In 2016, Saul Eslake was appointed as the University of Tasmania's inaugural Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow. A focus of his efforts in the role will be the University’s Institute for the Study of Social Change, where he will provide advice and leadership on new research programs designed to analyse and address the social and economic challenges facing our local community and nation as a whole. His work also will centre upon the importance of education to Tasmania.
This is a part-time role; Saul is also an independent consulting economist.
Saul Eslake has worked as an economist in the Australian financial markets for 25 years, including 14 years as Chief Economist at the Australia & New Zealand Banking Group (ANZ).
After leaving ANZ in mid-2009, Saul was Director of the Productivity Growth program at the Grattan Institute, a non-aligned public policy 'think tank' affiliated with the University of Melbourne, and a part-time Advisor in PricewaterhouseCoopers' Economics & Policy practice.
From 2011 to 2015, Saul was Chief Economist at the Australian arm of Bank of America Merrill Lynch, before establishing a private consultancy in Tasmania.
Saul is currently a member of the Parliamentary Budget Office's Expert Advisory Panel, and of the Australian Taxation Office's "Tax Gap" Expert Panel. He is also Chair of the CSIRO's Decadal Climate Forecasting Project Advisory Board, and of the Advisory Board for Jamieson Coote Bonds, a Melbourne-based specialist fixed income funds management business. He is a non-executive director of the Macquarie Point Development Corporation (a Tasmanian Government owned entity responsible for the remediation and redevelopment of an 11ha parcel of land adjoining the Hobart waterfront). Saul has previously been a non-executive director of Hydro Tasmania (the Tasmanian state-owned electricity generator); a member of the National Housing Supply Council and the Australian Statistics Advisory Committee; Chair of the Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board; and a non-executive director of the Australian Business Arts Foundation. He was also a member of the Howard Government's Foreign Affairs and Trade Policy Advisory Councils, and of the Rudd Government's Long-Term Tourism Strategy Steering Committee.