Events
Upcoming events 2009
- 2009 Economic and Social Outlook Conference (5-6 November 2009)
- Public lectures at the University of Melbourne
Recent events
- 70th Annual CPA Lecture: Professor Mary Barth (12 October 2009)
- Foenander Lecture: Professor Barbara Pocock (21 October 2009)
- Downing Lecture: Professor Stephen Jenkins (22 October 2009)
Upcoming events 2009
2009 Economic and Social Outlook Conference
The next Economic and Social Outlook Conference, “The Road to Recovery”, will be held at the University of Melbourne from 5 to 6 November. The conference is hosted jointly by the Melbourne Institute and The Australian.
Program details are available at the Melbourne Institute website.
Mr Glen Stevens, Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, will speak at the Gala Dinner on Thursday 5 November, 7.00 pm at the Melbourne Museum, Carlton Gardens (opposite the Royal Exhibition Building). The Gala Dinner is a valuable opportunity for networking with stakeholders and clients. Table bookings can be made independently from the overall conference.
The conference has established itself as the nation’s premiere economic and social public policy conference, providing a unique forum that brings together leading politicians, bureaucrats, academics and non-government organisation representatives. The plenary addresses, concurrent sessions and a gala dinner will provide many opportunities for valuable participation and networking.
The 2009 conference program will facilitate a wide-ranging debate on major current economic and social policy issues on managing recovery from the global financial crisis and addressing how Australia can be best placed to meet its longer term challenges. These issues include the social factors facing the newly unemployed and the socially excluded; what we have learned from the financial crisis about how to manage cycles in Australia’s terms of trade or the adequacy of regulation; the right approach to pricing carbon emissions; closing the gap in outcomes achieved for indigenous Australians; maximizing health and education standards; achieving affordable housing; labour skills issues; and how to best achieve an environmentally friendly future.
Among the many distinguished speakers are:
- Mr Gary Banks AO, Chairman, Productivity Commission
- Professor Ross Garnaut AO, Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow and Professorial Research Fellow, The University of Melbourne
- The Hon Julia Gillard MP, Deputy Prime Minister
- Mr Chris Richardson, Director, Consulting, Access Economics
- The Hon Wayne Swan MP, Commonwealth Treasurer
- The Hon Lindsay Tanner MP, Minister for Finance and Deregulation
- The Hon Malcolm Turnbull MP, Leader of the Opposition
- Senator The Hon Penny Wong, Minister for Climate Change and Water.
To register for the conference please complete the form located on the Melbourne Institute website.
For conference enquiries, please phone +61 3 8344 2149 or email melb-conf@unimelb.edu.au.
Please direct media enquiries to Cliff Howard, Communications and Publicity Manager, Melbourne Institute through +61 3 8344 2154 or email howardc@unimelb.edu.au.
Public lectures
The University of Melbourne hosts a selection of public
lectures by prominent local, national and international speakers. The
content of the lectures is selected for general interest and accessibility.
Schedule of
Public Lectures
Recent events
70th Annual CPA Lecture : Professor Mary Barth (Stanford University)
Accounting Research and Global Financial Reporting
The presenter, Professor Mary Barth, is a member of the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). Her research focuses on financial accounting and reporting issues, particularly topics of interest to accounting standard setters. This lecture considers the various financial reporting issues that the IASB has had to evaluate in recent times with a focus on specific issues like fair value and the effects of globalisation.
The University of Melbourne and CPA Australia’s annual research lecture was established to promote and stimulate research and encourage original contributions to accounting.
Foenander Public Lecture 2009: Professor Barbara Pocock (Centre for Work + Life, University of South Australia)
What Makes for Meaningful Work in the 21st Century: Terms, Conditions and Contexts
Australians are giving more and more time to paid work. Many employees draw much meaning in their lives from their paid work whether it is from their pay, the tasks they do, the difference these tasks make to others or their communities, the skills they exercise, the things they make or learn, or the relationships, laughs or social connection work brings. What kinds of meaning do we draw from work, how much does it matter, and how does meaning vary between people, over the life course, and compared to other things we do and are? The lecture reflected on how the meaning of work varies between jobs and by socio-economic status. Professor Pocock argued that particular terms, conditions and contexts matter a great deal to the meaning we draw from work, and that what the makers of these terms and conditions do - employers, unions and governments - can help make work more meaningful in lives that are increasingly shaped by the stamp of work.
Professor Barbara Pocock is Director of the Centre for Work + Life, at the University of South Australia. Barbara's research has included work, industrial relations, trade unionism, pay and pay equity, vocational education and inequality in the labour market. In 2003 she was awarded a Queen Elizabeth II Fellowship to study the intersections between work, family and community. Barbara has published many books, articles and book chapters and given visiting lectures in the US, Canada, the UK, New Zealand, Switzerland, and China. She is actively involved in policy development and public commentary on work issues in Australia, and undertakes many public contributions on these issues each year. She is Deputy Chair of The Australia Institute, a member of the Strategic Council of The Climate Institute, a member of the Festival of Ideas Committee in Adelaide, and has been President, Vice-President and Conference Convenor of the Association of Industrial Relations Academics of Australia and New Zealand (AIRAANZ).
Downing Lecture - Professor Stephen Jenkins (Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, UK)
Spaghetti unravelled: how income varies with age
Knowledge of how income varies with age on average, and the extent to which individual trajectories differ from an average profile, is relevant to many aspects of social policy making. For example, how your income varies over your life is an important determinant of your spending possibilities and hence economic well-being at different ages, and your ability to save for old age, whether privately or through company, occupational, or state pension schemes. Even if income increases with age on average, this is consistent with considerable year-on-year fluctuation in the incomes of a minority, or a mixture of subgroups with rising income and subgroups whose income is falling. Such heterogeneity complicates the design of effective policies for fostering saving by all. The lecture presents new evidence about the shape of people’s income-age trajectories. Stephen explained that, collectively, trajectories look like cooked spaghetti – they are a complex mix of wiggly lines. But the spaghetti can be unravelled. The lecture summarised the key features of income-age trajectories – both the average trajectory for groups of individuals with similar characteristics and the differences from the average within groups (which are substantial).
Stephen Jenkins is a professor of economics in the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, UK. He has just completed a term of office as ISER Director, and is visiting the Melbourne Institute in October for two months. Stephen has wide-ranging substantive research interests in income distribution and labour market topics, and methodological research interests in microeconometric methods for longitudinal data. He is a member of the UK’s National Equality Panel. He was President of the European Society for Population Economics in 1998, and Chair of the Council of the International Association for Research on Income and Wealth, 2006–8.