Clive Hamilton

Clive Charles Hamilton AM FRSA (born 12 March 1953) is an Australian public intellectual currently serving as Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics (CAPPE) and the Vice-Chancellor's Chair in Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University. He is a member of the board of the Climate Change Authority of the Australian Government, and is the founder and former executive director of The Australia Institute. He regularly appears in the Australian media and contributes to public policy debates. Hamilton was granted the award of Member of the Order of Australia on 8 June 2009 for "service to public debate and policy development, particularly in the fields of climate change, sustainability and societal trends".

Education and academic career Hamilton graduated from the Australian National University with a Bachelor of Arts in history, psychology and pure mathematics in 1975 and completed a Bachelor of Economics with First Class Honours from the University of Sydney in 1979. He was an Overseas Commonwealth Postgraduate Scholar and completed his Doctorate at the Institute of Development Studies at the University of Sussex in 1984.

He is a Life Member of Clare Hall, University of Cambridge and was a visiting scholar of the Department of Land Economy of the University of Cambridge.

He was a senior visiting fellow of the School of Forestry and Environmental Studies of Yale University.

Works Hamilton has written about the issue of climate change politics over a period of some 15 years. Hamilton's general view about climate change is that the "world is on a path to a very unpleasant future and it is too late to stop it". Hamilton argues that to believe anything else is to deny the climate change truth and engage in wishful thinking.

Hamilton has written several books relating to consumerism and overconsumption. Growth Fetish (2003) became an Australian best-seller and suggests that the unthinking pursuit of economic growth has become a fetish, which has not led to any real improvements in levels of happiness. In Growth Fetish, Hamilton advocates the politics of wellbeing over economic growth. In What's Left? (2006) Hamilton comments on topics written about in Growth Fetish and Affluenza. He argues that there is an emergence of new types of "alienation and exploitation", in the form of ravages of the free market, which have "robbed life of its meaning". The Freedom Paradox (2008) relates to the nature and consequences of advanced consumer capitalism. In the book Hamilton proposes a system of "post-secular ethics" that will serve as a challenge to the "moral malaise" occasioned by the "freedom of the marketplace".

Silencing Dissent: How the Australian Government is Controlling Public Opinion and Stifling Debate, edited with Sarah Maddison was published in 2007.

In February 2018 Hamilton published the book Silent Invasion: China's influence in Australia on the increasing involvement of the Chinese Communist Party in Australian civil society and politics.

In June 2020, British businessman and advocate of closer China-UK economic relations Stephen Perry and the 48 Group Club launched a defamation lawsuit in a failed attempt to block the release of Hamilton's Hidden Hand: Exposing How the Chinese Communist Party Is Reshaping the World.

Political candidate

On 23 October 2009, Hamilton was announced as the Australian Greens candidate for the by-election in the federal seat of Higgins. He ran against nine others for the seat, and came second, receiving 32.40 percent of primary votes and 39.77 percent of preferred votes. The Australian Labor Party did not run a candidate in the election.