The Inflection Points Podcast

Auckland is the world’s most well-studied example of upzoning and planning reform. It’s the landmark story of how loosening restrictions enables more homes to be built—and yet the history of how it happened is not well understood. Join New Zealand’s own Stuart Donovan for an in-depth chat about the Auckland upzoning, the housing crisis, and what it takes to get good policy over the line. Get full...

It’s not the same as social housing, and it doesn’t help those most in need. Australia is spending big on ‘affordable’ housing—but we shouldn’t. The reality is that ‘affordable’ housing is deeply, intrinsically flawed. It is a wasteful use of public funds that redirects government support away from the people who need it most. It provides those who do benefit with help they don’t particularly valu...

In October 2023, Jim Chalmers told the Sydney Morning Herald about his chocolate-eating habits. He said: "I don't do moderation, in anything. I'm always going 100 miles an hour. If I eat a piece of chocolate, I eat a block of chocolate." On Tuesday night, he stood up in the House and ate chocolate. He scrapped the fifty per cent capital gains tax discount. He quarantined negative gearing on existi...

Alain Bertaud has worked in over forty cities across the world. He has seen what happens when cities try to function without land markets — in Moscow, in Beijing, in post-apartheid Johannesburg. He has seen what happens when planners restrict the market's ability to produce floor space — in Mumbai, in New York, and, indeed, in Australian cities. In 2018, he synthesised sixty years of field work in...

Recorded live in Melbourne in March 2025, this event — co-hosted with Effective Altruism Australia — brings together three speakers making the case for reforming our charitable giving laws. Ryan Ginard (Fundraise for Australia) argues that without fixing the infrastructure, the $5.4 trillion intergenerational wealth transfer will pass the charitable sector by. Clare Ozich (Justice Connect) explain...

Keith Wolahan is a barrister, a former Australian Army commando with four deployments including three tours in Afghanistan, and the former Liberal Member for Menzies—the seat named after the party’s own founder. He won the seat in 2022 by unseating a thirty-year conservative incumbent at preselection. Three years later, he lost that same seat as the Liberal party’s metropolitan vote collapsed bene...

Policymakers often suffer from a cognitive blind spot, intuitively thinking like consumers rather than producers. When it comes to housing, this leads governments to reach for demand-side levers—like First Home Owner Grants—that often inflate prices, rather than addressing the fundamental constraints on building new homes. In this episode of the Inflection Points Podcast , Matthew Maltman, Senior...

Australia’s housing stock is growing more slowly than its population, and for the first time in decades, we are failing to build enough homes in the places people want to live. The result is a median home price in Sydney that is more than 10 times the median household income. In this episode, Brendan Coates, the Housing and Economic Security Program Director at the Grattan Institute, outlines the...

Every successful Australian tech company follows roughly the same playbook: build the product here, test it in our market, then export it overseas. Atlassian, Canva, Safety Culture—they kept a lot of their engineering and R&D in Australia, while their sales teams conquered international markets. The secret to Australian tech success is to treat it like an export industry. Brandon Sheppard is the C...

In this podcast episode, we’re joined by Jessy Wu, who spent four years on the inside of Australian venture capital, first at NAB Ventures, and then as a partner at AfterWork Ventures. She was part of a team that deployed $20 million into 30 companies, building a community-powered model that challenged how VC traditionally works. And then she left. Not for another fund, not for a bigger partnershi...

After a decade of sluggish growth—the slowest productivity gains in 60 years—Australia faces a fundamental question: how does our nation capture the dynamic potential of the 21st century? How do we build an economy that rewards innovation, enables competition, and creates opportunity for all? This is a conversation with Andrew Leigh about both personal and national productivity. In the first half...

Recorded from Inflection Point’s launch event, we’ll hear from: Michael Brennan (e61 Institute and former Productivity Commission chair) on how non-compete clauses got on the Commonwealth policy agenda. Brendan Coates (Grattan Institute) on how Grattan shifted the dial on skilled migration policy. Katie Roberts-Hull (Think Forward Educators) on how phonics was mandated in primary schools. Get full...

Australians aren't apathetic. If anything, we care a lot more than our reputation suggests. But when the conversation about our country's direction is either a one thousand-word op-ed or a 400-page report, the real work of changing Australia becomes inaccessible. Welcome to the Inflection Points Podcast : the home of in-depth policy discussion for a bigger, better Australia. Get full access to Inf...