John Quiggin is a professor of Economics at The University of Queensland, Australia and I first met him 10 years ago when I was making my documentary Mind The Gap . He had not long published his book Zombie Economics about how the dead economic ideas of neoliberalism such as “the market knows best”, deregulation, privatisation and “trickle down” theory, still manage to haunt the corridors of power in our country.

In this interview we discuss how Australian political parties on both left and right have managed to kill off some of these zombie ideas (such as how public hospitals would be run more cost effectively if they were privatised) yet in the New Zealand graveyard of economics such dangerous ideas still walk among us.

And in the wake of Trump’s victory in the American Presidential race last week, John gives his take on what impact it might have on the economies of both Australia and New Zealand and on the geopolitics of the Pacific.

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