Freedom to Choose 2021 - Conference Speakers

Freedom to Choose 2021: Triumphant or Misplaced Keynesianism: Australia’s Response to the Global Financial Crisis of 2008-9 and the lessons for life after Covid.

Conference Speakers

William Coleman
Australian National University

William Coleman (BEc Hons Syd: PhD LSE) is a Reader at the School of Economics of the Australian National University, and has written extensively upon inflation, the history of economic thought, and the contested position of economics in society. He is currently the editor of Agenda: A Journal of Policy Analysis and Reform. He co-authored Giblin’s Platoon: The Trials and Triumph of the Economist in Australian Public Life, which won the Bruce McComish Prize for Economic History. His other books include Economics and Its Enemies, The Causes, Costs and Compensations of Inflation and The Political Economy of Wages and Unemployment. He recently edited Only in Australia: The History, Politics and Economics of Australian Exceptionalism and is currently researching a debunking history of Australia’s Federation episode.

Henry Ergas (AO)
The Australian

Henry Ergas is an economist and columnist for The Australian. He has held senior policy positions in a range of organisations, including the OECD, the Australian Trade Practice Commission and Deloitte. He was Professor of Infrastructure Economics at the University of Wollongong from 2009 to 2016 and has held appointments at the National University of Singapore, the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, the Centre for Research in Network Economics and Communications at Auckland University, Monash University and the Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Economique. He was made an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2016 for distinguished service to infrastructure economics, higher education, and public policy development, and as a supporter of emerging artists.

Tony Makin
Griffith University

Tony Makin is Professor of Economics at Griffith University and has previously taught at the University of Queensland, the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore and in the Australia and New Zealand School of Government (ANZSOG) program. His field of expertise is international macroeconomics and public finance and he has previously served as an economist with the International Monetary Fund and in the Australian federal departments of Finance, Foreign Affairs and Trade, The Treasury and Prime Minister and Cabinet. He has also been Director of the APEC Study Centre at Griffith University, and Australian convener of the structural issues group of the Pacific Economic Cooperation Council (PECC).

David Uren
University of Sydney

David Uren is a non-resident fellow at the United States Studies Centre at the University of Sydney. He is a contributor to The Australian and the Australian Financial Review. During his career in journalism he was economics editor of The Australian for five years and editor of Business Review Weekly for nine years. David is the author of Takeover: Foreign Investment and the Australian Psyche, The Kingdom and the Quarry: China, Australia, Fear and Greed. Published by Melbourne University Publishing in 2010, David’s book Shitstorm: Inside Labor’s Darkest Days, writtenjointlywith Lenore Taylor, revealed the inside story of the Rudd government’s response to the Global Financial Crisis.