Jessica Brown - Author of Why vs Why: Big Australia (co-written by Mark O'Connor and Oliver Hartwich).

Jessica was a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies.

She is now working for The Economist in Hong Kong - her research focused on population, family policy, welfare reform, disability pensions, parental leave and foreign policy. She has published widely in these areas.

Jessica has been published in major newspapers such as the Sydney Morning Herald, The Australian and the Herald Sun, and has appeared on television programs such as Q&A, The Drum, and Today Tonight as well as on radio programs around Australia.

She holds a Master of International Studies from the University of Sydney and Bachelor of Arts (Hons.) from the University of Melbourne, where she majored in Political Science.

Jessica Brown and Oliver Hartwich are authors of Populate and Perish: Modelling Australia’s Demographic Future, and Why A Growing Australia is Nothing to Fear, both published by the CIS.

Oliver Hartwich - Author of Why vs Why: Big Australia (co-written by Jessica Brown and Mark O'Connor).

Oliver Marc Hartwich is the Executive Director of The New Zealand Initiative in Wellington. Before that he was a Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies from October 2008 to April 2012. His area of expertise is local government and federalism, urban economics, European affairs and Industry policy. He was previously, the Chief Economist at the British think tank, Policy Exchange, London.

His publications with Policy Exchange mainly dealt with housing and planning, urban regeneration and transport policy. Before that he worked as an adviser to Lord Oakeshott of Seagrove Bay in the UK House of Lords. He studied Business Administration and Economics at Bochum University (Germany). After graduating with a Master’s Degree, he completed a PhD in Law at the universities of Bochum and Sydney (Australia) while working as a Researcher at the Institute of Commercial Law of Bonn University (Germany).

Jessica Brown and Oliver Marc Hartwich are authors of Populate and Perish: Modelling Australia’s Demographic Future, and Why A Growing Australia is Nothing to Fear, both published by the CIS. Oliver Marc Hartwich is author of Australia’s Angry Mayors: How Population Growth Frustrates Local Councils (with Adam Creighton) and Selection, Migration and Integration: Why Multiculturalism Works in Australia (And Fails in Europe).

Co-author, Why vs Why: Big Australia

Mark O’Connor (b. 1945) is an award-winning Australian poet and environmental writer with a special interest in population.

He is an editor of the Oxford University Press textbook Protected Area Management: Principles and Practices (2001). He is the author of This Tired Brown Land and co-author of Overloading Australia: How Governments and Media Dither and Deny on Population, the book which Dick Smith sent to all Australian MPs and mayors in 2010.

He has taught at James Cook University, University of Aarhus, and the Australian National University, and has been the ANU’s H. C. Coombs Fellow, and thereafter a Visiting Scholar in its Department of Archaeology and Natural History. He has also been the Museum of Victoria’s Thomas Ramsay Science and Humanities Fellow, and served for a decade as National Vice-President of Sustainable Population Australia.

Mark has published 16 books of verse, and is the editor of Oxford University Press’ Two Centuries of Australian Poetry.

He is a frequent voice on a range of ABC radio programs.