Writer

Ross Garnaut
Ross Gregory Garnaut AC is a vice-chancellor's fellow and professorial fellow of economics at the University of Melbourne.
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Ending ‘Dog Days’ stagnant living standards
Over the past decade, Australia has endured its worst stagnation in living standards since the Great Depression of the 1930s, and has lost its way in terms of economic policies that can restore prosperity, says Ross Garnaut in conversation with Michael Lester. Continue reading »
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Let’s tax carbon: Why the time is right for a second shot at carbon pricing
Australia now has a government and parliament wanting timely transition to net zero. We have a government and parliament wanting to build Australia as the renewable energy superpower of the zero-carbon world economy. For the time being, we have favourable international settings for using our opportunity. Continue reading »
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Australia: Made for free trade and a tax on rent
There is no more important issue in Australian taxation reform than replacing current arrangements by efficient mineral rent taxation. That requires large analytic effort and effective political leadership. Success would bring high rewards to the Australian polity, and I expect electoral rewards to the Government that is seen as being responsible for a good outcome. Continue reading »
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Australia could fall apart under climate change. But there’s a way to avoid it (The Conversation, 06 November 2019)
Four years ago in December 2015, every member of the United Nations met in Paris and agreed to hold global temperature increases to 2°C, and as close as possible to 1.5°C. The bad news is that four years on the best we can hope for is holding global increases to about 1.75°C. We can only do Continue reading »
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ROSS GARNAUT. Where Australia’s at 10 years after climate change review. (AFR 8.10.2018)
Energy costs will be lower if there is more investment in renewables capacity. Continue reading »
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The future of Chinese economic growth
At any level of development in any country, but especially from upper-middle incomes, growth momentum can be broken by adverse developments of several kinds. Continue reading »
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ROSS GARNAUT. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Part 2.
The Challenge of Globalisation. This is the second of a two-part series of extracts from an address which Professor Ross Garnaut gave to the Sydney Democracy Network, University of Sydney, 7 September 2016. The full text of his address can be found on his website. PART 2. RESPONDING TO THE CHALLENGES OF GLOBALISATION. Democratic capitalism’s return Continue reading »
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ROSS GARNAUT. Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy. Part 1.
The Challenge of Globalisation. I will be posting in two parts, extracts from an address which Professor Ross Garnaut gave to the Sydney Democracy Network, University of Sydney, 7 September 2016. the full text of his address can be found on his website: https://blogs.unimelb.edu.au/rossgarnaut/files/2015/12/Garnaut_CapitalismSocialismDemocracy_070916_3-2ei70mk.pdf PART 1. THE PROBLEMS WE FACE WITH GLOBALISATION In the twenty Continue reading »
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ROSS GARNAUT. The economics of the future energy system.
How can we provide a high degree of energy security in Australia at the lowest possible cost, while contributing our fair share to the global effort to contain the costs of climate change? I take as my starting point Prime Minister Turnbull’s admonition that we put ideology aside as we seek answers to this Continue reading »
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ROSS GARNAUT. China’s new normal inches on.
China is undergoing profound changes in its economic policy and structure. These changes represent a new model of Chinese economic growth. The recent Five Year Plan (FYP) is an evolutionary document. Building on earlier official statements on the new model of growth, it provides the most elaborate statement to date on the model’s content Continue reading »
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Ross Garnaut. Australian Climate Change Policy
Policy Series I once called climate change policy diabolical, but with a saving grace (Garnaut 2008). It is diabolical because of the overlapping of four complex issues. While there is high scientific confidence that human action causes warming and that, beyond some limit, warming damages many aspects of human life, perhaps catastrophically, there is uncertainty Continue reading »