Former senior Treasury official David Pearl argues that Australia's decline is not fate but the product of bad choices made by the people running our institutions. He contends that Treasury, once feared for its razor-sharp scrutiny of policy, has been captured from above by secretaries who treat emissions reduction as a moral imperative rather than a trade-off, and who withhold the true cost of the energy transition — a figure he puts as high as $1 trillion. David Pearl is a former assistant secretary of the Australian Treasury and now a full-time writer and commentator on economic and cultural policy. He spent some three decades in the federal bureaucracy, with postings to the OECD in the late 1990s and a period as the Treasurer's representative in the United States, working across taxation, fiscal management and energy policy. He writes regularly for The Australian and The Spectator Australia and appears frequently on Sky News, where he has been among the most persistent critics of Treasury's modelling of the renewable energy transition. Sign up to John's newsletter here: https://johnanderson.net.au/contact/ -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 0:56 – Introducing David Pearl 4:14 – Have you ever seen Australia this divided? 7:25 – Mass immigration, or a broken social contract? 8:20 – The people with the megaphones 10:28 – A nation of warring tribes 12:51 – How trust collapsed 15:38 – Climate policy and the cost nobody would name 20:06 – What happened to Treasury 25:44 – The grain of truth in the renewables lie 34:18 – The fastest falling living standards in the OECD 41:17 – Tax, aspiration and the ladder pulled away 50:20 – Debt, deficits and fictional forecasts 1:00:43 – Fuel insecurity means food insecurity 1:22:01 – History won't be kind -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Conversations feature John Anderson, former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia, interviewing the world's foremost thought leaders about today's pressing social, cultural and political issues. John believes proper, robust dialogue is necessary if we are to maintain our social strength and cohesion. As he puts it; "You cannot get good public policy out of a bad public debate." If you value this discussion and want to see more like it, make sure you subscribe to the channel here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCtnYSEGViOnb7k8ezUaWUww?sub_confirmation=1 And stay right up to date with all the conversations by subscribing to the newsletter here: https://johnanderson.net.au/contact/ Follow John on X: https://www.twitter.com/JohnAndersonAC Follow John on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/johnandersonac Follow John on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/johnandersonac/ Subscribe to John's Substack: https://www.ourcivilisationalmoment.com/ Support the channel: https://johnanderson.net.au/support/ Website: https://johnanderson.net.au/ Podcast: https://open.spotify.com/show/6Qh2fEsC7nEVxXxQzwTv54 2QH0QLLWRVNX5LFA