Lumen Summer 2013 - Flipbook - Page 16
story by Robyn Mills
An Economics
flight path
From University of Adelaide Economics with Honours to the
Premier’s Adviser on International Engagement – Lumen follows
the 昀氀ight path of Tim Harcourt, The Airport Economist.
I
f anyone did actually follow the flight
path of Tim Harcourt, they’d get dizzy:
over the past five years he’s been to 56
countries, averaging two days a country.
The former Chief Economist of Austrade
and author of the popular culture
economics book, The Airport Economist,
fortunately loves travel. It is an important
part of his latest position, advising
Premier Jay Weatherill on international
engagement for our State.
The Harcourt name is well known at
the University of Adelaide. Tim’s father,
the distinguished economics scholar
Professor Geoff Harcourt, lectured here
in the School of Economics for 25 years
before moving full-time to Cambridge
University.
Perhaps surprisingly, it wasn’t his
father’s career in Economics that set
the path for Tim. It was politics that
dominated the Harcourt household when
Tim was growing up in Adelaide. His
parents, Geoff and Joan, were both strong
advocates for workers’ rights.
“My family was very politically active,”
he says. “My Mum ran for Parliament,
urged along by Don Dunstan, and my Dad
was an avid anti-Vietnam war campaigner.
Both were big Labor Party activists.
“I was surrounded by politics growing
up in the 70s – the sacking of Gough
Whitlam, the protests – and, running
through all this, economics dominated the
political debate.”
When he was in Year 11, Tim Harcourt
visited the Australian Council of Trade
Unions (ACTU) in Melbourne and said he
wanted to work for them.
“The ACTU said I should either run a
union or get a degree to be able to join
them – and if it was a degree, it should
be economics or law, but economics was
probably handier,” he says.
14 Lumen | Summer 2013
Tim undertook his Economics degree –
including a good smattering of industrial
law – and excelled. He won the E.A.
Russell Memorial Prize for the best
results in third year Macroeconomics and
a Frank Hambly Memorial Scholarship
for academic excellence from Lincoln
College; and he secured one of the highly
sought-after Reserve Bank of Australia
cadetships.
He attributes both his good grades
and the development of his passion and
interest in Asia and travel to his early
days at the University of Adelaide living at
Lincoln College.
“Most of my classmates at Lincoln
College were either from Singapore or
Malaysia,” he says. “Lee Kuan Yew made
a mistake in his paperwork – all these
top students were meant to go to Oxford
to study Physics but they all came here
instead to study Economics!
“They fed me noodles every night, and I
got very good marks!” Tim’s first overseas
trip was to South-East Asia, invited by his
Lincoln College friends.
“Everything I’ve done – the travel, my
work in Asia, the position with Austrade,
The Airport Economist – it all stems from
my time at Adelaide Uni.”
He also treasures his memories of
playing cricket and particularly footy for
the Adelaide University Football Club, a
member of the bottom team ‘The Scum’
along with The Blacks legend Bob Neil.
Following his graduation, Tim
completed a Master of Arts in Economics
(Industrial Relations) at the University
of Minnesota and then a Trade Union
Program at Harvard before fulfilling his
Year 11 ambition and starting work with
the ACTU, where he was a research
officer and then industrial advocate
from 1991 to 1999.
He left the ACTU for Austrade where he
was Chief Economist until last year. While
still at Austrade, he became the JW Nevile
Fellow in the School of Economics at the
University of NSW, where he has an office
just down the corridor from his father who
has returned from Cambridge.
“It’s actually great to be working so
close to him,” says Tim. “After spending
30 years in different countries, we’re now
making up for lost time.”
Just this year, Tim was appointed to his
most recent challenge as the inaugural
Adviser–International Engagement for
South Australia. It’s a position which,
happily, brings him back to Adelaide
frequently and keeps him in the skies.
As part of that role, he wants to
establish networks of South Australians
around the world to help build the State’s
influence and exposure overseas, and
to leverage those communities to create
export opportunities.
“Just because this isn’t the biggest
state or the biggest capital city, it doesn’t
mean we can’t have an impact,” he says.
Tim Harcourt is certainly doing his best to
make that happen.
Right: Tim Harcourt
Picture courtesy Matt
Turner of The Advertiser
