John Roskam
Senior Fellow
John Roskam is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for the Australian Way of Life at the Institute of Public Affairs. He served as Executive Director of the Institute of Public Affairs from 2005 to 2022. Before joining the IPA he taught political theory at the University of Melbourne. He was previously the Executive Director of The Menzies Research Centre in Canberra, has been a senior adviser and chief of staff to federal and state education ministers, and was the manager of government and corporate affairs for a global mining company.
His publications include Australia's Education Choices (with Professor Brian Caldwell), 'Terrorism and Poverty' in Blaming Ourselves, 'Liberalism and Social Welfare' in Liberalism and the Australian Federation, and 'The Liberal Party and the Great Split' in The Split Fifty Years Later.
His fortnightly column appears in The Australian Financial Review. He is a member of the Editorial Board of The Australian Journal of Public Administration, and Connor Court Publishing, and the Advisory Board of The Centre for Advanced Journalism at the University of Melbourne. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Public Administration, Australia in Victoria, and is an Honorary Fellow of Campion College.
27 September 2021
There’s Solidarity With The CFMEU
Many Victorians would not condone some of the methods angry unionists are utilising to make their point. But they would sympathise with the protesters’ message. An out-of-control pandemic, riots, earthquakes and a Premier with a 65 per cent approval rating as Melbourne yesterday became officially the longest locked-down city in the world. Such is Victoria in 2021. Melbourne was once
10 September 2021
Health Costs Of Sacrificing Livelihoods
The COVID-19 myth that’s done the most harm is that ‘it’s about lives versus the economy’. This ignores the connection between unemployment and reduced life expectancy. Of all the myths of COVID-19 such as “we’re all in this together” and “lockdowns are a last resort”, the myth that’s done the most harm is "it’s about lives versus the economy”. When
27 August 2021
Retreat At Last From Zero-Covid
A few days ago Australians got as much of an acknowledgement of the failure of the country’s always-doomed-to-fail “zero-COVID” strategy as they’re ever likely to get. On Monday on these pages, Tony Blakely – an epidemiologist and professor at the University of Melbourne, and probably the nation’s loudest advocate for the elimination of COVID-19 by shutting businesses, closing schools and not allowing
13 August 2021
Libs In Name Only Cancel Christensen’s Dissent
It’s hard to know what will remain of the Liberal Party at the end of the COVID-19 pandemic. As an organisation it will continue on, it will have representatives in the Commonwealth and state parliaments, and the Liberal-National Coalition might even win the next federal election. However, whether the Liberals will exist in anything more than name is uncertain. Under
30 July 2021
Plan On Living And Dying With The Virus
On Wednesday, NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro spoke more honestly about COVID-19 than any other politician – state or federal – has done since the outbreak of the virus in Australia in January last year. He said he didn’t know what would happen if infections in Sydney did not fall before the planned end of the state’s lockdown on August 28, and
15 July 2021
If Lockdowns ‘Work’, Cut Fat Cats’ Pay
Last month, ABC News reported on the results of a survey of 1157 Victorians conducted in September last year. Those results have just been published in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, but amid the exhaustive (and exhausting) media coverage of the coronavirus crisis have barely rated a mention. It is to the credit of the ABC the survey received any attention at all. During
2 July 2021
Virus Fights Blights Fiscal Future
There’s a neat symmetry between the release this week of the 2021 Intergenerational Report from the Commonwealth Treasury department and the shambles Australia’s response to the coronavirus has become over the last few days (although some would say the country’s management of the virus has been shambolic, totalitarian, utterly inhumane, and lacking in any accountability or transparency since almost the beginning of the
18 June 2021
Pandemic Slogans Mask Public Scrutiny
George Orwell would have had an absolute field day analysing the great slogans of the great COVID-19 pandemic. “We’re all in this together”; “The government is following the science”; “We must flatten the curve”; “Just a little bit longer” are just some of them. All of them are largely meaningless and, as Orwell himself would have been the first to
4 June 2021
Victorian Lockdown Could Eliminate PM
For 6.6 million Victorians the cycle of lockdowns begins again. Schools closed, business shut, and the life of communities asphyxiated. And as Victorians know by now, after a total of more than five months of lockdown, with the lockdowns come the evasions, the half-truths, and the obfuscations delivered by the Andrews government, that the Melbourne media then repeats uncritically. Last year Victorians
21 May 2021
Libs Are Drifting Towards Sweden
Thirty years ago the author, journalist and one-time adviser to Margaret Thatcher, John O’Sullivan, described the behavioural tendencies of non-profit and philanthropic organisations. “O’Sullivan’s First Law” is “All organisations that are not actually right-wing will over time become left-wing”. The reason was “people who staff such bodies tend to be the sort who don’t like private profit, business, making money,
