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Sizing Up Government

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As the dust settles on this year’s federal budget, the Fifth Estate turns its eye to matters economic with Ross Gittins, economics editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, and public policy experts Miriam Lyons and Ian McAuley.

While the Federal Government expects to spend more in 2015 than at the height of the global financial crisis, it appears that well-funded health and higher education are inching further out of reach – not to mention an economy that addresses climate change or the growing divide between rich and poor.

Must the ‘path back to surplus’ entail a leaner, meaner government? Doesn’t public sector involvement make sound economics? What is the role of government in Australia today?  

Join Sally Warhaft and guests as they illuminate the complexities and contradictions of the modern economy – and its effects on our daily lives.

Featuring

Sally Warhaft

Sally Warhaft is a Melbourne broadcaster, anthropologist and writer. She is the host of The Fifth Estate, the Wheeler Centre’s live series focusing on journalism, politics, media, and international relations, and The Leap Year, a Wheeler Centre podcast about Australians’ lives in the fog of ... Read more

Miriam Lyons

Miriam Lyons is a Renewable Energy Campaigner with GetUp! She is also an Australian policy analyst, writer and commentator, and the co-author, with Ian McAuley, of Governomics, published by Melbourne University Press in May 2015. Miriam is a member of the Centre for Australian Progress board, and a ... Read more

Ian McAuley

For most of his life Ian McAuley has lived and breathed public policy. He has been an engineer in a manufacturing firm (in the days when we had a home-grown manufacturing sector), a trade commissioner, a policy analyst and a manager in the federal Department of Industry, and more recently a lecturer... Read more

Ross Gittins

Ross Gittins is the economics editor of Sydney Morning Herald and an economic columnist for the Age. He is a winner of the Citibank Pan Asia award for excellence in financial journalism and has been a Nuffield Press fellow at Wolfson College, Cambridge, and a journalist-in-residence at the... Read more

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