In our second episode, the Publications team dives into the murky pool that is the PPE job market! With graduate job applications in full swing (and PPE Pathways coming up on the 19th of March!), it seems high time to have a chat to some employment experts and find out their perspectives on getting students into jobs.

Our two guests for this week are Lucy Boyle, UQPPES Vice President of Vocations, and Devika Moss, a 2024 PPE graduate currently working in the Queensland Government's Policy Futures graduate program. As well as discussing what strategies this year's graduating cohort can employ, we consider what sort of opportunities other cohorts should be looking out for, as well as whether things like GPA and choice of major are as important as they're cracked up to be.

It's a new year, and with it comes new UQPPE initiatives! This is the first episode of the PPE Survival Guide, a series of interviews organised by the UQPPE Publications Portfolio to help communicate different perspectives on the degree. The PPE cohort has always been brimming with warnings, stories, and advice: our hope is that this series helps broadcast these experiences throughout the degree, as well as to give people outside of the degree a bit of an insight into what studying PPE is all about!

Our first guest is Jack Sutton, the current president of the UQPPE Society. Jack and Elliott chat about the role of president, the opportunities out there for PPE students, and what advice they would pass on to 2025's first years.

In the final episode of season one of Pillar Talk, Will and Ollie chat with Dr Cameron Murray. Cameron is a post-doctoral research fellow at the University of Sydney Henry Halloran Trust, specialising in the economics of property and urban development, environmental economics, rent-seeking, and corruption.

This conversation covers a lot of these topic areas, beginning with Cameron’s work on corruption, before honing in on the ongoing crisis of housing affordability, and Cameron’s proposed solution: a policy he calls HouseMate.

To read more about this and other ideas of Cameron's check out his substack here.

This episode is a follow-up to the 2022 Statecraft Autumn Lecture, which Cameron gave back in March last year, on the topic: Why politicians must pretend to care about cheap housing. As with the lecture & podcast we did with George Brandis, you don’t need to have seen that lecture to know what’s going on here, but I recommend you checking it out anyway, as it was a real highlight of my time with the UQ PPE Society, and clarifies a lot of the issues discussed in this episode.

This is the last episode we’re uploading from the first season of Pillar Talk. As such, I just want to take a moment to thank both Will and Oliver for their efforts with the podcast in 2022. In my opinion, both did a great job hosting these episodes, and I’m particularly grateful to Will for his passion in getting the project up and running, and for his work in organising all the guests for what has been a fantastic first season. Will, Ollie, and the rest of the graduating cohort of 2022, thanks, congratulations, and all the best starting your careers post-PPE.

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Pillar Talk is published by the University of Queensland Politics, Philosophy & Economics Society. It is produced by Will Splatt and co-produced and edited by Tom Watson, with music created by Isaac Haynes. Your hosts for this episode are Will Splatt and Oliver Friendship.

If this episode has you keen for more content from the UQ PPE Society, you might want to check out our other publications: Statecraft Magazine, and The Statecraft Review.

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KPMG is a platinum sponsor of the UQ PPE Society. They provide a range of professional services for businesses, non-profits, and government, including consulting on the design and implementation of key government policies. As mentioned during the ad break, they offer two programs that might interest you: a 12-month graduate employment program, and a 4-8 week vacation internship program for students in their penultimate year of study. For more information about these opportunities, click here, or reach out to the UQ PPE Society using vocations@uqppes.com.au to talk about meeting with one of our contacts at KPMG.