Well-researched interviews on ideas, technology, and policy. (Plus a recurring series on Australian public policy.)

In this special end-of-year episode, the tables are turned: I'm the guest, and I'm interviewed by Zac Gross — an Australian macroeconomist and long-time listener of the show.
 We reflect on what I learned on the podcast in 2025 and what I changed my mind about. We also discuss the behind-the-scenes work of running the show, and my plans for 2026.
 Sponsors
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  To sponsor a future episode, go to https://josephnoelwalker.com/sponsor/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Jolly Swagman Podcast

2025 Retrospective — A Listener (Zac Gross) Interviews Me

Glyn Davis and Terry Moran are two of the very small number of Australians who have literally sat in the Cabinet Room, week after week, watching the machinery of government operate from the inside.
 Both served as Secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) — the most senior public servant in Australia. Terry held the role from 2008 to 2011 (including during the Global Financial Crisis). Glyn held it from 2022 to 2025.
 Both have also held equivalent roles at the state level: Glyn as Director-General of the Office of the Cabinet in Queensland (1995–96), and Terry as Secretary of the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet (2000–08). Before PM&C, Glyn was Vice-Chancellor of the University of Melbourne for thirteen years, and later ran the Paul Ramsay Foundation (Australia's largest philanthropic foundation). Terry's career spanned senior roles across the Commonwealth and Victorian public services, including as CEO of Victoria's Office of the State Training Board, inaugural CEO of the Australian National Training Authority, and Queensland's Director-General of Education. He later served as Chancellor of Federation University.
 In this episode, we trace the routines, conventions, and systems that shape power in Canberra. Where, exactly, does a prime minister's power come from? What separates a good Cabinet submission from a bad one? What actually happens in the Cabinet room once the doors close? How does Australia's Westminster model differ from the UK and Canada? And why is Australia so unusually good at bureaucracy?
 (Episode recorded on 8 December 2025.)
 Sponsors
  Vanta: helps businesses automate security and compliance needs. For a limited time, get one thousand dollars off Vanta at vanta.com/joe. Use the discount code "JOE".
  To sponsor a future episode, go to https://josephnoelwalker.com/sponsor/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Cabinet is Australia's Operating System — Here's How It Works (Glyn Davis & Terry Moran)

2,500 years of strategic history, 11 books, one afternoon. 
 Hugh White is Australia's foremost strategic thinker: former senior adviser to Defence Minister Kim Beazley and Prime Minister Bob Hawke, Deputy Secretary for Strategy and Intelligence in Defence, inaugural Director of ASPI, and principal author of the 2000 Defence White Paper. He is now Emeritus Professor of Strategic Studies at the Australian National University.
 Before this conversation, I asked Hugh for the eleven books that most shaped his thinking on strategy, international relations and defence policy. We work through them one by one — what each book argues, what it gets right and wrong, how it shaped his worldview — and use them to tackle the big questions: why great powers start disastrous wars, how international orders collapse, and how Australia and America should respond to the rise of China.
 Episode resources
  Hugh's strategy reading list: https://josephnoelwalker.com/hugh-whites-strategy-reading-list/
 Hugh's 1993 Tathra note: https://josephnoelwalker.com/hugh-whites-tathra-note/
  Sponsors
  Eucalyptus: the Aussie startup providing digital healthcare clinics to help patients around the world take control of their quality of life. Euc is looking to hire ambitious young Aussies and Brits. You can check out their open roles at eucalyptus.health/careers.
 Vanta: helps businesses automate security and compliance needs. For a limited time, get one thousand dollars off Vanta at vanta.com/joe. Use the discount code "JOE".
  To sponsor a future episode, go to https://josephnoelwalker.com/sponsor/
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Why Great Powers Sleepwalk to War — A Masterclass with Prof. Hugh White

Peter Costello is the longest-serving Treasurer of Australia (1996–2007).
 He led the most complex overhaul of Australia's tax system in the postwar era: introducing the Goods and Services Tax (GST) — a value-added consumption tax — while abolishing a range of indirect taxes (notably wholesale sales tax) and cutting income-tax rates.
 I wanted to learn from Peter what it actually takes to achieve a reform at that scale — and why we haven't managed anything like it since.
 In this conversation, we discuss:
  GST implementation war stories;
 lessons on how to get big things done in government;
 why major reform became so much harder after 2000;
 why Peter would sometimes hide revenue estimates even from the prime minister; and
 the baby bonus (introduced in 2004), which led to an uptick in Australia's total fertility rate — making Australia one of the only western countries to increase (albeit temporarily) its TFR since the demographic transition began.
   
 Episode sponsor:
  Vanta: helps businesses automate security and compliance needs. For a limited time, get one thousand dollars off Vanta at vanta.com/joe. Use the discount code "JOE".
 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Australia's last great act of economic courage — Peter Costello

One bacterium causes roughly 1 in 20 cancer cases worldwide. It's the most cancer-causing pathogen we've found—and the main cause of peptic ulcers. Its discovery overturned an ironclad medical dogma that the stomach was sterile.
 Despite infecting about half of humanity, Helicobacter pylori wasn't discovered until 1979 and shown to cause gastritis and peptic ulcer disease in the early 1980s. Why did it evade detection for so long—and what finally broke through the consensus?
 I went to Perth, Australia—where H. pylori was first discovered—to chat with Barry Marshall, gastroenterologist and co-recipient (with Robin Warren) of the 2005 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for discovering H. pylori and proving that it causes gastritis and peptic ulcer disease. Marshall famously infected himself with the bacterium to demonstrate causality and later helped develop clinical diagnostics like the urea breath test, which we demo live in the episode.
 We discuss:
   the rise and fall of stomach cancer in the West;

  whether Darwin's dyspepsia and Napoleon's stomach cancer trace to H. pylori;

  the ulcer–cancer paradox;

  Correa's cascade: what H. pylori eradication reverses—and what it doesn't;

  the "H. pylori enigmas" (Africa, India, Costa Rica);

  eradication prospects and an oral vaccine timeline;

  how the field missed the discovery;

  how the primitive internet enabled the discovery;

  what the H. pylori discovery teaches us about how knowledge diffuses;

  lessons from manufacturing millions of tests in Perth;

  and much, much more.

   
 Episode sponsors:
  Eucalyptus: the Aussie startup providing digital healthcare clinics to help patients around the world take control of their quality of life. Euc is looking to hire ambitious young Aussies and Brits. You can check out their open roles at eucalyptus.health/careers.
 Vanta: helps businesses automate security and compliance needs. For a limited time, get one thousand dollars off Vanta at vanta.com/joe. Use the discount code "JOE".
 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

The Discovery of The Bacterium Behind 5% of All Cancers — Barry Marshall

Stagnation! The 2010s witnessed Australia's weakest productivity growth in six decades.
 How much of the slowdown is homegrown? How much reflects the broader "great stagnation" plaguing the West?
 How much is simply an artefact of the way "productivity" is measured?
 And what would a credible new growth model for Australia—with its distinctive reliance on mining over manufacturing—actually look like?
 To answer these questions and more, I'm joined by two of Australia's smartest economists.
 Greg Kaplan is the Alvin H. Baum Professor of Economics at the University of Chicago. He is also the cofounder and chairman of e61, a non-partisan economic economic research institute in Australia.
 Michael Brennan is the CEO of e61. He was previously chair of Australia's Productivity Commission and a Deputy Secretary of the Australian Treasury.
 We discuss the forces behind falling construction productivity; how to think about "Australia's most productive company"; where to find quality gains in the services sector; what we can learn from the stunning innovativeness of Australia's agricultural industry; why we need new economic engines beyond the Sydney–Melbourne duopoly; and much, much more.
 Episode sponsors:
  Eucalyptus: the Aussie startup providing digital healthcare clinics to help patients around the world take control of their quality of life. Euc is looking to hire ambitious young Aussies and Brits. You can check out their open roles at eucalyptus.health/careers.
 Vanta: helps businesses automate security and compliance needs. For a limited time, get one thousand dollars off Vanta at vanta.com/joe. Use the discount code "JOE".
 See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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The Jolly Swagman Podcast

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