John Anderson: Conversations

Former senior Treasury official David Pearl argues that Australia's decline is not fate but the product of bad choices made by the people running our institutions.He contends that Treasury, once feared for its razor-sharp scrutiny of policy, has been captured from above by secretaries who treat emissions reduction as a moral imperative rather than a trade-off, and who withhold the true cost of the energy transition — a figure he puts as high as $1 trillion.David Pearl is a former assistant secretary of the Australian Treasury and now a full-time writer and commentator on economic and cultural policy. He spent some three decades in the federal bureaucracy, with postings to the OECD in the late 1990s and a period as the Treasurer's representative in the United States, working across taxation, fiscal management and energy policy. He writes regularly for The Australian and The Spectator Australia and appears frequently on Sky News, where he has been among the most persistent critics of Treasury's modelling of the renewable energy transition.

In this conversation, Melanie Phillips joins John Anderson to discuss the crisis of Western resolve and moral decline. Drawing on her decades as a commentator, Phillips argues that Iran's perceived strength reflects Western weakness and hesitation. She also explores how anti-Zionism and elite failure have hollowed out Western valuesA pre-eminent voice in British public discourse, Melanie Phillips possesses a storied journalistic pedigree. Having established her reputation at The Guardian and the New Statesman, she now provides sharp political and social analysis for The Times, The Jerusalem Post, and The Jewish Chronicle. A familiar and formidable presence on the airwaves, she has long served as a regular panellist for BBC Radio 4’s The Moral Maze and BBC One’s Question Time. Phillips was honoured with the Orwell Prize for Journalism in 1996 during her tenure at The Observer, and her extensive bibliography includes her candid memoir, Guardian Angel: My Story, My Britain.

Steven Koonin joins John Anderson for an in-depth conversation exploring the science, engineering and economics behind today's climate debate. Drawing on decades of experience in physics, energy research and public policy, Koonin argues that while climate change is real, many public discussions fail to capture the uncertainty, nuance and trade-offs contained within the scientific evidence. Together they examine what climate models can reliably predict and why careful analysis matters when shaping long-term policy.The conversation also explores Australia's energy future, the challenges of maintaining reliable electricity grids, the potential role of nuclear power, and the balance between affordability, energy security and environmental responsibility. Koonin reflects on scientific integrity, technological innovation and why societies benefit when evidence, rather than politics, remains at the centre of public debate.Steven E. Koonin is the Edward Teller Senior Fellow at Stanford University’s Hoover Institution. He served as the undersecretary for science in the US Department of Energy under President Obama from 2009 to 2011, and was the lead author of the US Department of Energy’s Strategic Plan (2011) and the inaugural Department of Energy Quadrennial Technology Review (2011). His recent book is called Unsettled (Updated and Expanded Edition): What Climate Science Tells Us, What It Doesn't, and Why It Matters.Sign up to John's substack here: https://www.ourcivilisationalmoment.com/Sign up to John's newsletter here: https://johnanderson.net.au/contact/

In this conversation, John Anderson sits down with Prof. Simon Haines and Dr. Fiona Mueller to examine how Australia's schools and universities stopped teaching children how to think, and what a genuine restoration of education would look like. The results are measurable in falling literacy, rising school refusal, and a curriculum that has prioritised ideological formation at the expense of knowledge.From the classical roots of Western education and the Trivium to the ideological capture of teacher training and university management, Haines and Mueller expose the ideas driving the decline and the institutions already proving a better model is possible. What is at stake is not just educational outcomes, but the capacity of the next generation to reason clearly, to govern themselves wisely, and to pass on what they have inherited.Prof. Simon Haines is the Distinguished Professor of Liberal Arts at Campion College Australia, Adjunct Professor at the Australian Catholic University, and a founding Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of the Humanities. He previously served as the inaugural CEO of the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation and is a Director of Humanities for Life.Dr. Fiona Mueller served as Head of ANU College at the Australian National University and as Director of Curriculum at the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority (ACARA), and was named among the five most influential people in Australian education by the Australian Financial Review in 2019. She is an Adjunct Fellow with the Centre for Independent Studies, a Senior Fellow with Advance HE (formerly the Higher Education Academy), and currently serves as Director of Research at the Page Research Centre.

John Anderson joins energy analyst Aidan Morrison and journalist Chris Uhlmann for a forensic examination of Australia's energy crisis. Together, they expose the broken promises behind the renewable transition, the CSIRO modelling built on figures no operating wind farm has achieved, and the legislative blunder that turned the New England Renewable Energy Zone into a multi-billion dollar infrastructure disaster. Drawing on international comparisons, primary documents, and on-the-ground testimony, the panel reveals how Australians were sold a false economic promise — and what the true cost to the nation's bills, industry, and security will be.Aidan Morrison is a leading researcher into Energy Systems and currently the Director of Energy Research at the Centre for Independent Studies. In 2023 he exposed how the famous CSIRO report “GenCost” excluded vast costs required to integrate and firm renewables by treating them as “sunk” costs. In 2024 he was amongst the strongest voices calling for nuclear energy in Australia and was a leading critic of the ‘Integrated System Plan’ (or ISP): Australia’s blue-print for a transition to an energy system dominated by wind and solar. Chris Uhlmann is a Walkley Award winning Australian journalist and news commentator. His career in the media spans over 35 years in radio, print and television. His latest documentary is The Real Cost of Net Zero: The shocking truth of the renewable energy push.