{"podcast":{"title":"John Anderson: Conversations","slug":"john-anderson-conversations-66200","podcast_index_feed_id":66200,"rss_url":"https://anchor.fm/s/10ef18ca4/podcast/rss","website_url":"https://johnanderson.net.au/","image_url":"https://d3t3ozftmdmh3i.cloudfront.net/staging/podcast_uploaded_nologo/45356785/5f73b971b78f2c88.jpg","author":"John Anderson","episode_count":256,"summary":"Former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia John Anderson sits down with world-leading historians, economists, politicians, and thinkers to examine the ideas shaping our society. Drawing on decades at the highest levels of government, John brings rare depth and civility to conversations that mainstream media won't have. This podcast covers everything from Australia's political future to faith, freedom, and the fragility of Western democracy. Thoughtful, rigorous, and genuinely independent.","last_synced_at":"2026-07-31T16:19:46.211741+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/john-anderson-conversations-66200"},"episode":{"title":"Treasury Insider: How Ideology Beat Common Sense in Australia | David Pearl","slug":"treasury-insider-how-ideology-beat-common-sense-in-australia-david-pearl","published_at":"2026-07-24T07:01:02+00:00","page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/john-anderson-conversations-66200/treasury-insider-how-ideology-beat-common-sense-in-australia-david-pearl","show_page_url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/john-anderson-conversations-66200","url":"https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/dual-citizens30/episodes/Treasury-Insider-How-Ideology-Beat-Common-Sense-in-Australia--David-Pearl-e3mfttd","audio_url":"https://anchor.fm/s/10ef18ca4/podcast/play/123254125/https%3A%2F%2Fd3ctxlq1ktw2nl.cloudfront.net%2Fstaging%2F2026-6-24%2F428527261-44100-2-be911401f9c64.mp3","summary":"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.","meta_description":"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 inst…","key_points":[],"chapters":[],"topics":[],"duration_seconds":4973,"processing_state":"not_requested","actions":[{"name":"request_transcript","method":"POST","url":"https://stenobird.com/v1/public/podcasts/john-anderson-conversations-66200/episodes/treasury-insider-how-ideology-beat-common-sense-in-australia-david-pearl/transcription-requests","description":"Idempotently request low-priority transcript generation for this episode."},{"name":"read_markdown","method":"GET","url":"https://stenobird.com/podcast/john-anderson-conversations-66200/treasury-insider-how-ideology-beat-common-sense-in-australia-david-pearl.md","description":"Read the agent-friendly Markdown representation of this episode resource."}]}}