Richard Denniss

Richard Denniss is the Executive Director of The Australia Institute. He is a prominent Australian economist, author, public policy commentator, and former Associate Professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia. Mark Kenny described Dennis in the Sydney Morning Herald as "a constant thorn in the side of politicians on both sides due to his habit of skewering dodgy economic justifications for the policy." In October 2018, The Australian Financial Review listed Dennis and Ben Oquist of The Australia Institute as equal tenth-place on their 'Covert Power' list of the most powerful people in Australia.

Before his appointment at The Australia Institute, Dennis was Senior Strategic Advisor to Australian Greens Leader Senator Bob Brown and was also Chief of Staff to Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, former Leader of the Australian Democrats. Dennis also worked as a researcher at the H.V. Evatt Memorial Foundation (the 'Evatt Foundation'), a public policy organization with strong links to the Australian Labor Party.[citation needed] His academic work has resulted in publications in various peer-reviewed journals, and he has lectured in Economics at the University of Newcastle.

During the 2000s, Denniss' research focused on climate change policy and tax policy. He also worked on several projects to improve government and economic performance measurement, including the 'Genuine Progress Indicator' (GPI), the 'Wellbeing Manifesto,' and the state of the Australian Government. 666 ABC Canberra produced and broadcast "An occasional series with 'The Moral Economist'" podcast starring Richard Denniss in 2013. The series discussed economic issues from the dollar cost of human life to preventative health care to who deserves welfare.

In 2015 Dennis delivered the 16th Manning Clark Lecture at The Australian National University. The speech drew from Clark's writings, identifying 'enlargers' and 'punishers' in Australian cultural, economic, and political history. Australian Labor Party MP Andrew Leigh says, "I think of Richard as being kind of a mirror image of [free-market economist and former Reserve Bank board member] Warwick McKibbin."