Australia's Broken Budget | Chris Richardson, Michael Stutchbury, Robert Carling & Richard Holden

Australia's Broken Budget | Chris Richardson, Michael Stutchbury, Robert Carling & Richard Holden

Watch here: https://youtu.be/NpXfg20UPWg As Treasurer Jim Chalmers prepares to hand down his fifth federal budget on 12 May 2026, four of Australia's leading economists gather at the Centre for Independent Studies to ask: is this budget up to the challenge? Hosted by CIS Executive Director Michael Stutchbury, this roundtable brings together Robert Carling (CIS Senior Fellow, former Treasury and IMF official), Professor Richard Holden (UNSW Business School), and Chris Richardson (Principal, Rich Insight and Australia's most cited budget economist) for a frank, wide-ranging conversation on the fiscal pressures facing Australia. They discuss rising inflation, a productivity slowdown, a housing crisis, a federal debt approaching $1 trillion, and whether Chalmers' promises on savings, tax reform, and intergenerational equity stack up. 👉 Support CIS Research: 🔹 Become a member:  https://www.cis.org.au/membership-2-step-1/ 🔹 Make a donation: https://www.cis.org.au/support/donate/today/ 🔹 Learn more: https://www.cis.org.au/ CIS promotes free choice and individual liberty and the open exchange of ideas. CIS encourages debate among leading academics, politicians, media and the public. We aim to make sure good policy ideas are heard and seriously considered so that Australia can prosper.

Antisemitism Is Not a Jewish Problem, It's an Australian Problem | Frydenberg, Finlay & Sackville

Michael Stutchbury, Executive Director of the Centre for Independent Studies, opens this panel discussion with a sobering observation: the Bondi massacre did not come from nowhere. The attack on 14 December 2025 was the violent endpoint of a cascade of hatred that had been building across Australian society for years, and it has forced a confrontation with a question our institutions can no longer avoid. Are our laws, our civic culture, and our leaders equipped to deal with antisemitism as it is now? Former Federal Treasurer The Hon. Josh Frydenberg argues that the answer, so far, has been no. He traces the failure of political and civic leadership that allowed antisemitism to move from the fringes into the mainstream of Australian life, and sets out what he believes the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion must find and recommend to create genuine, lasting change. For Frydenberg, this is not a Jewish problem. It is an Australian one. Human Rights Commissioner Dr Lorraine Finlay examines the tension between protecting Jewish Australians from harm and preserving the liberal freedoms that define an open society, and argues these goals are not in conflict. She warns against treating the Royal Commission as the solution in itself, calling on institutions and individuals alike to take responsibility for what has become normalised. Retired Federal Court judge The Hon. Ronald Sackville AO KC brings a historical and legal perspective, reflecting on the significance of Australia's response and what meaningful accountability must look like. The discussion is moderated by Peter Kurti, Director of the Culture, Prosperity and Civil Society programme at the Centre for Independent Studies, with a vote of thanks delivered by award-winning journalist and author Jill Margo AM.

Behind Every Great Teacher Is a Great System | David Didau, Jenny Donovan & Trisha Jha

David Didau — education consultant, teacher trainer, and author of Making Kids Cleverer and Intelligent Accountability — and Dr Jenny Donovan — inaugural CEO of the Australian Education Research Organisation and former head of the NSW Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation — join the Centre for Independent Studies to make the case for systemic reform over individual teacher improvement. Didau challenges the prevailing deficit view of teachers, arguing that educators already behave rationally within the systems they work in, and that redesigning those systems is a far more powerful lever than targeting individual practice. He frames every teaching decision around three core questions: is every student paying attention, do they understand what's being taught, and are they actually improving? Donovan brings a research and policy lens to the discussion, drawing on her extensive work translating education evidence into real classroom impact at both the state and national level. Together, the panel explores teacher beliefs, school leadership, the smart use of classroom observation, and the opportunity cost of focusing on home environments rather than where teachers have the most direct impact — in the classroom. The discussion is chaired by Trisha Jha, Research Fellow in the Education Program at the Centre for Independent Studies, and recorded live at CIS in Sydney, Australia.

The Case for Optimism: More People, More Ideas, More Wealth | Marian Tupy

Marian Tupy — editor of HumanProgress.org, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, and co-author of Superabundance — makes a data-driven case that human ingenuity consistently outpaces resource constraints. Presenting as the CIS Max Hartwell Scholar-in-Residence for 2026, Tupy argues that more people, given freedom, generate more ideas, more innovation, and rising living standards for everyone. Using "time prices" — the cost of goods measured in hours of work rather than dollars — Tupy documents a dramatic expansion of material abundance across Australia and the world over the past century. He examines why most goods have become far more affordable relative to wages, while housing, health, and education have not, tracing those exceptions to government interference and restricted competition rather than genuine scarcity. The lecture traces population pessimism from Malthus to Paul Ehrlich's The Population Bomb, measuring those predictions against the historical record, and revisits the famous Simon-Ehrlich wager of 1980. Tupy then turns to the deeper drivers of abundance: free markets as information systems, the compounding power of knowledge, and his core thesis — superabundance equals population times freedom. The conversation also takes in declining global fertility, the limits of current AI as an engine of innovation, and what a depopulating world might mean for human progress. The Q&A, chaired by CIS Executive Director Michael Stutchbury, explores why intellectuals gravitate toward zero-sum thinking and the ideological roots of policy failure. This event was presented by the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, Australia, and recorded live at CIS.

Angus Taylor at CIS: Economic Reform, Immigration, and Australia's Cost of Living Crisis

Speaking at his first address outside Canberra since being elected Leader of the Opposition by the Liberal Party room, Angus Taylor joins CIS Executive Director Michael Stutchbury for a wide-ranging conversation on the Liberal Party's direction under new leadership, Australia's cost of living crisis, and the policy reforms needed to restore the country's prosperity and way of life. Taylor outlines his agenda for economic renewal, centred on spending restraint, lower taxes, affordable energy, and reduced regulation — and issues a direct challenge to the Albanese government to join a bipartisan task force on budget repair. The discussion examines the Liberal Party's path to renewal, including Taylor's candid acknowledgment of past electoral mistakes and his commitment to returning the party to its core values of free markets, economic liberalism, and individual choice. Taylor sets out his case against what he describes as Labor's big-government model — marked by record regulation, rising taxes, and unchecked spending — and its consequences for inflation, interest rates, housing affordability, and business investment. Turning to specific policy areas, Taylor addresses the urgent need to bring energy costs down by opening up all fuel sources, including gas and nuclear, and critiques the safeguard mechanism as an effective carbon tax on Australian manufacturing. On immigration, he argues for lower numbers and higher standards, grounded in values rather than race or religion, and calls for moral clarity in response to the Bondi terrorist attack and recent protests. The conversation also covers childcare flexibility, housing supply, defence force funding and recruitment, industrial relations reform, and the threat posed by militant unionism to major national projects including AUKUS. Joining Taylor on stage, Michael Stutchbury draws on CIS research across energy, housing, productivity, and fiscal policy, while questions from the floor — including from CIS scholars, journalists, and business leaders — probe the hardest edges of the Liberal Party's reform agenda. The event forms part of CIS’s “Next 50” series marking its 50th anniversary and was recorded live in Sydney. This event was presented by the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, Australia, and recorded live at CIS.