Richard Denniss (pictured) was one of a trio of speakers at an event at Melbourne's Royal Society of Victoria to consider: "What is Australia Risking? Future Impacts of Climate Change".

The event was convened by Climate Communications Australia and hosted by The Royal Society of Victoria, and offered a unique chance to discuss the report with Risk Assessment experts.

The event focused on how climate change would affect Australia, and the scenarios for the 'cascading, compounding and concurrent disasters' that are emerging across the country.

The social and developmental implications of these impacts for future generations were discussed, along with what policies were needed to adapt to and mitigate the risks.

The speakers were:

Dr Andrew Watkins is a climate scientist in the School of Earth, Atmosphere and Environment at Monash University. He was previously at the Australian Climate Service, where he was a Lead Author of the National Climate Risk Assessment. For more than 10 years, he was the Head of Climate Prediction at the Bureau of Meteorology. Andrew is a Research Fellow at Climate Communications Australia.

Dr Richard Denniss is the Executive Director of The Australia Institute and is a prominent Australian economist, author and public policy commentator, and has spent the last twenty years moving between policy-focused roles in academia, federal politics and think-tanks.

He was also a Lecturer in Economics at the University of Newcastle and former Associate Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy at ANU. He is a regular contributor to The Monthly and the author of several books,a including Econobabble, Curing Affluenza and Dead Right: How Neoliberalism Ate Itself and What Comes Next?

Professor Lucas Walsh is the director of the Monash Centre for Youth Policy & Education Practice (CYPEP) within the Faculty of Education at Monash University and was a member of the National Climate Risk Assessment Expert Advisory Committee.