Uploaded August 2026 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Alex Sanchez was economic adviser to Anthony Albanese for five years, until 2024. In this frank NEXT50 lunch conversation with CIS Executive Director Michael Stutchbury, he explains why he now believes Labor has walked away from the pro-growth instincts of the Hawke-Keating era, and what it would take to bring them back.
Drawing on his own story, the son of Spanish migrants who arrived in Australia in 1963, Sanchez traces a direct line from his parents' working life in Green Valley to his years advising Mark Latham and then Albanese. He reveals he pushed hard inside the Albanese government for a flatter income tax system, a lower company tax rate and restraint on capital gains changes, and explains why he came up short on almost all of it.
The conversation ranges across the ballooning cost of the NDIS, universal entitlement versus means testing, the politics of the 2019 franking credits defeat, and whether today's Labor Party can still find its way back to the reform instincts of Hawke and Keating. Sanchez also discusses his recent CIS paper, Banana Republic Redux, which argues that Australia is squandering the hard-won gains of the 1980s reform era.
This event drew significant national media coverage, including in The Australian and news.com.au, for Sanchez's comments on tax reform and his account of trying to shift Labor's economic direction from the inside.
CIS NEXT50 lunches bring leading thinkers and public figures together for candid, wide-ranging conversations on the ideas shaping Australia's future.
Learn more about the Centre for Independent Studies: https://www.cis.org.au
Read Banana Republic Redux: https://www.cis.org.au/publication/banana-republic-redux-how-australia-is-surrendering-gains-of-the-reform-era/
Alex Sanchez was economic adviser to Anthony Albanese for five years, until 2024. In this frank NEXT50 lunch conversation with CIS Executive Director Michael Stutchbury, he explains why he now believes Labor has walked away from the pro-growth instincts of the Hawke-Keating era, and what it would take to bring them back.
Drawing on his own story, the son of Spanish migrants who arrived in Australia in 1963, Sanchez traces a direct line from his parents' working life in Green Valley to his years advising Mark Latham and then Albanese. He reveals he pushed hard inside the Albanese government for a flatter income tax system, a lower company tax rate and restraint on capital gains changes, and explains why he came up short on almost all of it.
The conversation ranges across the ballooning cost of the NDIS, universal entitlement versus means testing, the politics of the 2019 franking credits defeat, and whether today's Labor Party can still find its way back to the reform instincts of Hawke and Keating. Sanchez also discusses his recent CIS paper, Banana Republic Redux, which argues that Australia is squandering the hard-won gains of the 1980s reform era.
This event drew significant national media coverage, including in The Australian and news.com.au, for Sanchez's comments on tax reform and his account of trying to shift Labor's economic direction from the inside.
CIS NEXT50 lunches bring leading thinkers and public figures together for candid, wide-ranging conversations on the ideas shaping Australia's future.
Learn more about the Centre for Independent Studies: https://www.cis.org.au
Read Banana Republic Redux: https://www.cis.org.au/publication/banana-republic-redux-how-australia-is-surrendering-gains-of-the-reform-era/
