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As Treasurer Jim Chalmers prepares to hand down his fifth federal budget on 12 May 2026, four of Australia's leading economists gather at the Centre for Independent Studies to ask: is this budget up to the challenge?

Hosted by CIS Executive Director Michael Stutchbury, this roundtable brings together Robert Carling (CIS Senior Fellow, former Treasury and IMF official), Professor Richard Holden (UNSW Business School), and Chris Richardson (Principal, Rich Insight and Australia's most cited budget economist) for a frank, wide-ranging conversation on the fiscal pressures facing Australia.

They discuss rising inflation, a productivity slowdown, a housing crisis, a federal debt approaching $1 trillion, and whether Chalmers' promises on savings, tax reform, and intergenerational equity stack up.

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Michael Stutchbury, Executive Director of the Centre for Independent Studies, opens this panel discussion with a sobering observation: the Bondi massacre did not come from nowhere. The attack on 14 December 2025 was the violent endpoint of a cascade of hatred that had been building across Australian society for years, and it has forced a confrontation with a question our institutions can no longer avoid. Are our laws, our civic culture, and our leaders equipped to deal with antisemitism as it is now?

Former Federal Treasurer The Hon. Josh Frydenberg argues that the answer, so far, has been no. He traces the failure of political and civic leadership that allowed antisemitism to move from the fringes into the mainstream of Australian life, and sets out what he believes the Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion must find and recommend to create genuine, lasting change. For Frydenberg, this is not a Jewish problem. It is an Australian one.

Human Rights Commissioner Dr Lorraine Finlay examines the tension between protecting Jewish Australians from harm and preserving the liberal freedoms that define an open society, and argues these goals are not in conflict. She warns against treating the Royal Commission as the solution in itself, calling on institutions and individuals alike to take responsibility for what has become normalised. Retired Federal Court judge The Hon. Ronald Sackville AO KC brings a historical and legal perspective, reflecting on the significance of Australia's response and what meaningful accountability must look like.

The discussion is moderated by Peter Kurti, Director of the Culture, Prosperity and Civil Society programme at the Centre for Independent Studies, with a vote of thanks delivered by award-winning journalist and author Jill Margo AM.

David Didau — education consultant, teacher trainer, and author of Making Kids Cleverer and Intelligent Accountability — and Dr Jenny Donovan — inaugural CEO of the Australian Education Research Organisation and former head of the NSW Centre for Education Statistics and Evaluation — join the Centre for Independent Studies to make the case for systemic reform over individual teacher improvement.

Didau challenges the prevailing deficit view of teachers, arguing that educators already behave rationally within the systems they work in, and that redesigning those systems is a far more powerful lever than targeting individual practice. He frames every teaching decision around three core questions: is every student paying attention, do they understand what's being taught, and are they actually improving?

Donovan brings a research and policy lens to the discussion, drawing on her extensive work translating education evidence into real classroom impact at both the state and national level. Together, the panel explores teacher beliefs, school leadership, the smart use of classroom observation, and the opportunity cost of focusing on home environments rather than where teachers have the most direct impact — in the classroom.

The discussion is chaired by Trisha Jha, Research Fellow in the Education Program at the Centre for Independent Studies, and recorded live at CIS in Sydney, Australia.