Nicholas Gruen

About Nicholas Gruen

A record of media podcast interviews I've done.

Publisher

Nicholas Gruen

Category

government

Language

en

Explicit

No

First episode

8 Aug 2018

Latest episode

25 Sept 2026

Latest episodes

23 of 147 episodes have a transcript.

1. 

   25 Sept 2026TRANSCRIPT

   Superannuation: The ALP's Maginot Line (With Leon Gettler)

   Nicholas Gruen explains to Leon Gettler why Australia's superannuation system serves empire-building interests over public needs, revealing its political vulnerability.

2. 

   26 Nov 2025TRANSCRIPT

   90% of Voters Hate This, But Politicians Do It Anyway

   Interviewed on my videos (https://www.thesharedcentre.com/) by Peter Clarke of The Transit Zone (https://open.spotify.com/episode/7JARHiFKJfdtPFy37UoMxv), you'll find this interview is in a new register, more appropriate to our dire situation. Asked what I thought of democracy I riffed off Lincoln's idea that it was "the last best hope of earth". And off an idea I expressed a few years ago - in a post titled "Will you join me in the alt-centre (https://clubtroppo.com.au/2022/03/06/will-you-join-me-in-the-alt-centre/)". I argued that the alt-right's diagnosis of how much is wrong with our institutions is right! It's just their next step, that there's something better than democracy, catastrophically wrong. So wrong that the world they build will be worse even for them. So have a listen and tell me what you think.

3. 

   13 Aug 2025TRANSCRIPT

   Me on Curious World View

   Ryan Faulkner-Hogg asked me to join him on his long-form podcast show where, over nearly three hours, we spoke about many things.Here are his show notes: I joined the Australian economist Nicholas Gruen recently in his Melbourne home to host his first 'long-form' podcast (although I'm not sure at what hour it goes from short to long) At the core of Gruen's worldview is the “un-seriousness” he levels at Australian politics, the media landscape, institutions and in a word... bureaucracies. From his creation of the HALE Index to his decades inside Australia’s public institutions, Nicholas continuously challenges orthodox thinking. The podcast covers the (in my opinion) radical yet (Nicholas's opinion) ancient idea of citizens’ juries as a second pillar of representation, the reasons bold policy rarely survives bureaucratic reality, and how lessons from the Toyota production system could help governments actually listen to people at the bottom of the hierarchy. Along the way, Gruen takes us from Australia’s superannuation system to pokies, from the mental health crisis to the subtle erosion of public-spiritedness inside organisations. To be specific, these are all the topics covered in this chat. The HALE Index of Well-being – Why GDP misses the mark, how HALE works, and what it reveals about Australia’s progress. Measuring What Matters – The limits of subjective well-being metrics, correlations between indicators, and why faux indexes mislead policymakers. Indigenous Policy Contradictions – The tension between material “gap closing” and self-determination, and why policy rarely confronts it. Citizens’ Juries & Political Reform – Introducing random selection into governance and how it could act as a check on elected officials. Goodhart’s Law in Action – How turning measures into targets corrupts them, and the problem of gaming metrics in education and beyond. Internal vs External Goods – Alasdair MacIntyre’s framework and its relevance to public service, corporate culture, and motivation. Institutional Stagnation – Why promising initiatives stall, and how bottom-up programs could scale without being crushed by bureaucracy. Toyota Production System Lessons – Building respect for frontline workers into systems and how it transforms performance. Australia’s Superannuation System – Strengths, inefficiencies, unfair taxation, and misaligned regulation of self-managed super funds. Compulsory Voting & Preferential Systems – How they shape Australia’s political centre and guard against extreme populism. Universities Today – The shift from idea-driven discourse to metric-chasing careerism, especially in economics. Trade-offs vs Synergies – Why economics often overemphasises trade-offs, and examples of where quality and cost improve together. If you prefer to watch the video, it's here (https://youtu.be/Q4Ti0BC2sKA).

Inside a recent episode

Superannuation: The ALP's Maginot Line (With Leon Gettler)

Published 25 Sept 2026 · Transcript excerpt

[…] Could actually affect the super system and people's retirement savings, couldn't it? Of course it could. Of course it could. If you let people take money out of their super and put it into a house, then that's fairer in a bunch of respects. It also will drive up house prices to some extent. That's what happens when you let people buy houses. They drive up the house price. So yes, we won't have as much money for retirement. We'll rely a little bit more on the age pension. But when all these calculations were done, The aim was to head for 15% super. And that was at a time when inflation was running at about 7%. […]

Reach and audience

Public platform figures. Ratings count people who left a rating, not total listeners.

YouTube views

253,974

Score snapshot 15 Sept 2025

Apple Podcasts (US)

5.0 / 5

1 ratings

Spotify

5.0 / 5

3 ratings

Podcast Authority Score: 65 / 100

A composite of feed quality, social presence, YouTube performance and engagement. Read the methodology.

Quality

83

Social presence

0

YouTube

86

Engagement

32

Contact Nicholas Gruen

Guest appearances

Books guests

Based on episode analysis; this does not confirm that the show is currently accepting guests.

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Questions about Nicholas Gruen