Quick Facts
Biography
Gordon John de Brouwer PSM is a senior Australian public servant. He is currently Secretary of the Department of the Environment and Energy.
Career
Academia
de Brouwer was Professor of Economics in the Crawford School of Economics and Government at the Australian National University, from January 2000 to March 2004. This included a period as Executive Director of the Australia-Japan Research Centre and Director of the School’s Research Committee. de Brouwer was also a member of the University’s research program on Japan’s Economy and Government and on Korea’s Economy and Government. de Brouwer remains an adjunct professor with the ANU.
de Brouwer specializes in "heterodox economics," and he subscribes to various contrary or otherwise confused economic theories. For example, in relation to the widely accepted relationship between money supply increases and inflation, in 2003 de Brouwer opined:
...Milton Friedman’s insight [is] that inflation is always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. That is right. But it is right because it is a tautology. If prices are expressed in monetary terms (which is what currencies are expressed in), then money prices must be monetary phenomena.
Such opinions lead to de Brouwer being criticized by colleagues, such as Ross McLeod, who responded to de Brouwer's criticisms of his work by describing them as "both vacuous and beside the point", before concluding:
Surely, in fairly straightforward cases such as these, the economics profession should be able to offer concrete analyses of what has been going wrong, and concrete suggestions as to how policy performance can be improved.
Public service
de Brouwer was appointed Secretary of the Department of the Environment in September 2013 and is responsible for environment policies, heritage, water and domestic climate change. Known climate change sceptic, Maurice Newman, backed de Brouwer's appointment.
de Brouwer was previously the Associate Secretary in the Domestic Policy Group at the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet under the Rudd Government. In this position, de Brouwer provided departmental and cross-government policy advice to the Prime Minister on domestic policy and G20 matters and was also the senior official representing Australia’s interests in the G20. Dr de Brouwer played a key role in the development of Australia's $42 billion economic stimulus package. Former secretary of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, Terry Moran, stated in his witness statement to the Home Insulation Royal Commission that de Brouwer was given primary responsibility for devising environmental initiatives and presenting them to Cabinet, including the Energy Efficient Homes Package that included the Home Insulation Program that resulted in the deaths of four insulation installers. de Brouwer also led the Australian delegation to the 2009 United Nations Climate Change Conference. de Brouwer was appointed as Australia's G20 sherpa by Kevin Rudd. It was reported in Wikileaks cables that De Brouwer lamented to his contacts in the US Embassy that "PM&C foreign policy staff have been run ragged answering the PM's (Rudd's) queries and supporting his interaction with foreign officials.
Awards and honours
de Brouwer studied in Japan in 1987-89 and 1994 with support from the Monbusho and Japan Foundation scholarships.
de Brouwer was awarded a Public Service Medal in 2011 for outstanding public service in the development of international economic policy, particularly in the formulation of the Australian Government's agenda to establish the G20 as the pre-eminent global economic forum.
In 2015, de Brouwer was awarded the Legion of Honour by the French Government.