The reMAKERs

What if Australia had a national conversation about the country we want to have, and the kind of ancestors we want to be — and then enshrined these goals into legislation? What if we asked school children to write postcards to their future selves and construct their dream cities using lego and minecraft, and decision-makers really listened? What if different sectors — from health and transport to business and NGOs — came together inspired and united by a shared vision of what we want?

Meet Sophie Howe, the groundbreaking leader who had a front seat in driving this transformation in Wales, as the world’s first ever Commissioner for Future Generations.  Her job description was to be the legislated “conscience of the nation and voice of future generations" under the country’s Future Generations Act.   What she actually did required no small amount of inspiring people, building relationships, navigating political systems — as well as sometimes “banging heads together”.

Sophie joins us to talk through the journey Wales has been on and the lessons for Australia: how we can strengthen and rebuild trust in government and institutions like our public sector; how ideas can snow-ball, gathering others to drive incredibly brave, long-term, cross-siloed solutions; and why getting the systems of government right makes every other breakthrough possible.  As the Albanese Government puts its oars in the water for the first time towards a wellbeing framework of our own, Sophie reckons those of us who want to see Australia follow a similar path could be “knocking on an open door”.  This conversation also builds on our chat chat with Dr Cressida Gaukroger in episode 2 of this season (‘The Road to Wellbeing’)— check it out if you missed it.  

This episode of the reMAKERS was recorded on the lands of the palawa people in lutriwita/Tasmania.  We honour Traditional Owners of these lands and waters, and pay our respect to Elders past and present.  

SHOW NOTES

Things we mention

The Wellbeing of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015 — including the 7 wellbeing goals      

The  visioning project and nine pillars of Australia reMADE

The ‘SDGS’ — UN Sustainable Development Goals

‘Slow lanes’ in the supermarket for people who want to talk

Wales announcing a moratorium on new roads (changing tack from more freeways to active and public transport infrastructure)

Hospitals working with green construction firm to re-purpose vacant lands

Recommendations and things you can do

Check out Measuring What Matters — the first wellbeing report from Australia’s Treasurer Jim Chalmers.

Watch Sophie’s John Menadue Oration — her recent speech for The Centre for Policy Development in Australia.

Learn more about the role of Future Generations Commissioner and key achievements.

Read “Governments can do amazing things” — Millie’s blog inspired by Sophie Howe’s 2023 John Menadue Oration.

Tell your MP you support a National Conversation about ‘the Australia we want’, and look out for other opportunities to get involved.

Donate to support these conversations and the work of Australia reMADE.

Subscribe to the reMAKERS podcast (hit ‘follow’ in your podcast app). Share on social, write a review, tell a friend.

Join the conversation. Find us on social media (@Australia reMADE) or email us at [email protected].

Are you overdue for a big pay rise? Would moving a 4 day standard working week be the best way for your employer to give you one (even if you work part-time)?

Economist and Professor John Quiggin thinks so — and he joins for a fireside chat to explain this and other big ideas gathering momentum in modern economics today. 

This is your episode if you want to better understand policies like a 4 Day Working Week, different forms of Basic Income, a National Employment Guarantee and how these things would work in practice. What’s inflationary? What can we afford? What about taxes? When does government debt actually matter, and what does the pathway to change look like?

John Quiggin is one of the most respected and prolific voices in Australian economics today.  He is a VC Senior Fellow in Economics at the University of Queensland, with more than 1500 publications to his name — including six books. His latest, Economics in Two Lessons: Why Markets Work so Well and Why they can Fail so Badly, is published by Princeton University Press.  You can find him everywhere, see links below in your show notes.

This episode of the reMAKERS was recorded in Gubbi Gubbi country on the sunshine coast of Queensland, as well as the land of the Turrbal and Jagera peoples in Meanjin, Brisbane. We honour traditional owners of these lands and waters, and pay our respect to elders past, present and emerging.

SHOW NOTES

Things we mention

Zombie Economics: How Dead Ideas Still Walk Among Us, book by John Quiggin

4DayWeek.com — the global campaign for a 4 day standard working week 

“Meet the Liveable Income Guarantee”  — article in The Conversation by John Quiggin et al

White Paper on Full Employment in Australia post WW2, and the more recent ‘Jobs and Skills Summit’ 

“Deaths of Despair”

Recommendations and things you can do

Check out John’s latest book, ‘Economics in Two Lessons: Why Markets Work So Well and Why They can Fail so Badly’.

Read John’s newsletter on Substack. 

Check out John’s website for a selection of his recently published media articles and more.

Follow John on Mastodon. 

Learn more about 4 Day Work Week, Basic Income and Full Employment Guarantee + get involved. 

Donate to support this podcast and keep it ad-free.

Subscribe to the reMAKERS podcast (hit ‘follow’ in your podcast app). Share on social, write a review, tell a friend. 

Join the conversation. Find us on social media (@Australia reMADE) or email us at [email protected].

When it comes to our economy, can we dare to ask the question, ‘when is enough, enough?’  Is it time to be more discerning about what we want from our economy and how we define success, from our personal lives to the world at large? 

Political economist, writer and advocate for economic system change Dr Katherine Trebeck is here to guide us through a paradigm shift from the economics of ‘more’ to the economics of wellbeing — what she describes as ‘arriving and making ourselves at home’.  

Katherine is co-founder of the Wellbeing Economy Alliance. She is a writer-in-residence at the University of Edinburgh’s Edinburgh Futures Institute, Strategic Advisor for Australia’s Centre for Policy Development and sits on a range of boards and advisory groups (including our own). She’s co-authored the essential book, ‘The Economics of Arrival: ideas for a grown up economy’.

Katherine has a talent for explaining big ideas with warmth, passion and clarity.  If remaking the economy to better serve people and planet is a thousand piece jigsaw puzzle, where do you start with a puzzle? You start with the corners, which she introduces us to here. It’s a conversation that will change the way you read the news, listen to political speeches, look at business and talk to your friends and family. 

“The purpose of this journey could change. We could go from trying to own the world to trying to feel at home in it… And that’s when you take off your shoes, prepared to stay a while.” - Katrine Marçal, quoted in The Economics of Arrival, page 1. 

SHOW NOTES

Things we mention

European Commission Eight Environment Action Programme

The Club of Rome’s Limits to Growth report (first published more than 50 years ago)

Stockholm Resilience Centre’s guide to Planetary Boundaries

Prof Serge Latouche, who coined the term ‘consolation goods’

Defensive expenditures and ecological economics

Failure demand

Herman Daly’s ‘uneconomic growth’

Worker cooperatives, Community Wealth Building

Deliberative democracy, citizens’ assemblies, participatory budgeting, Just Transition work

Wealth Tax myths debunked by the Tax Justice Network in the UK

Recommendations and things you can do

Read “The Economics of Arrival: Ideas for a grown-up economy” by Katherine Trebeck and Jeremy Williams.

Check out WeAll.org and join your local chapter.

Check out Katherine’s website, follow her on Twitter.

“Channel your inner three-year-old,” and keep asking why, use your spheres of influence, start conversations.

Encourage governments to flip the script (the economy exists to serve the issues we care about), encourage pro-social business models and get real about environmental crises.

Donate to support this podcast and keep it ad-free.

Subscribe to the reMAKERS podcast (hit ‘follow’ in your podcast app). Share on social, write a review, tell a friend.

Join the conversation. Find us on social media (@Australia reMADE), leave a message for the show by calling (02) 7257 2619, or email us at [email protected].

Imagine if we put wellbeing at the heart of government.  Imagine a National Conversation that kicks off and creates shared goals for the ‘Australia We Want’, with input from all corners of society.  

Our former Treasurer may have mocked wellbeing budgets as all mala beads and incense, but more than half the countries in the OECD have some form of wellbeing framework in place. If we get this right in Australia it could be both practical and powerful — even transformative, for our country.

Our next guest, Dr Cressida Gaukroger, is a global expert on wellbeing government. She joins us for a fascinating look at what’s happening globally, what works and what doesn’t, and why she’s completely changed her mind on how ambitious we should be.  

Cressida is a Senior Policy Advisor on Wellbeing with the Centre for Policy Development.  She’s taught ethics at Oxford, has PhD in Philosophy and writes children’s stories in her spare time in a genre she lovingly refers to as “parents’ revenge”.  

SHOW NOTES

Things we mention

Amartya Sen’s ‘Capability Approach’ to wellbeing

Welsh Well-being of Future Generations Act

The Thodey Review (an independent review into Australian public service)

Australia reMADE’s work on what we want the public service to be

How Glasgow took a ‘radically different approach’ to tackling knife crime

Victorian Early Intervention Investment Framework

Treasurer Jim Chalmers’ article in The Monthly about values-based capitalism

The Wales We Want National Conversation

Office of the Future Generations Commissioner in Wales

Recommendations

Sophie Howe’s John Menadue Oration in Australia

“Government Can Do Amazing Things,” by Dr Millie Rooney, Australia reMADE

“The Makings of a Vision” — the backstory to the making of the vision of an Australia reMADE

Things you can do

Check out the upcoming Wellbeing Economy Forum in Iceland (you can register to attend online).

Learn How to host a Kitchen Table Conversation.

Write a letter to the editor, kick off a conversation online or in your networks about these ideas. 

Tell your MP you want a National Conversation for the ‘Australia We Want’. 

Write to the Treasurer as Treasury considers next steps in Australia’s wellbeing budget development. 

Donate to support the podcast and more of these conversations.

Subscribe to the reMAKERS podcast. Share on social, write a review, tell a friend.

Join the conversation. Find us on social media (@Australia reMADE), leave a message for the show by calling (02) 7257 2619, or email us at [email protected].

…

This episode of the reMAKERS was recorded in Gubbi Gubbi Country on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, as well as the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation in Melbourne. We honour Traditional Owners of these lands and waters, and pay our respect to Elders past, present and emerging.   

It’s the economics course you’d actually like to take, and today’s guests hope the best universities in the world copy their approach and put them out of business. In the meantime, they’re educating a new generation of leaders to remake economics from the inside out, and you’re invited to apply.

Join us for a provocative discussion about an economics fit for the 21st century, with guests Steven Hail and Gabrielle Bond. They explain why they quit their jobs to create Australia’s first Master of Economics of Sustainability degree, what they’d like to see our government doing differently, and where to from here if we want to solve the crises of climate change, rising inequality, cost of living and more.

Steven Hail is adjunct Associate Professor at Torrens University and Research Scholar at the Global Institute for Sustainable Prosperity. Gabrielle Bond is a climate activist and organiser, CEO of the charity Modern Money Lab, member of Extinction Rebellion and a co-founder of the Sustainable Prosperity Action Group. This conversation offers a revealing glimpse behind the curtain of economics and power, and a generational transformation we need to accelerate.

This episode of the reMAKERS was recorded in Gubbi Gubbi Country on the Sunshine Coast of Queensland, as well as the lands of the Kaurna people in Adelaide, South Australia. We honour Traditional Owners of these lands and waters, and pay our respect to Elders past, present and emerging.

SHOW NOTES

Things we mention

“What if climate change meant not doom, but abundance?” article in The Washington Post by Rebecca Solnit, March 15, 2023.

"A message from the Future,” video presented by Naomi Klein and the Intercept, with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Stephanie Kelton keynote, Sustainable Prosperity Conference, Adelaide

The Doughnut Economics model — Kate Raworth

Genuine Progress Indicator (an alternative economic measurement to GDP)

Future to Fight For, GetUp campaign

A Federal Jobs Guarantee report by the Sustainable Prosperity Action Group

Universal Basic Income (UBI) in Australia

William Nordhaus’ Nobel Prize

The Appallingly Bad Neoclassical Economics of Climate Change, paper by by Steve Keen

Upcoming weekend intensives with Modern Money Lab

Recommendations

Don’t think of an Elephant, by George Lakoff

Doughnut Economics by Kate Raworth

Less is More and The Divide, both by Jason Hickel

Mission Economy by Mariana Mazzucato

The Deficit Myth by Stephanie Kelton

Things you can do

Sign up for courses with Modern Money Lab and Torrens University

Donate to the team who make this podcast and keep it ad-free.

Share the podcast on social, write a review, tell a friend.

Join the conversation. Find us on social media (@Australia reMADE), leave a message for the show by calling (02) 7257 2619, or email us at [email protected].

What does it mean to contribute? What do we need to to enable everyone to meaningfully contribute to society (and for this contribution to be recognised)? 

In the second half of 2022, Australia reMADE and Women’s Health Goulburn North East hosted a series of live panel discussions based around the three Cs from our public good work — Care, Connection and Contribution.

Join Millie and three expert panellists for our final conversation in this series as they discuss what it means to contribute; the importance of actively building a more respectful society, and the power of a crisis to offer obviously pathways to meaningfully care, connect and contribute.

It’s a conversation about capitalism, history, gender, generations, culture, the lessons of the pandemic and so much more.

Our panellists for today’s discussion are:

Cr Greg James is a very proud Yorta Yorta man and the first Indigenous person to be elected to the Greater Shepparton City Council. Greg is an active member on various boards, community sports and is also an artist.

Judy Horacek is a cartoonist, writer and beloved children’s book-maker (Where is the Green Sheep? Good Night, Sleep Tight). Ten collections of her cartoons have been published, the most recent of which is Now or Never. Her cartoons are often concerned with the environment, feminism and social justice. Judy is also a printmaker and regularly exhibits her work.

Ali Thwaites is an educator and leader, including being a founding member of the Australian Youth for International Climate Engagement Working Group. Since graduating from her Masters in 2016 Ali has been a primary and special education teacher while continuing to work in various youth and environmental leadership roles. 

This was a sensitive, nuanced and wide-ranging conversation covering broad and deeply personal themes. We hope it inspires you to value yourself, be gentle on yourself and play your part to build a world where everyone contributes, matters and belongs.

SHOW NOTES

Things we mention:

Our public good research

Koori Court

Yarning Circles

Universal Basic Income

Youth volunteering

Things you can do:

Be gentle on yourself: you are enough.

Allow yourself to grow, give and take up space — especially if you haven’t, or people like you haven’t, in the past.

Learn to listen and value dialogue over just debate. Learning more about Yarning Circles is a good place to start.

Partner with someone older or younger to learn, mentor and connect.

Find out whose land you’re on if you don’t already know; there’s so much to learn from our Traditional Custodians of Australia.

Chip in to support this podcast and the work of Australia reMADE.

Share the conversation on social, write a review, tell a friend.

Join the conversation. Find us on social media (@Australia reMADE), leave a message for the show by calling (02) 7257 2619, or email us at [email protected].

Welcome to the second instalment in our Bonus Summer Series — a deep dive into CONNECTION.

It’s a conversation about radical love and the peace we gain when we are still, vulnerable and connected to place — accepting Country as a place of care and love that loves us back. It’s about the gender implications of connection as real actual work. It’s about connection across difference, and welcoming connection inside the mess and complexity. It’s about being gentle on ourselves as we try to find and focus on our patch of the world to change.

In the second half of 2022, Australia reMADE and Women’s Health Goulburn North East hosted a series of live panel discussions based around the three Cs from our public good work — Care, Connection and Contribution.

Featuring Millie and three expert panelists:

Dr. Emma Lee is a trawlwulwuy woman of tebrakunna country, north-east Tasmania, Australia.  She is an Associate Professor (Indigenous Leadership) Swinburne University of Technology.  Her research fields over the last 25 years have focused on Indigenous affairs in land and sea management, policy and governance of Australian regulatory environments. She’s also the author of articles like, “We 'love-bombed' the Tasmanian government to win Indigenous rights”.

Jasper Peach, a trans, non-binary and disabled writer, speaker and editor from Jaara Country; Castlemaine, Victoria. They are passionate about equitable access and inclusion, focused around the dismantling of misplaced shame via storytelling. Their first book, “You’ll Be A Wonderful Parent” is a collection of advice and encouragement for new and prospective queer parents, and will be released in March 2023 by Hardie Grant.

Amanda Kelly (she/her), the CEO of Women’s Health Goulburn North East has spent the majority of her working life in the not-for-profit sector. She has always sought to find the connections between the ways we live, work and are in the world. Her current role allows her to focus on the long-term, systemic changes that we need to consider if we want to create a life that is full of meaning for all of us.

It might make you want to sit under tree in the rain for a while. Happy listening.

SHOW NOTES

Things we mention:

Our public good research

Our previous chat with Dr Emma Lee

That time the women of Iceland all went on strike for a day

Abolishing prisons

Things you can do:

Answer the question, ‘What is your little patch to love?’

Be gentle on yourself, explore what it looks like and feels like to love who you are.

Choose localisation over globalisation where you can. Try on the mantra, ‘this is enough for me’.

Chip in to support this podcast and the work of Australia reMADE.

Share the conversation on social, write a review, tell a friend.

Join the conversation. Find us on social media (@Australia reMADE), leave a message for the show by calling (02) 7257 2619, or email us at [email protected].

We bring you the first episode of our Bonus Summer Series — a conversation reframing CARE.

Why is it that a fence line on a National Park changes our care relationship with a piece of land? What does it look like to recognise care as a policy choice rather than just an individual responsibility? And who is up for a four-day work week?

In the second half of 2022, Australia reMADE and Women’s Health Goulburn North East co-hosted a series of live panel discussions based around the three Cs from our public good work — Care, Connection and Contribution.

Join Millie and our three wonderful panellists for our first conversation about valuing care: what it means for our for human life and community, nature and the environment, our careers and family life, and the sort of infrastructure we need to build to care and be cared for well.

The panellists for today’s conversation are:

Beth Thornber, a First Nations artist of the Wiradjuri people, whose art practice considers existing structures cemented in everyday life and applies this lens to reimagine ideas of sacredness, boundaries, common ownership and shared responsibility.

Dr Arnagretta Hunter, a  physician and cardiologist concerned with the effects of climate change on human health. She is the chair of the Commission for the Human Future and a member of the ANU Institute for Climate, Energy and Disaster Solutions.

Matt Grogan, a commercial and property lawyer and a director and founder of community-energy company, Indigo Power Ltd and a founder of Totally Renewable Yackandandah.

This wide-ranging conversation might change the way you think about care forever.

SHOW NOTES

Further reading:

Millie’s blog about her key takeaways from this conversation

“Reclaiming our Purpose: It’s time to talk about the public good” research and report by Australia reMADE

4 Day Work Week (check out the global campaign)

Universal Basic Income (the Australian Parliament website has published this introductory guide)

A living wage

Feminist economics

Things you can do:

Find new ways to openly centre care, and talk about “#valuecaring” in your work and world.

Join a campaign for structural change (see starter list above).

“Throw a fish back” — don’t take more than what you need, leave enough for others.

Chip in to support this podcast and the work of Australia reMADE.

Share the conversation on social, write a review, tell a friend.

Join the conversation. Find us on social media (@Australia reMADE), leave a message for the show by calling (02) 7257 2619, or email us at [email protected].

It’s the end of the year, folks. No one needs anything overly demanding to listen to, but nor do we need a whinge-fest (state of nation: “tired”).

Enter Millie and Lily for the final reMAKERS pod of this year: a pretty chill but perky chat that comes full circle to the start of this season, about our ‘why’ as a country and interesting spaces the public good ideas have travelled to this year.

Find out why 2022 is the year Millie fell in love with public servants, and what Lily’s most excited to learn about next year (bringing the pod community along, of course).

Also some books and podcast recommendations for your summer, even though Millie confesses she has no intention of reading ‘nerd books’ any time soon.  It’s honest, but light. It’s reMAKING, over-an-iced-latte-with-a-friend style.

SHOW NOTES

Things we mention:

Reclaiming our Purpose: It’s time to talk about the public good

Thodey Review into the public service

A public service for the public good? Millie’s recap of a candid and remarkably uplifting public servants’ conversation

“The great delusion behind Twitter” by Ezra Klein, The New York Times, 11 Dec 2022

Recommendations:

Living Democracy, by Tim Hollo

Rest Is Resistance: Reclaiming Our Divine Right to Lay Down, by Tricia Hersey

Doughnut Economics: Seven Ways to Think Like a 21st-Century Economist, by Kate Raworth

The Economics of Arrival: Ideas for a Grown-Up Economy, by Katherine Trebeck and Jeremy Williams

Principle of Charity podcast with Emile Sherman and Lloyd Vogelman

Things you can do

You can now donate! Our small team who make this podcast and keep it ad-free thank you!!

Share the podcast on social, write a review, tell a friend.

Join the conversation. Find us on social media (@Australia reMADE), leave a message for the show by calling (02) 7257 2619, or email us at [email protected].

What does it mean to be Australian? Do we have a national story, a national identity; and do we need one if we’re going to heal the wounds of our past and rise to the challenges ahead? Join us for a fascinating discussion with two of Australia’s leading historians, authors and academics about finding and evolving the story of us.

Professor Emeritus Julianne Shultz and Professor Frank Bongiorno have dedicated their lives to observing, understanding and exploring who we are, and how we got here.

In this wonderful conversation we discuss why Federation celebrations fell flat and were a missed opportunity (but the 2000 Sydney Olympics got the masses nationally inspired), the need for a Hamilton-esque Australian musical (and why we may or may not be ready and able for such a thing), and the potential of the democracy sausage as a national symbol to gather around. 

In her latest book, Julianne writes that, “Change, ambition and doing things differently are surprisingly hard in a place that is at once cosmopolitan and provincially deferential, young and ancient, in Asia but not of it, without much history yet brimming with it”. 

It feels more important than ever right now to have a sense of who we are, what we stand for and how we might come together with all our complexities and contradictions. 

Julianne is Professor Emeritus of Media and Culture at Griffith University’s Centre for Social and Cultural Research. She is currently the chair of The Conversation and was the publisher and founding editor of the Griffith Review. Julianne is recognised as a national leader and advocate on matters related to media and culture. And her wonderful new book, The Idea of Australia: A Search for the Soul of the Nation (2022) really showcases her understanding of Australia as a nation. 

Frank is a Professor of History at the Australian National University and the president of the Australian Historical Association. He is the author of numerous acclaimed histories including The Eighties and The Sex Lives of Australians. His latest book, Dreamers and Schemers: A Political history of Australia, (2022) is a detailed and entertaining insight into our national moments of political renewal and change.

Join us for a fascinating conversation that makes space for new ways of seeing, and new possibilities for us all.

SHOW NOTES

Historical figures we mention

Vida Goldstein

Alfred Deakin

Things you can do

Find these great books at your local bookstore, library or order them online (links above).

Share this podcast, write a review, tell a friend.

Join the conversation. Find us on social media (@Australia reMADE), leave a message for the show by calling (02) 7257 2619, or email us at [email protected].