In the final episode of season one of Pillar Talk, Will and Ollie chat with Dr Cameron Murray. Cameron is a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Sydney Henry Halloran Trust, specialising in the economics of property and urban development, environmental economics, rent-seeking, and corruption.

This conversation covers a lot of these topic areas, beginning with Cameron’s work on corruption, before honing in on the ongoing crisis of housing affordability, and Cameron’s proposed solution: a policy he calls HouseMate.

To read more about this and other ideas of Cameron's check out his substack here.

This episode is a follow-up to the 2022 Statecraft Autumn Lecture, which Cameron gave back in March last year, on the topic: Why politicians must pretend to care about cheap housing. As with the lecture & podcast we did with George Brandis, you don’t need to have seen that lecture to know what’s going on here, but I recommend you checking it out anyway, as it was a real highlight of my time with the UQ PPE Society, and clarifies a lot of the issues discussed in this episode.

This is the last episode we’re uploading from the first season of Pillar Talk. As such, I just want to take a moment to thank both Will and Oliver for their efforts with the podcast in 2022. In my opinion, both did a great job hosting these episodes, and I’m particularly grateful to Will for his passion in getting the project up and running, and for his work in organising all the guests for what has been a fantastic first season. Will, Ollie, and the rest of the graduating cohort of 2022, thanks, congratulations, and all the best starting your careers post-PPE.

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Pillar Talk is published by the University of Queensland Politics, Philosophy & Economics Society. It is produced by Will Splatt and co-produced and edited by Tom Watson, with music created by Isaac Haynes. Your hosts for this episode are Will Splatt and Oliver Friendship.

If this episode has you keen for more content from the UQ PPE Society, you might want to check out our other publications: Statecraft Magazine, and The Statecraft Review.

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KPMG is a platinum sponsor of the UQ PPE Society. They provide a range of professional services for businesses, non-profits, and government, including consulting on the design and implementation of key government policies. As mentioned during the ad break, they offer two programs that might interest you: a 12-month graduate employment program, and a 4-8 week vacation internship program for students in their penultimate year of study. For more information about these opportunities, click here, or reach out to the UQ PPE Society using vocations@uqppes.com.au to talk about meeting with one of our contacts at KPMG.

In this episode, I join Will at the table as we chat with Dr Adrian Moore.

Adrian is an academic philosopher, with a keen interest in both continental and Eastern philosophy, especially existentialism, anarchism, and Buddhism. You can read his PhD thesis, which we discuss in the podcast, here.

In this conversation, we cover these topic areas, and much more. It was a really interesting conversation to be a part of, and both Will and I found ourselves taking long detours down philosophical rabbit-holes about the nature of consciousness and the self, non-dualism, and Pythagoras’s religious obsession with the number 3.

This was a less structured and more wide-ranging chat than we normally do at Pillar Talk, and I’ve chosen to leave it uncut – in part for my own sanity as an editor, and in part to let you enjoy the rabbit-holes as much as I did. I hope you do.

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Pillar Talk is published by the University of Queensland Politics, Philosophy & Economics Society. It is produced by Will Splatt and co-produced and edited by Tom Watson, with music created by Isaac Haynes. Your hosts for this episode are Will Splatt and Oliver Friendship.

If this episode has you keen for more content from the UQ PPE Society, you might want to check out our other publications: Statecraft Magazine, and The Statecraft Review.

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KPMG is a platinum sponsor of the UQ PPE Society. They provide a range of professional services for businesses, non-profits, and government, including consulting on the design and implementation of key government policies. As mentioned during the ad break, they offer two programs that might interest you: a 12-month graduate employment program, and a 4-8 week vacation internship program for students in their penultimate year of study. For more information about these opportunities, click here, or reach out to the UQ PPE Society using vocations@uqppes.com.au to talk about meeting with one of our contacts at KPMG.

In this episode, Will and Ollie chat with UQ’s very own John Quiggin.

John is a bit of a favourite among UQ PPE students. One of Australia’s most prolific academic economists, and an avid blogger, he is a common contributor to public debate, and isn’t scared to share his hot takes on topical issues. John takes the third year PPE course PPES3101, where he draws on his experience as a former member of the Australian Climate Change Authority to deliver a course focused on the economic and political dimensions of climate change. 

In this conversation, John talks about the 2022 Federal Election, Australian climate policy, COVID-19 policy, cost of living, and much more.

For more from John, check out his blog here, or get your hands on his latest book, Economics in Two Lessons: Why Markets Work So Well, and Why They Can Fail So Badly.

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Pillar Talk is published by the University of Queensland Politics, Philosophy & Economics Society. It is produced by Will Splatt and co-produced and edited by Tom Watson, with music created by Isaac Haynes. Your hosts for this episode are Will Splatt and Oliver Friendship.

If this episode has you keen for more content from the UQ PPE Society, you might want to check out our other publications: Statecraft Magazine, and The Statecraft Review.