Economic growth is stagnating, hitting up against a range of limits. Last week’s news that GDP growth in Australia is at its lowest since the GFC, with interest rates already at an unprecedented low of 1% (they are negative in many places around the world), emphasises what is increasingly apparent to people around the world – the old model isn’t working, and it’s not coming back. So what’s the future of the growth-based system, and how do we transition to a new model of work, business and economics, while avoiding collapse?

Around 300 people filled the Greenhouse in Melbourne, Australia, at the 2016 National Sustainable Living Festival, with a highly credentialed panel exploring these questions. While the conversation took place a few years ago, its relevance and importance only seem to heighten. You’ll hear from: 

• Jan Owen AM, CEO of the Foundation for Young Australians, the Inaugural Australian Financial Review/Westpac Woman of Influence 2012, and former director for the Australian National Development Index (ANDI).
• Miriam Lyons, a campaigns director for the prominent progressive advocacy network GetUp!, co-author of Governomics, and previously the founding CEO of the Centre for Policy Development.
• Ian Dunlop, formerly an international oil, gas and coal industry executive, chairman of the Australian Coal Association and CEO of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. He is a director of Australia21 and a Member of the Club of Rome.

Each panellist speaks for 10 minutes, leading off with a little story on how they came to do what they do. Then we’re into another powerful Q&A with the capacity audience (featuring in an extra to this episode).

In the words of Ross Gittins, celebrated economics writer and Economics Editor at the Sydney Morning Herald: "The beginning of economic wisdom is to understand that the advanced economies – including ours – have stopped working the way they used to and won’t be returning to the old normal."

So what is the future of the growth-based economic system? Especially in the context of planetary limits, resource constraints, rising inequality, increased automation, increasing mental illness, and worsening extinction and climate crises. What’s an economy even for? And how can we recreate it for the better, and quickly?

Thanks to Chris Grose from Scout Films for this recording, and the team at the Understandascope who supported this event.

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