IPA Review Articles

20 June 2023

Dries founder John Hyde deserves honour and still shows the best path forward for our nation, writes former IPA executive director Mike Nahan. John Hyde—former executive director of the IPA and leader of ‘the Dries’—received an Order of Australia (general division) in the 2023 Honours List –a timely and deserved honour. John received the honour for services to the community

6 June 2023

David Kemp’s magnum opus imparts hope that Australian liberal democracy can adapt to tackle this century’s many challenges, writes IPA Senior Fellow Richard Allsop. David Kemp’s now complete multi-volume masterpiece is the perfect antidote to any sense of despair readers with a liberal disposition might be feeling at the state of politics and society in Australia in the 2020s. The

19 May 2023

The ideology of Aboriginal empowerment is doing far more harm than good—especially in dysfunctional remote communities, writes Gary Johns in this book extract. The problem with the empowerment thesis (apart from its falsity) is that … every problem that occurs among Indigenous Australians can thereby be traced back to the original European sin of colonisa­tion and dispossession. This is a

16 May 2023

An economist’s research shows the benefits of well-managed migration programs, and the downside of open borders, writes IPA Executive Director Scott Hargreaves. This book is not specifically about Australian culture or our immigration policies, but should be compulsory reading for anyone concerned with either or both. Talking about immigration, or what kind of culture we have or want in Australia,

2 May 2023

Queensland’s desalination plant provides a prime example of how caving in to the green lobby harms our society, the economy, and the environment, writes communication consultant Bruce Kingston. Water is often ignored because of its ubiquity, but without it we humans can maintain life for only some three or four days. Major dam projects in Australia in the first half

24 April 2023

We must accept globalisation is now in reverse, and agree energy security is national security, argues IPA executive director Scott Hargreaves. As we witnessed Russia’s tanks rattle through Ukraine’s countryside, and China’s balloons floating over North America, so too have we witnessed the end of the globalisation era. Spanning roughly from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the invasion

24 April 2023

The IPA believes in the timeless values of freedom and the Australian way of life, but sometimes we have to put the focus on the very urgent and very important. Two extremely current issues are the Voice to Parliament, and the looming energy crisis in Australia driven by net zero obsessions. As you receive this, know that this month NSW

24 April 2023

The Swedes proved an alleged crisis—whether COVID or, say, climate change—is no excuse for curtailing our freedom, argues public policy analyst Scott Prasser. Sweden—with its extensive government regulation and social engineering—used to seem to me to be like the world’s largest prison, a sort of real-life version of that 1960s British TV series, The Prisoner, about a make-believe, contrived village

24 April 2023

Recklessly closing more coal-fired power stations threatens to condemn Australians to a new dark age, argues IPA Research Fellow Kevin You. In April 2023 the Hunter Valley in New South Wales will lose an icon, which—for the last two generations—has been providing reliable, baseload power to factories, businesses, schools, and families in NSW and the rest of the Eastern seaboard

21 March 2023

A new memoir provides a first-hand account of why Mao’s attempt to communise China was a blooming disaster, writes IPA Membership Officer Claire Peter-Budge. There is a line often heard in political and social justice circles which speaks of being on the “right side of history”. This notion is evoked when those behind it are challenged in situations such as