I share the 8 biggest things I learned from my Australian policy series. The conversations totaled more than 12 hours of discussion.

Grateful to my guests and to everyone who attended the live events. Was really fun to meet and hang out with you all!

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This episode is the seventh instalment of my Australian policy series, recorded live in Sydney on April 29, 2025. 

I speak with Ken Henry—former Treasury Secretary and chair of the landmark Henry Tax Review—about why Australia hasn’t achieved major economic reform since the GST, and what must change to restart it. 

We discuss how AGI could reshape the public service, intergenerational unfairness in the tax system, the collapse in business investment, how to build a new Australian city, and the roots of Australia's long-standing policy complacency.

Video available here:

Transcript available here:

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This episode is the sixth instalment of my Australian policy series, recorded live in Sydney on February 26, 2025.

I speak with Sam Roggeveen—Director of the Lowy Institute’s International Security Program, and a former senior analyst at the Office of National Assessments—about why the United States won’t fight China for dominance in Asia, and what that means for an Australia long reliant on American protection.

We explore the limits of America’s resolve in Asia, why an alliance with Indonesia should be the top priority of Australian statecraft, whether new technologies like drones are reversing the long-held advantage of the defender, the possibility that Australia might one day acquire nuclear weapons, and how Sam’s “echidna strategy” could let us defend ourselves from a major Asian power without substantially boosting defence spending.

Video available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uq9n62A07mE

Transcript available here: https://josephnoelwalker.com/sam-roggeveen-aus-policy-series/ 

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This episode is the fifth instalment of my Australian policy series, recorded live in Sydney on February 12, 2025.

I speak with Peter Tulip—Chief Economist at the Centre for Independent Studies, and a former senior researcher at both the Reserve Bank of Australia and the US Federal Reserve.

We go deep into what's driving Australia's housing crisis, the problems with heritage rules and height restrictions, critiques of both NIMBY and YIMBY thinking, the sobering 10–20-year timeframe that even an “extremely ambitious” supply plan might require, and the cultural shift needed to reach a new equilibrium where housing is truly abundant.

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Australia stands alone among English-speaking democracies with its compulsory, preferential voting system. But why?

This episode is the fourth instalment of my Australian policy series. It was recorded in Melbourne on March 6, 2025.

I speak with Judith Brett—Emeritus Professor of Politics at La Trobe University and author of the canonical history of Australia's electoral system, From Secret Ballot to Democracy Sausage—about how Australia became an electoral trailblazer.

We trace the accidental adoption of near-universal manhood suffrage in the 1850s, the political calculations that led to compulsory voting and preferential voting, and why bureaucratic efficiency is so deeply woven into our electoral culture.

Along the way, we explore how Benthamite thinking and low taxation in the colonial era combined to create a voting system that is unique among English-speaking democracies.

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This episode is the third of my live policy salons. It was recorded in Sydney on February 5, 2025.

We explore the concept of state capacity—the ability of governments to achieve their policy goals—and ask why Australia outperforms almost every other country in the world in this domain.

For the conversation, I'm joined by two of Australia's great public policy economists.

Richard Holden is professor of economics at UNSW Business School and president of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

Steven Hamilton is assistant professor of economics at The George Washington University in Washington DC, and a former Australian Treasury official.

If you’d like to attend an upcoming salon, you can get tickets here.

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This episode is the second of my live policy salons. It was recorded in Sydney on January 29, 2025.

What is the relationship between economic equality and egalitarianism in the cultural sense? Where does Australia's egalitarian tradition come from? Are we too egalitarian? Is economic inequality increasing? What's been driving it? And does it even matter?

We sit down with Andrew Leigh to discuss these questions and more.

Dr. Andrew Leigh MP is Australia’s Assistant Minister for Competition, Charities, and Treasury, and Assistant Minister for Employment. An economist by training, he was previously Professor of Economics at the Australian National University and earned his PhD from Harvard. The main theme of his academic research has been inequality.

If you’d like to attend an upcoming salon, you can get tickets here: https://josephnoelwalker.com/events/

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This episode is the first of my live policy salons. It was recorded in Melbourne on January 23, 2025.

In this salon, we go deep into Australia's immigration policy with Abul Rizvi, former Deputy Secretary of the Department of Immigration. Abul managed Australia’s migration program from 1995 to 2007 and played a crucial role in the 2001 policy changes that massively increased the intake of skilled migrants—most notably by expanding pathways for overseas students. 

If you’d like to attend an upcoming salon, you can get tickets here: https://josephnoelwalker.com/events/

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This episode is a little different: I’m the one being interviewed—and my interlocutor is Andy Matuschak, an independent applied researcher focused on "tools for thought" (ways to augment human intelligence). Andy founded and led Khan Academy’s Research and Development Lab, and prior to that, he was a senior engineer at Apple where he helped build iOS. I first discovered Andy’s work in 2021, and it was a game changer for me and the podcast. We spoke on the show in 2022.

In 2024, I recorded some podcast interviews in the US, and had the pleasure of hanging out with Andy while I was in San Francisco.

In October, Andy dropped by my place in SF to go behind the scenes of my podcast research process and interview me while I prepared for a conversation with Larry Summers. This is an unvarnished, unfiltered look at my tech stack and how I prepare for my interviews. I'm very grateful to Andy for suggesting the idea and for so thoughtfully drawing out my current strategies, tactics and tools.

I support Andy's research. If you'd like to do so too, go here.

If you'd like to access my interview research notes for podcast interviews, you can support to access here.

Watch this episode on YouTube here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTI69kKeaC4

 

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Eugene Fama is a 2013 Nobel laureate in economic sciences, and is widely recognised as the "father of modern finance." He is currently the Robert R. McCormick Distinguished Service Professor of Finance at the University of Chicago.

Full transcript available at: https://josephnoelwalker.com/eugene-fama-156/

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