Capital Group, a major US funds management group, where he had a variety of roles including as vice chairman of the boards of a number of global mutual funds in the American Funds family. Before joining Capital Group, he was Australia’s ambassador to the United States. While ambassador, he played a leading role in achieving the Australia-US free trade agreement and US immigration legislation that provides for visas for Australian professionals to work in the United States.

Professor Thorp gained her BEc (Hons) from the University of Sydney, and her PhD from the University of New South Wales. Before joining the University of Sydney, she held positions as Professor of Finance and Superannuation at the University of Technology Sydney, and the Reserve Bank of Australia.

He was the international adviser to the former Australian prime minister, Mr John Howard, from 1996 to 1999. Before that, he was head of the international division of PM&C under the previous prime minister, Mr Paul Keating. He entered the Australian public service in 1972, and he served in a variety of government positions in the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade and the Office of National Assessments in Australia and overseas, including in Rome, Moscow and Tokyo. He was appointed an officer in the Order Of Australia in 2006 for his contribution to Australia’s strategic and economic interests. He was born in London, moved to Australia as a child, and graduated from the Australian National University. He is married and has three sons.

2015 rebuilding foundations for reform

The Hon Malcolm Turnbull MP

Mr David Uren

Prime Minister of Australia

Economics Editor, The Australian

Malcolm Turnbull is a Liberal member of the House of Representatives and the Prime Minister of Australia. He served as the Communications Minister from September 2013 to September 2015. He was Leader of the Opposition from 16 September 2008 to 1 December 2009 and prior to that Shadow Treasurer.

David Uren is The Australian’s Economics Editor and has been leading the paper’s Canberra economic coverage for twelve years. He is author of the new book on Australia’s attitudes to global business – Takeover: foreign investment and the Australian psyche, and of the book on our relationship with China, The Kingdom and the Quarry.

Elected to Federal Parliament as the Member for Wentworth in 2004, Malcolm was appointed Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister with responsibility for national water policy, and in 2007 appointed to Cabinet as the Minister for Environment and Water Resources. Malcolm graduated from Sydney University with degrees in Arts and Law. He was a Rhodes scholar and completed a further law degree at Oxford. Malcolm worked as a journalist both in Australia and the United Kingdom before he began legal practice in 1980. He successfully defended the former MI5 agent Peter Wright in his efforts to publish his memoirs, Spycatcher. In 1987 Malcolm established his own investment banking firm and during that time co-founded a number of Australian companies including OzEmail Ltd, Australia’s first large Internet service provider. He joined Goldman Sachs & Co in 1997 as Chairman of its Australian business, becoming a partner of the global firm in 1998. Malcolm is married to Lucy and they have two adult children.

His career in journalism includes nine years as the editor of Business Review Weekly, and periods editing the Asian business magazines, Asiabanking and Asia Inc, as well as policy publications for the Business Council of Australia, Accenture and the Centre for Corporate Public Affairs. He has also worked in investor relations, advising blue-chip corporations including BHP-Billiton, ANZ and Southcorp.

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Professor John Wanna

Professor Beth Webster

Sir John Bunting Chair of Public Administration, The Australian National University

Director, Centre for Transformative Innovation, Swinburne University of Technology

Professor John Wanna holds the inaugural Sir John Bunting Chair in Public Administration (ANZSOG) at the Australian National University. He is National Research Director for the Australia and New Zealand School of Government, and a research professor in the School of Politics and International Relations at ANU.

Professor Beth Webster is the Director of the Centre for Transformative Innovation at Swinburne University of Technology. She is also an Honorary Professorial Fellow, Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research at the University of Melbourne.

John has studied Australian governments since the mid-1970s and has made a major contribution to the study of public administration in Australia and internationally. His interests include public finance and government budget reform, public sector management, federalism and intergovernmental relations, Australian politics, state politics and the changing nature and practices of governance. A National Fellow and Councillor of the Institute of Public Administration Australia (IPAA), John served as editor of the Australian Journal of Public Administration for twenty years to 2014. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Science Australia.

She has authored over 100 articles on the economics of innovation and firm performance and has been published in RAND Journal of Economics, Review of Economics and Statistics, Oxford Economic Papers, Journal of Law & Economics and Cambridge Journal of Economics. She has been appointed to a number of committees including the Lomax-Smith Base funding Review; CEDA Advisory Council; the Advisory Council for Intellectual Property; Board Member, European Policy for Intellectual Property Association; and Board Member, Asia Pacific Innovation Network.

A number of John’s research monographs and co-edited volumes are available online through ANU Press, including Abbott’s Gambit: The 2013 Australian federal election, and New Accountabilities, New Challenges (2015).

2015 rebuilding foundations for reform

Professor Peter Whiteford

Associate Professor Roger Wilkins

Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University

Principal Research Fellow and Deputy Director (Research), HILDA Survey, Melbourne Institute, The University of Melbourne

Peter Whiteford is a Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy at The Australian National University, Canberra. He has previously worked at the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales and in the University of York in the United Kingdom, as well as in the Directorate of Employment, Labour and Social Affairs of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development in Paris. His work at the OECD encompassed pension and welfare policies in OECD countries, Eastern Europe and China. He also worked on child poverty, family assistance policies, and welfare reform. He has published extensively on various aspects of the Australian system of income support. In July 2008, he was appointed by the Australian government to the Reference Group for the Harmer Review of the Australian pension system. He was an invited keynote speaker at the Melbourne Institute-Australia’s Future Tax and Transfer Policy Conference held in June 2009 as part of the Henry Review of Australia’s Future Tax System, and he participated in the Australian Government Tax Forum held in Canberra in October 2011. He is an Associate Investigator with the ARC Centre of Excellence in Population Ageing Research (CEPAR). He is also an Adjunct Professor with the Social Policy Research Centre at UNSW and an Honorary Professor in the School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Nanjing University, China. He is an independent member of the Sustainability Committee of the Board of the National Disability Insurance Agency.

Roger Wilkins joined the Melbourne Institute in 2001 and works in the HILDA Survey team, in which he is Deputy Director (Research). He holds a BCom (Hons), MCom (Hons) and PhD from the University of Melbourne and an MSc from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research interests include the nature, causes and consequences of labour market outcomes; the distribution and dynamics of individuals’ economic wellbeing; and the incidence and determinants of poverty, social exclusion and welfare dependence. As part of his work in the HILDA Survey team, he produces the annual HILDA Survey Statistical Report, which each year analyses the latest release of the HILDA data. He also produces the Australian component of the World Top Incomes Database. Roger is a member of the ABS Labour Statistics Advisory Group, the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI) Research Panel, and the Department of Social Services ‘Building a New Life in Australia’ Survey Technical Reference Group.

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Economic Social outlook conference

Professor Christine Wong

Senator Penny Wong

Professor of Chinese Studies and Director, Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies, The University of Melbourne

Shadow Minister for Trade and Investment

Christine Wong is Professor of Chinese Studies and Director of the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies at the University of Melbourne. In the past, Christine has held positions as Professor and Director of Chinese Studies at the University of Oxford (and Fellow at Lady Margaret Hall), and the Henry M. Jackson Professor of International Studies at the University of Washington. She has also taught in the economics departments at the University of California, Santa Cruz; University of California, Berkeley; and Mount Holyoke College. Christine’s research focuses on China’s public finance and public sector reform. She has worked extensively with the World Bank, the IMF, the OECD, and other international organisations. Christine is a member of the OECD Advisory Panel on Budgeting and Public Expenditures.

Penny Wong was born in the Malaysian state of Sabah. Her family moved to Australia in 1976, when she was eight years old, and settled in Adelaide. Her firm childhood plan was to study medicine, become a doctor, and join Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders). However a gap year working as a volunteer in hospitals in Brazil revealed a queasy disposition, so Penny changed course and studied law and arts at the University of Adelaide, graduating with honours in 1992. Before entering politics she worked for the union covering furniture industry employees, as a ministerial adviser and as a lawyer. She was elected to the Senate for the Australian Labor Party in 2001. With the election of the Rudd Government in 2007, she was appointed Minister for Climate Change and Water. After the 2010 federal election, Penny was appointed as Minister for Finance and Deregulation. In 2013 she was elected Leader of the Government in the Senate and, after the change of government that year, she became Leader of the Opposition in the Senate – the first woman to hold both of these roles. She is the Opposition’s Shadow Minister for Trade and Investment and a member of the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security. See more at: http://aiec.idp.com/penny-wong#sthash.VwWNgS81.dpuf

2015 rebuilding foundations for reform

Professor Mark Wooden Professorial Research Fellow and Director, HILDA Survey, Melbourne Institute, The University of Melbourne Mark Wooden has almost 30 years’ experience working in self-funded research organisations, first at the National Institute of Labour Studies at Flinders and then at the Melbourne Institute at the University of Melbourne. The author of more than 200 journal articles and other publications, he is one of Australia’s most well-known commentators on contemporary developments in the labour market. In 2000 he was appointed a Professorial Fellow with the Melbourne Institute where he led the winning tender for the design and management of the HILDA Survey, Australia’s first large-scale household panel survey. The HILDA Survey is still going strong today, and is generating world-class data used by many hundreds of researchers within both academia and government.

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conference sessions

2015 rebuilding foundations for reform

Session 1: Opening Welcome

Mr Paul Kelly, Editor-at-Large, The Australian

Introduction

Professor Glyn Davis AC, Vice-Chancellor, The University of Melbourne

Opening Speaker The Hon Malcolm Turnbull MP, Prime Minister of Australia

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Session 2: Making a Difference Policy-makers aspire to change the world for the better, but the gaps between aspiration and implementation can be large. What do we know about successful policy implementation?

Chair

Professor Paul Kofman, Dean, Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of Melbourne

Speakers

Mr Glenn Stevens, Governor, Reserve Bank of Australia

Mr Peter Harris AO, Chairman, Productivity Commission

Professor Deborah Cobb-Clark, Ronald Henderson Professor and Director, Melbourne Institute, The University of Melbourne

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Session 3: Why budget is so hard to fix? The governmentâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s tax revenue has been failing to meet growth forecasts for five years, while spending consistently runs ahead. There is political acknowledgement of the problem but no agreement on the solution.

Chair

Professor Helen Sullivan, Director, Melbourne School of Government, The University of Melbourne

Speakers

The Hon Chris Bowen MP, Shadow Treasurer

Mr Chris Richardson, Partner, Deloitte Access Economics

Professor John Wanna, Sir John Bunting Chair of Public Administration, The Australian National University

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Lunch (Day One) Chair

Mr David Uren, Economics Editor, The Australian

Speaker

The Hon Scott Morrison MP, Treasurer

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Session 4A: Driving economic growth There have been constant shifts in the sources of Australiaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s growth since the last recession in the early 1990s. As the resource construction boom winds down, where does Australia turn for future prosperity?

Chair

Professor Christine Wong, Professor of Chinese Studies and Director, Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies, The University of Melbourne

Speakers

Professor Bob Gregory AO, Emeritus Professor, Research School of Economics, The Australian National University

Professor Mark Wooden, Professorial Research Fellow and Director, HILDA Survey, Melbourne Institute, The University of Melbourne

Mr Phil Ruthven, Founder & Director, IBISWorld

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Session 4B: Competition policy How are commonwealth and state governments progressing with the implementation of reforms urged by Ian Harperâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Competition Policy Review?

Chair

Professor Judith Sloan, Professorial Fellow, Melbourne Institute and Contributing Editor, The Australian

Speakers

Professor Ian Harper, Partner, Deloitte Access Economics

Ms Lin Hatfield Dodds, National Director, UnitingCare

Professor Gary Sturgess AM, Premierâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s ANZSOG Chair in Public Service Delivery, The University of New South Wales

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Session 4C: Inequality The rise in extreme wealth among the â&#x20AC;&#x153;1 per centâ&#x20AC;? has occurred at the same time as an unprecedented reduction in global poverty.

Chair

Professor Shelley Mallett, Professorial Fellow in Social Policy, School of Social and Political Science, The University of Melbourne and General Manager Research and Policy, Brotherhood of St Laurence

Speakers

The Hon Dr Andrew Leigh MP, Shadow Assistant Treasurer

Professor Ross Garnaut AO, Professorial Research Fellow, Faculty of Business and Economics, The University of Melbourne

Dr Francisco Azpitarte Raposeiras, Ronald Henderson Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute, The University of Melbourne

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Session 5: Is the welfare system sustainable? The redistribution of tax payersâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; funds through the welfare system is driven by notions of equity. How does this align with individual responsibility?

Chair

Associate Professor Roger Wilkins, Principal Research Fellow and Deputy Director (Research), HILDA Survey, Melbourne Institute, The University of Melbourne

Speakers

Mr Simon Cowan, Research Fellow, The Centre for Independent Studies

Professor Peter Whiteford, Professor, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University

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2015 rebuilding foundations for reform

Conference Dinner, Thursday 5 November 2015 The rise in extreme wealth among the â&#x20AC;&#x153;1 per centâ&#x20AC;? has occurred at the same time as an unprecedented reduction in global poverty.

Chair Mr Paul Kelly, Editor-at-Large, The Australian Keynote Speaker

NOTES

Mr John Fraser, Secretary, Department of the Treasury

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Session 6: The Federation The commonwealth has steadily increased its power and revenue base at the expense of the states. There is agreement on the need for rebalancing but not the means.

Chair

Laureate Professor Emeritus Cheryl Saunders AO, Melbourne Law School, The University of Melbourne

Speakers

The Hon John Brumby, Former Premier of Victoria and Professorial Fellow, The University of Melbourne and Monash University

Professor John Daley, Chief Executive Officer, Grattan Institute

The Hon Peter Gutwein MP, Treasurer of Tasmania and Minister for Planning and Local Government

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Session 7A: The political economy of tax reform The Henry Tax Review was widely acclaimed but most of its recommendations ignored. What are the ingredients of successful tax reform?

Chair

Professor Janine Oâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;Flynn, Professor of Public Management, Melbourne School of Government, The University of Melbourne

Speakers

Mr Greg Smith, Chairperson, Commonwealth Grants Commission

Professor John Freebairn, Ritchie Chair in Economics, Department of Economics, The University of Melbourne

Dr David Gillespie MP, Member for Lyne

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Session 7B: Retirement policy Covering the cost of a rapidly growing aged population will challenge both retirement and pension systems. What can be done to ease the burden?

Chair

Ms Patricia Karvelas, Presenter, Radio National Drive, ABC Radio National

Speakers

Ms Karen Chester, Commissioner, Productivity Commission

Mr Peter Davidson, Senior Adviser, Australian Council of Social Service

Professor Susan Thorp, Professor of Finance, The University of Sydney Business School

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Session 7C: Innovation Does government have a role in supporting business innovation beyond fostering competition and securing intellectual property?

Chair

Professor Paul Jensen, Acting Director and Professorial Research Fellow, Melbourne Institute

Speakers

Dr Matthew Butlin, Red Tape Commissioner, Department of Treasury and Finance

Mr David Dyer, Principal, McKinsey & Company

Ms Deena Shiff, Non-Executive Director, The Citadel Group

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Lunch (Day Two) Chair

Mr Jim Middleton, Vice-Chancellorâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Fellow, The University of Melbourne

Speaker

The Hon Bill Shorten MP, Leader of the Opposition

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Session 8A: Higher education Tertiary institutions have become one of the nationâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s largest export earners but still have trouble getting their financing onto a sound footing.

Chair

Professor Beth Webster, Director, Centre for Transformative Innovation, Swinburne University of Technology

Speakers

Senator the Hon Simon Birmingham, Minister for Education and Training

Professor Glyn Davis AC, Vice-Chancellor, The University of Melbourne

Professor Bruce Chapman AM, Director, Policy Impact, Crawford School of Public Policy, The Australian National University

Mr Andrew Norton, Program Director, Higher Education, Grattan Institute

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Session 8B: Trade and investment Bilateral trade agreements have flourished as multilateral trade agreements have become too hard. Do they deliver their promise?

Chair

Mr Rowan Callick, Asia Pacific Editor, The Australian

Speakers

Senator Penny Wong, Shadow Minister for Trade and Investment

Mr Alan Oxley, Managing Director, ITS Global

Professor On Kit Tam, Professor of Finance, RMIT University

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Session 8C: Industry/political advice Government faces a vast array of pressures from lobby groups and interested parties as it develops policy positions. Who succeeds and why?

Chair

Mr Nicholas Reece, Director Strategy, Chancellery and Principal Fellow, Melbourne School of Government, The University of Melbourne

Speakers

Senator the Hon Scott Ryan, Assistant Cabinet Secretary

Dr Andrew Charlton, Director, Sydney, AlphaBeta

Mr Geoff Allen AM, Chairman, The Centre for Corporate Public Affairs

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Session 9: Policy and practice The challenge of implementing a new policy agenda

Chair

Mr David Uren, Economics Editor, The Australian

Speakers

The Hon Josh Frydenberg MP, Minister for Resources, Energy and Northern Australia

Mr Paul Kelly, Editor at Large, The Australian

Mr Michael Thawley AO, Secretary, Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

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2015 rebuilding foundations for reform