Ross Garnaut to take post at Melbourne

[ The University of Melbourne Voice Vol. 3, No. 1  14 April - 12 May 2008 ]

By Christina Buckridge

Economist and climate change review chair, Professor Ross Garnaut, has been appointed a Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Melbourne, and a Professorial Fellow in the University’s Faculty of Economics and Commerce.

Professor Garnaut will take up the part-time appointment at Melbourne after completion of the Garnaut Climate Change Review. He will be attached to the Department of Economics and the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research in the Faculty of Economics and Commerce.

Welcoming the appointment, University of Melbourne Vice-Chancellor Professor Glyn Davis says Professor Garnaut brings to Melbourne a wealth of experience as an academic and practising economist. “As a Fellow ‘in residence’, he will make an outstanding contribution as a public intellectual to the wider community and to the life of the University.”

His main role at the University of Melbourne will be to write from his lifetime of thought and experience on China’s economic reforms and internationalisation, Asia-Pacific economies’ development and international economic relations, Australia’s economic relations with the Asia-Pacific region and economic adjustment to Asia-Pacific economic development.

Economics researchers and graduate students will be able to draw on his expertise. He will provide advice to the Centre for Asian Economics and actively contribute to the Melbourne Institute’s highly-respected public outreach program.

Ross Garnaut has had a distinguished career as an academic, government policy adviser, diplomat, and businessman. His academic career began at the Australian National University where he was Professor of Economics in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University from 1989 until the end of 2007.

In 2007, he was commissioned by the Australian States and Territories, and now the Commonwealth Government, to undertake a review examining the impact of climate change on the Australian economy and potential medium to long-term policies to ameliorate these. He is due to report on 30 September 2008.

Professor Garnaut is currently on the boards of directors of a number of international research and policy organisations, including the International Food Policy Research Institute (Washington), of which he is Chairman, including the Lowy Institute for International Policy (Sydney), and Asialink (Melbourne). He chairs the Board of Directors of Lihir Gold Limited.

He is a former Australian Ambassador to China and served as Senior Economic Adviser to Prime Minister Bob Hawke. In 1989 he reported to the Australian Government on Australia and the Northeast Asian Ascendancy. He is also author of numerous books, monographs and articles in scholarly journals on international economics, public finance and economic development, particularly in relation to East Asia and the Southwest Pacific.

Professor Garnaut is an Officer of the Order of Australia for services to education and to international relations, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences and an Honorary Professor of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.