Richard Denniss is the Executive Director of

The Australia Institute The Australia Institute is a left-wing public policy think tank based in Canberra, Australia. Since its launch in 1994, it has carried out research on a broad range of economic, social, and environmental issues. The institute has offices in Ca ...

. He is a prominent Australian economist, author and public policy commentator, and a former Associate Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public research university located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton encompasses seven teaching and research colleges, in addition to several national academies an ...

in Canberra, Australia. Denniss was described by

Mark Kenny Marc Kenny (born 17 September 1973) is an Irish former footballer. Kenny was captain of the Home Farm schoolboys team that got into the Guinness Book of Records for going six seasons without a defeat. A Republic of Ireland national under-17 ...

in the Sydney Morning Herald as "a constant thorn in the side of politicians on both sides due to his habit of skewering dodgy economic justifications for policy". In October 2018,

The Australian Financial Review ''The Australian Financial Review'' (abbreviated to the ''AFR'') is an Australian business-focused, compact daily newspaper covering the current business and economic affairs of Australia and the world. The newspaper is based in Sydney, New Sou ...

listed Denniss and Ben Oquist of

as equal tenth-place on their 'Covert Power' list of the most powerful people in Australia.

Career

Prior to his appointment at The Australia Institute, Denniss was Senior Strategic Advisor to Australian Greens Leader Senator

Bob Brown Robert James Brown (born 27 December 1944) is a former Australian politician, medical doctor and environmentalist. He was a senator and the parliamentary leader of the Australian Greens. Brown was elected to the Australian Senate on the Tasma ...

and was also Chief of Staff to Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, former Leader of the

Australian Democrats The Australian Democrats is a centrist political party in Australia. Founded in 1977 from a merger of the Australia Party and the New Liberal Movement, both of which were descended from Liberal Party dissenting splinter groups, it was Austral ...

. Denniss also worked as a researcher at the H.V. Evatt Memorial Foundation (the '

Evatt Foundation The H.V. Evatt Memorial Foundation is an Australian think tank founded in memory of Australian politician, judge, historian and diplomat H. V. Evatt. It is based in Sydney, with members and supporters from around the world. It is a progressive ...

'), a public policy organisation with strong links to the

Australian Labor Party The Australian Labor Party (ALP), also simply known as Labor, is the major centre-left political party in Australia, one of two major parties in Australian politics, along with the centre-right Liberal Party of Australia. The party forms t ...

. His academic work has resulted in publications in various peer-reviewed journals, and he has lectured in Economics at the University of Newcastle. During the 2000s Denniss' research focused on

climate change policy The politics of climate change results from different perspectives on how to respond to climate change. Global warming is driven largely by the emissions of greenhouse gases due to human economic activity, especially the burning of fossil fuels ...

and

tax policy Tax policy includes the guidelines developed by a government regarding how taxes are imposed, in what amounts, and on whom. It has both microeconomic and macroeconomic aspects. The macroeconomic aspect concerns the overall quantity of taxes t ...

. He also worked on a number of projects aimed at improving the measurement of government and economic performance including the ' Genuine Progress Indicator' (GPI), the 'Wellbeing Manifesto', and the state of Australian Government. 666 ABC Canberra produced and broadcast "An occasional series with 'The Moral Economist'" podcast starring Richard Denniss, in 2013. The series discussed economic issues from the dollar cost of a human life to preventative health care to who deserves welfare. In 2015 Denniss delivered the 16th

Manning Clark Charles Manning Hope Clark, (3 March 1915 – 23 May 1991) was an Australian historian and the author of the best-known general history of Australia, his six-volume ''A History of Australia'', published between 1962 and 1987. He has been descri ...

Lecture at The Australian National University. The speech drew from Clark's writings, identifying 'enlargers' and 'punishers' in Australian cultural, economic and political history.

MP Andrew Leigh is quoted as saying, "I think of Richard as being kind of a mirror image of ree-market economist and former Reserve Bank board member

Warwick McKibbin Warwick James McKibbin (born 21 April 1957 in Sydney) is an Australian Professor of Economics at the Australian National University who works across a wide range of areas in applied policy. He has published more than 200 scholarly articles and ...

Publications

Denniss is the co-author (with

Clive Hamilton Clive Charles Hamilton AM FRSA (born 12 March 1953) is an Australian public intellectual and Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE) and the Vice-Chancellor's Chair in Public Ethics at Charles ...

) of best-selling book '' Affluenza: When Too Much is Never Enough'' and ''An introduction to Australian Public Policy'' (with Sarah Maddison). He co-authore
Minority policy: rethinking governance when parliament matters
with Brenton Prosser, a book that examines the operations of minority government and implications for public policy in Westminster systems. In 2016, his book
Econobabble
' was published by Black Inc and Redback. Most recently, Denniss has publishe
Curing Affluenza
a followup to Affluenza: When too Much is Never Enough, and is the author of the June 2018 Quarterly Essay
Dead Right: How Neoliberalism Ate Itself and What Comes Next
Denniss is a regular contributor to

The Monthly ''The Monthly'' is an Australian national magazine of politics, society and the arts, which is published eleven times per year on a monthly basis except the December/January issue. Founded in 2005, it is published by Melbourne property developer ...

and

Quarterly Essay ''Quarterly Essay'' is an Australian periodical that straddles the border between magazines and non-fiction books. Printed in a book-like page size and using a single-column format, each issue features a single extended essay of at least 20,000 ...

, as well as producing columns in

The Canberra Times ''The Canberra Times'' is a daily newspaper in Canberra, Australia, which is published by Australian Community Media. It was founded in 1926, and has changed ownership and format several times. History ''The Canberra Times'' was launched in ...

and

External links

The Australia Institute research by Richard Denniss

Article archive
at

Article archive
at

Recorded appearances

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Denniss, Richard Living people Sustainability advocates Australian economists Australian National University faculty Year of birth missing (living people)