Bernie Fraser Oration

Join us at the inaugural Bernie Fraser Oration, featuring former Reserve Bank of Australia Governor, Bernie Fraser. This oration is being launched by The Australia Institute to celebrate and honour the significant contribution to economic and public policy in Australia made by Bernie Fraser.

Politicians and industry leaders often prioritise short-term approval over confronting challenging economic choices. However, where others dance around the fringes, playing painstaking games of semantics, prominent economist, Bernie Fraser, barrels right down the middle, refusing to compromise his highly respected independence of thought. Most recently he called out the central bank board for taking too long to cut interest rates. Ask Bernie and he’ll tell you, “It’s been a bloody long time coming, to be honest”. It’s that honesty and integrity that has led to Bernie Fraser becoming one of the most trusted, no-nonsense voices when it comes to economic growth and reform.

This oration – the first of what will be an annual event – will be delivered by its namesake, Bernie Fraser, who lays claim to being the only person to have led the two main pillars of economic policy management in Australia, the RBA and Treasury. Having served 25 years in the Commonwealth Public Service, Bernie went on to be appointed Secretary to the Treasury, and five years later, the Governor of the RBA. He held the position for seven years, from 1989 to 1996. During that time, he’s credited for defeating inflation and pioneering the inflation target, all the while carving out crucial conditions for the RBA to operate independently.

As a prelude to The Australia Institute’s 2025 Revenue Summit, Bernie Fraser will lay out his ‘big picture’ view of global trends and how they relate to Australian financial markets and the economy in general. While financial leaders typically favour conservatism, Bernie Fraser doesn’t hold back and will present his ideas for raising revenue and detail Australia’s desperate need for new wave of brave leaders.

The oration will be MC’d by Dr Richard Denniss, Executive Director of the Australia Institute and a prominent Australian economist, author and public policy commentator. He has spent the last twenty years moving between policy-focused roles in academia, federal politics and think tanks. He was also a Lecturer in Economics at the University of Newcastle and former Associate Professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy at ANU. He is the author of several books including: ‘Econobabble’, ‘Curing Affluenza’ and ‘Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us: Vantage Point Issue 2’.

SPEAKER:

Bernie Fraser - Former Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia

Mr Bernie Fraser commenced his career in 1961 at the Department of National Development before moving to the Treasury in 1963. After working as Treasury's representative in London in the early 1970s, he served in senior roles at the Department of Finance and the National Energy Office before serving as Treasury Secretary from 1984 to 1989. From 1989 to 1996, Mr Fraser then served as RBA Governor and is the only person to have led both the Treasury and the Reserve Bank of Australia. Mr Fraser holds a Bachelor of Arts majoring in Economics from the University of New England and has been awarded two Honorary Doctorates from Australian universities.