Interviews by Claire Lehmann

Claire Lehmann
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A new podcast hosted by Claire Lehmann, founder of Quillette, featuring in-person conversations with the experts, economists, scientists, and thinkers shaping Australian life. From politics and culture to policy and ideas, Claire sits down with guests who have something real to say — and the courage to say it.

Episodes

  1. Sep 2

    Why So Many Young Men Are Giving Up on Work | Tanveer Ahmed

    Why are increasing numbers of young men withdrawing from work—and what happens when people lose a sense of purpose, competence and belonging? Claire Lehmann speaks with psychiatrist and author Tanveer Ahmed about the growing number of men who have stopped working or looking for work, despite persistent labour shortages across the Western world. Ahmed argues that this phenomenon cannot be understood simply as unemployment or clinical depression. He describes a broader problem of demoralisation: people who are capable of functioning but have become stuck, disconnected and uncertain about what their lives are for. They discuss the changing status of ordinary work, the rise of mental-health and disability identities, welfare incentives, online entertainment, cannabis, declining community ties, immigration and the changing labour market for men. They also explore why work can provide something that money alone cannot: structure, competence, dignity and a feeling of being needed. The conversation asks a difficult question: have modern societies become exceptionally good at satisfying our desires while becoming worse at giving people meaningful roles? Tanveer Ahmed is a psychiatrist and author of Fragile Nation, In Defence of Shame and The Exotic Rissole. READ TANVEER'S ARTICLE Men Without Meaning — Tanveer Ahmed https://quillette.com/2026/07/28/men-without-meaning/ MORE FROM TANVEER AHMED Tanveer Ahmed's Quillette author page: https://quillette.com/author/tanveer-ahmed/ BUY TANVEER AHMED'S BOOKS Fragile Nation — Tanveer Ahmed https://www.amazon.com.au/s?k=Fragile+Nation+Tanveer+Ahmed&tag=quillette-20 In Defence of Shame — Tanveer Ahmed https://www.amazon.com.au/s?k=In+Defence+of+Shame+Tanveer+Ahmed&tag=quillette-20 The Exotic Rissole — Tanveer Ahmed https://www.amazon.com.au/s?k=The+Exotic+Rissole+Tanveer+Ahmed&tag=quillette-20 CHAPTERS 00:00 — Why Men Need to Feel Useful 00:24 — Men Without Meaning 01:08 — Why Are Men Leaving the Workforce? 02:12 — The Cycle of Work, Welfare and Disability 03:35 — Why Men Are Opting Out of Work 05:36 — When Mental-Health Labels Become Status 08:51 — When Diagnosis Becomes Identity 11:24 — Status, Identity and the Loss of Community 13:28 — Are Welfare Incentives Keeping Men Out of Work? 15:19 — Why Staying Home Has Never Been Easier 17:26 — Have We Cured Boredom? 18:59 — Better Consumers, Worse Citizens? 22:24 — Why the Labour Market Is Changing Men's Lives 24:28 — Men, Work and the Dating Market 26:15 — Can Work Restore Purpose? 29:19 — Demoralisation Is Not Depression 30:41 — Immigration and the Value of Low-Paid Work 33:14 — Cannabis and Male Demotivation 35:49 — The Feedback Loop of Disengagement 36:28 — How Can We Make Men Feel Needed? 40:11 — When Mental Illness Becomes an Identity

  2. Aug 18

    “They’re Putting Australia Back 300 Years” | Geoff Wilson on Labor’s CGT

    Geoff Wilson founded Wilson Asset Management in 1997 and now manages around $6 billion for 130,000 investors. He has fought three tax campaigns against Labor governments over the past decade, and he is in the middle of a fourth. In June, Parliament legislated the biggest change to Australia's capital gains tax in a generation: the fifty per cent discount replaced with cost-base indexation, plus a thirty per cent minimum rate on gains accruing from 1 July 2027. Wilson is blunt about his own position. His funds are high-yield, so a shift away from growth stocks benefits them. He says he is campaigning anyway, because the people who lose are the founders, the employees paid in equity, and the young investors buying ETFs to save for a deposit. In this conversation with Quillette Editor-in-Chief Claire Lehmann, he argues that Treasury never modelled the behavioural consequences: why it is now in a company's interest to pay out all its earnings rather than reinvest, why a young investor is better off trading than holding, and why a technology founder who had offered a returning expat five per cent of his company now has to offer ten. CHAPTERS 00:00 "Growth has become a dirty word" 01:11 Intro ends 01:20 The fixed-pie assumption 02:20 A productivity round table, then a productivity tax 03:15 The modelling Treasury didn't do 05:20 "The highest capital gains tax in the world" 07:00 Why capital flees growth for franked dividends 08:35 What it does to founders and employee equity 10:10 "Carve out all Australian businesses" 10:55 "The government has been gaslighting the Australian people" 11:50 Four extra years to a house deposit 13:10 The one-in-ten-young-people claim 14:50 Why productivity is hard to explain 16:00 The industries where productivity can't rise 17:25 Superannuation, and why nobody trusts it 20:00 The maths: why companies should stop reinvesting 21:40 Why young investors should become traders 23:40 Ideology, or incompetence? 24:35 Policy engineered backwards 26:10 Wilson benefits from this tax — and fights it anyway 28:20 Why the business community stays quiet 29:20 The case for getting on a plane 31:20 Brain drain, and the Canva CFO 32:40 The UK precedent 35:20 A tax on the family home? 36:00 Can any of this be repealed? 37:35 Could this cause a recession? 38:40 43,000 new companies, and what they're really for 39:50 The grassroots campaign 43:10 Treasury versus Keating 44:00 Closing

  3. Aug 14

    Australia Stopped Investing—and Productivity Flatlined | Chris Bradley

    Chris Bradley, director of the McKinsey Global Institute, tells Claire Lehmann that Australia has had almost zero productivity growth for a decade—and that the cause isn't mysterious. We stopped investing, and nobody legislates for growth anymore. He also argues the next 75 years could still deliver universal prosperity: every country living like Switzerland does today. Chris Bradley is a co-author of A Century of Plenty: A Story of Progress for Generations to Come (McKinsey Global Institute, 2026): https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G66Z5Y4D?tag=quillette-20 0:00 Teaser 0:34 Introduction 1:00 Why McKinsey wrote it at 100 2:15 Our grandparents' century 4:30 The machine of progress: energy, capital, cities 7:00 The firm: prosperity's unsung hero 9:15 What went wrong in Australia 14:00 Giving up on growth 15:00 Luxury beliefs and 'economic measles' 19:00 Zero-sum thinking and the magic of 1 and 2 percent 27:20 Art downstream from technology 29:30 The few firms that drive productivity 33:40 Capital gains tax and talent flight 38:40 Switzerland vs Burundi 44:30 Australia in 2100: AI, energy, earning optimism

  4. Jul 14

    Generation Trapped: Why Young Australians Have Given Up Hope | Parnell Palme McGuinness

    Claire Lehmann sits down with Parnell Palme McGuinness — columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age, and senior research fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies — to unpack her landmark report, Generation Trapped, on the collapsing life satisfaction of Australians aged 18–34. Parnell identifies six distinct "tribes" among young Australians — from disillusioned Progressive Identitarians to optimistic Strivers — and explains why a sense of control, not income, is the strongest predictor of happiness. The conversation ranges across why women are swinging toward One Nation, the East–West divide still shaping German politics, the missing men in the marriage debate, the manosphere and the collapse of dating culture, and why the government's new budget may be actively hurting the young people it claims to help. 00:00 – Teaser 00:24 – Introduction: Parnell Palme McGuinness and Generation Trapped 01:11 – Why women are preferencing One Nation 03:01 – What issues actually divide men and women 05:28 – Preference cascades and the rural–city divide 06:07 – Germany's East–West split, and lessons for Australia 08:31 – Generation Trapped: six tribes of young Australians 09:02 – The Progressive Identitarians: hopeless but not struggling 11:06 – The Dislocated Post-Traditionalists 14:50 – Why government can't fix cultural problems 17:02 – Rob Henderson, luxury beliefs, and the marriage gap 19:05 – The missing men: young men, family, and religiosity 21:35 – The manosphere and the collapse of dating culture 24:53 – The Head Starts and the Strivers: Australia's optimists 30:00 – Fixing policy by giving people back control 32:06 – The budget's "landmines" and the case against the capital gains tax hike 37:57 – Why politicians don't understand the private sector 40:13 – Will One Nation's rise survive the next election? 43:54 – Where to find the research

  5. Jul 3

    Why Australia's New Capital Gains Tax Is the Best Tax Policy for Crushing the Economy: Derek Francis

    Treasurer Jim Chalmers calls it tax reform. Derek Francis calls it "a complete dog's breakfast." Derek Francis — former chief economist at the NSW Parliamentary Budget Office and a fund manager — joins Claire Lehmann to break down a basic error in Treasury's modelling of Australia's new capital gains tax. Treasury calculated tax rates using the average return on a share portfolio, ignoring the distribution of returns — meaning investors get taxed heavily on their winners with no compensation for their losers. The result: effective tax rates of up to 70% on shares, a policy that hits young investors, self-funded retirees, and startup founders hardest, and — according to Francis's own modelling — may end up collecting less tax overall as investment and talent leave the country. 00:00 Introduction 02:18 Highest capital gains tax in the world 03:16 Treasury's modelling flaw 05:20 Real-world impact on investors 07:28 Process failures at Treasury 10:57 Asymmetric tax impact 15:36 Housing and wealth accumulation 16:18 Young investors and app-based investing 17:29 Behavioural effects on tax revenue 22:33 Incentives skewed toward property 24:37 Administrative complexity 27:25 Enforcement and compliance issues 29:18 Likely revenue decline 30:43 Macroeconomic consequences 32:21 Startup impact 36:48 Risk asymmetry 38:26 Government misunderstanding of productive investment 42:07 Proposed solution 43:44 Conclusion Resources: Jim Chalmers' Budget Announcement — https://www.australia.gov.au Treasury's Budget Modelling Report — https://treasury.gov.au Australian Taxation Office (ATO) — https://www.ato.gov.au Guest: Derek Francis LinkedIn —   / derekfrancis   Twitter/X —   / derekfrancis

  • 5 Episodes

About

A new podcast hosted by Claire Lehmann, founder of Quillette, featuring in-person conversations with the experts, economists, scientists, and thinkers shaping Australian life. From politics and culture to policy and ideas, Claire sits down with guests who have something real to say — and the courage to say it.

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