Canberra as a city is undergoing big changes, not all of them positive. This seminar, featuring Khalid Ahmed, former Executive Director of the ACT Treasury, analyses key challenges for Canberra services and infrastructure and explores why they have arisen. Ahmed reviews the recent history of Canberra, and confronts its pressing issues with services, debt and governance failure. Since 2012, there have been thirteen consecutive operating deficits totalling $7.5 billion. Canberra has the highest level of rental stress and the second-highest house prices in Australia. Public housing has been sold off, and the current government has introduced legislation that overhauls the ACT's previously strict planning regime. The seminar will close with Bruin Christensen drawing together some conclusions from Ahmed's analysis, followed by an open discussion about paths forward and future actions.

Khalid Ahmed served in the ACT Public Service for 19 years, with around 10 years as Executive Director of the Policy Coordination and Development Division in Treasury. Over that period, he had been involved with the analysis of medium to long-term fiscal policy issues, and the development and implementation of major policy initiatives in the Territory. He had been involved with the preparation of the Territory’s budget in a senior capacity for over a decade. He has also led expenditure reviews and the review of the ACT’s taxation system, including the development of the Taxation Reform Plan. Khalid was on the Affordable Housing Taskforce established by the ACT Government, and had the oversight and responsibility for the implementation of a range of initiatives of the Government to improve housing affordability. He now works in the private sector as an economic advisor and is involved in public policy and public sector reform.

Bruin Christensen is a philosopher who, until September 2019, was in the School of Philosophy at the ANU. Since then, he has been in the Department of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales, where he has recently completed a PhD on the concept of the de se. He has studied in Frankfurt, Germany, supervisors for his German Dr. Phil being Karl-Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas. His main areas of teaching and research are both German philosophy of the 18th, 19th and 20th centuries and the tradition of analytic philosophy. In addition, he has worked on the philosophy of technology and sustainability, which he taught in the Fenner School while at the ANU. He has been active in ACT community politics for many years.

This event is organised by the Capitalism Studies Network. For more information, please contact Melinda.Cooper@anu.edu.au or Amelia.Dale@anu.edu.au .