Set the Agenda: Cost of Living and the Australian Election

Join Peter Martin, Business and Economy Editor of The Conversation, and expert guests, Julie Toth and John Hawkins as they discuss cost of living and how the major parties’ policies stack up in the lead up to the federal election. Live audience members will be invited to ask the experts their own questions and we will hear what respondents to The Conversation’s #SetTheAgenda poll had to say about cost of living.

Please note: You do not need to have a Facebook account to watch the live video of this event.

About the speakers:

Peter Martin is Business and Economy Editor of The Conversation and a Visiting Fellow at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University. A former Commonwealth Treasury official, he has worked as Economics Correspondent for the ABC and as Economics Editor of The Age. In 2016 he was made a Distinguished Alumni of Flinders University. In 2019 He was made a member of the Order of Australia (AM).

Julie Toth is Principal at Nous Group. She has three decades of experience in Australian economic policy and research working across public, private, not-for-profit and academic sectors. To advance public policy, she is a member of the National Export Policy Panel of the Economic Society of Australia, and also a member of the Melbourne Economic Forum, convened by the University of Melbourne and Victoria University. Julie is also an advisory board member of Swinburne University’s Centre for Transformative Innovation and a member of AMES Australia’s corporate leaders’ network. She previously held senior policy roles at the Australian Industry Group, ANZ Bank, the Productivity Commission and other Australian Government agencies. Julie was also previously an Adjunct Professor of Economics at Deakin University and served on the advisory board of the university’s Department of Economics.

John Hawkins is Senior Lecturer at the Canberra School of Politics, Economics and Society and NATSEM, University of Canberra. He has a PhD in political science and Masters degrees in Economics and Applied Finance. John has headed the economics division at the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and been a senior economist with the Reserve Bank of Australia, Bank for International Settlements and Australian Treasury and secretary to the Senate Economics Committee.