Staff
david hughes
Executive director
David Hughes became Executive Director of the MRC in April 2023.
David brings a wealth of experience in policy development and advocacy. He served in senior roles advising three prime ministers, Tony Abbott, Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison He was the senior political adviser to leader of the Federal Opposition, Peter Dutton, before joining the MRC.
Over the last 16 years David has worked on wide ranging and important policy issues.
David has been at the forefront of policy development since 2010. He has a strong analytical mind and deep appreciation of Australian Liberal principles and values.
Nick Cater
senior fellow
Nick is Senior Fellow at the Menzies Research Centre, where he contributes to the public policy conversation through podcasts, newspaper columns, media appearances and his online show Battleground, which airs on the ADH TV network.
Nick was formerly the MRC’s executive director, a role he held for nearly 9 years from July 2014 to March 2023. Under him, the MRC increased its presence in the media and key policy debates, published a wide range of books about liberalism and the Liberal Party, released dozens of groundbreaking reports, hosted public debates and gala dinners, and developed the talents of many rising Liberal MPs. All of this was achieved through Nick's intellectual curiosity, love of robust debate and adherence to core liberal principles.
A journalist by trade, Nick has risen to become one of the nation's leading political and cultural commentators. He was deputy editor of The Sunday Telegraph in Sydney and editor of The Weekend Australian. He also spent five years in Hong Kong as the correspondent for News Corp. He remains a weekly columnist at The Australian, regularly appears on Sky News and writes for a variety of local and international publications.
Nick migrated to Australia from the UK in 1989 and has since developed a profound affection for his adopted homeland, which he captured in his bestselling book The Lucky Culture (2013).
James Mathias
Chief of staff
In 2016, at the age of 21, James Mathias was preselected as the youngest Liberal to run for the seat of Holt, in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne. It was his strongly held belief that Liberal values would resonate among the growing number of aspirational families and migrants that call the area home, and deliver what was a supposedly safe Labor seat to the Coalition. Alas, the Labor Party's roots in the electorate were too deep to budge, but James learned enormously from the experience. If anything, his political convictions are now even stronger.
Following the election, James went on to work as a policy adviser to the Hon Karen Andrews in the apprenticeships and vocational education portfolio, helping to create the Skilling Australians Fund to train hundreds of thousands of young apprentices. Both James' parents built considerable success from vocational qualifications, so he is understandably passionate about policy reform in this field. In 2018, he spearheaded the MRC's media campaign to ensure state and territory governments supported more apprentices.
He joined the Menzies Research Centre in January of 2018 as the Executive Officer and in February 2019 became the Chief of Staff where he oversees the day to day operations and governance of the centre whilst taking a continued focus on research and media advocacy.
susan nguyen
communications director
Susan Nguyen commenced as Communications Director of the Menzies Research Centre in August 2020. In this role she leads the MRC’s marketing and communications activities in line with its mission to promote Australian Liberalism and advocate for effective, efficient and democratic government. She produces and disseminates the organisation’s policy research and publications and manages its digital output.
Susan first ventured into the public policy arena in 2018 when she joined the think tank China Matters as its Communications and Events Manager. In this role, she gained fascinating insights into the nuances and complexities that characterise Australia’s China policy, arguably the greatest foreign policy challenge of our time. Prior to this, Susan spent eight years in the aviation sector working for CAPA – Centre for Aviation, a global provider of commercial aviation news and analysis. She set up and managed the Centre’s first hardcopy publication, a bimonthly magazine. She later became Head of Events where she expanded and strengthened the organisation’s global footprint by launching its annual calendar of B2B conferences in Asia, the Middle East, the US and Europe.
Susan has a particular affinity for the principles of personal responsibility, individual dignity and enterprise as articulated by Sir Robert Menzies. These values inform her own approach to the workplace setting.
Susan has a BA (Media and Communications) from the University of Sydney.
freya leach
Director of the Centre for Youth Policy
Freya Leach is the Director of the Centre for Youth Policy commencing at the Menzies Research Centre in May 2023.
She is completing a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Sydney.
She began her career working in Macroeconomics research at UBS and recently ran as the Liberal candidate for Balmain in the NSW State Election.
She has a broad range of policy interests and is focussed on winning young people back to the Liberal Party through better policy and engagement.
David Furse-Roberts
Research Fellow
David holds a PhD in history from the University of New South Wales and is the editor of Howard: The Art of Persuasion (2018) and Menzies: The Forgotten Speeches (2017). Since joining the MRC in 2016, he has written for Quadrant, Spectator Australia and other publications on the history and contemporary relevance of the Liberal tradition in Australia. This has covered such topics as the founding philosophy of Robert Menzies, the remarkable life of Prime Minister John Gorton and the rich legacy of John Howard. David's contributions also critique topical issues such as free speech and education from a conservative and liberal perspective.
At the MRC, David is committed to rediscovering the principles of Menzies and applying these to our contemporary culture. He believes that the values Menzies affirmed of free enterprise, personal responsibility, human dignity, selfless individualism, family, faith and patriotism were not only a proven success in his time, but hold the key to Australia's future flourishing as a free country.
His favourite quote of Menzies is from a speech he gave for Australia's 1951 jubilee celebrations: "Democracy is neither accidental nor inevitable. It is the product of generations of self-sacrifice, of conscious struggle, of belief in the vital significance of individual men and women, of a sense of a divine order in a distracted human world."