Community & Business
15 April, 2025
Leading economist to speak at Prayer Breakfast
Leading Australian economist and public policy specialist, Professor Ian Harper AO is the guest speaker for the 2025 Toowoomba Mayoral Prayer Breakfast.
The 31st community fundraiser will be held on Tuesday, May 13 at Rumours International from 6am.
Toowoomba Region Mayor Geoff McDonald said Professor Harper was a highly regarded economist in academic, business and government spheres, in addition to being an accomplished speaker.
Professor Harper is a member of the Monetary Policy Board of the Reserve Bank of Australia and Chair of the Australian Statistics Advisory Council.
For five years until November 2023, he was Dean and Director of Melbourne Business School and Co-Dean of the Faculty of Business and Economics at The University of Melbourne.
From March 2014 to March 2015, Professor Harper chaired the Australian Government’s Competition Policy Review
and, before that, served as inaugural Chairman of the Australian Fair Pay Commission from December 2005 to July 2009.
He has served the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne as chair of the former Stipends Committee (now renamed the Clergy Remuneration and Working Conditions Committee), and in 2024 was elected to the Board of Nominators for the Archbishopric of Melbourne.
Professor Harper was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia in 2000 and a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Company Directors in 2009.
In 2016 he was elected a Distinguished Public Policy Fellow of the Economic Society of Australia and in 2024 was awarded an Honorary Doctorate in Economics by The University of Queensland.
Professor Harper was appointed an Officer in the Order of Australia (AO) in the 2020 Queen’s Birthday Honours List with the citation: “For distinguished service to education in the field of economics, and to public and monetary policy development and reform”.
He won the Australian Christian Book of the Year award for his 2011 book, Economics for Life., which was updated and later published as, Confessions of a Meddlesome Economist.
Tickets can be bought by calling 131 872 or via Council’s website from Monday, April 14.
