Recent publications
A roadmap to peace in the war on drugs
The war on drugs has been raging for decades. Tens of millions of lives have been lost or ruined. Because both the effect of the drugs and the effect of criminalisation have contributed to the toll, both prohibitionists and those for...
Power and the years of LBJ
There is almost a cult amongst readers of political history and biography: those who count down the years until the release of the next volume of Robert Caro's totemic biography of Lyndon Johnson. Commencing with The Path to Power in 1982,...
The essence of successful nations
Tolstoy famously wrote that while happy families are all alike, unhappy families are uniquely unhappy in their own way. In their latest book, MIT economist Daron Acemoglu and Harvard political scientist James Robinson have found the Russian...
Why capitalism is awesome
Each year the glossy business magazine FastCompany releases a list of what it considers to be the ‘World's 50 most innovative companies'. This list is populated much as you would expect. In 2012, the leader is Apple, followed by Facebook,...
The end of money as we know it
The Western world's post global financial crisis stagnation has shaken faith in the idea that central banking and monetary policy activism can resuscitate sick economies back to life. This has been reinforced by the fact that controversial...
ASIC push for surveillance powers goes too far
"The Australian Securities and Investments Commission's push to access the personal data of all Australian web users shows exactly why the government's proposed mandatory data retention regime should not go ahead," said Simon Breheny, Director of...
North Queensland Special Economic Zone proposal should be adopted in Pilbara
New proposals for a Special Economic Zone in North Queensland should be adopted by local councils in the Pilbara, according to John Shipp, Director of the ANDEV/IPA North Australia Project. According to the Courier Mail yesterday, Cairns,...
North Queensland Special Economic Zone proposal welcome
New proposals for a Special Economic Zone in North Queensland are a welcome recognition that our system of governance is failing Northern Australians, according to John Shipp, Director of the ANDEV/IPA North Australia Project. According to the...
High labour costs killing Australian mining boom
Without industrial relations reform Australia risks losing billions of dollars in investment in the resources sector, according to John Shipp, Director of the ANDEV/IPA North Australia Project. Mr Shipp's warning came in response to a Port Jackson...
Regulator lets the cat out of the bag: data retention not just about national security
"The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's demand to access Attorney-General Nicola Roxon's proposed data retention regime reveals how dangerous this regime could be," said Simon Breheny, Director of the Rule of Law Project at the free...