20 December 2022
Wake Up And Smell The CCP
Two new books are right to warn we should be alert and alarmed by the military threat China poses to Australia, advises Paul Monk. The literature on our strategic dilemmas regarding China is accumulating. To our credit, as an open society, it runs the gamut from James Curran or Stan Grant arguing that Australia’s anxieties about China are rooted in
20 December 2022
Winning Hearts and Minds
The conservative battle to win back lost ground here and abroad requires renewal and entering new territories, argues Sydney-based writer and cultural critic Adrian Nguyen. Centre-right parties and governments across the West have recently proven to be disappointments, especially as a consequence of forgetting the core values that made them unique and strong. Soon after delivering a long-delayed Brexit, the
20 December 2022
Tomorrow Never Knows
If educator and novelist John Marsden agrees our kids should be free to take risks; why not also adults?, wonders IPA Adjunct Fellow Cian Hussey. How ironic for a book called Take Risks to come out at the height of the panic-driven response to COVID. As former Prime Minister Tony Abbott said on numerous occasions, we adopted a ‘safety only’
19 October 2022
Best Of The West
We must defend Western Civilisation so all of humanity can continue to be enriched, argues author and former intelligence analyst Paul Monk. Douglas Murray is a wonderfully free spirit who lucidly tackles the manias of political correctness with erudition, panache and limpid reasoning. At just 43 years of age, he is a ‘conservative’ and courageous author in the era of
1 September 2022
Ok Boomer, Is That It?
The gap between Boomers and Millennials is as wide as the one between idealism and reality, writes IPA Membership Officer Claire Peter-Budge. Journalist and author Helen Andrews is already interesting as a self-proclaimed conservative in a very woke era, leading from the front in her role as editor of the American Conservative (co-founded by the paleoconservative and former Nixon speechwriter,
1 September 2022
Time To Try Freedom
David Kemp chronicles how an ascendant utopian socialism dragged Australia down, until believers in freedom regrouped and fought back, writes IPA Senior Fellow Richard Allsop. It is rare to be able to say when a task is 80 per cent complete that it is already a classic, but that is certainly the case with David Kemp’s landmark five-volume historical study
30 August 2022
Spies Who Loved Us
Threats to our national security remain as real right now as they were last century, writes IPA Future Leaders Program intern Jacob Watts. Spies and Sparrows: ASIO and the Cold War attracted my interest because although I was not even born when the Cold War ended, I am keen to learn more about Soviet spies in Australia and work done
31 January 2022
Don’t Pass This On
What happened in Wuhan is a worry but what’s happening here now is even more disturbing, argues IPA Adjunct Fellow Cian Hussey. Until quite recently, few journalists were willing to even report on the possibility COVID-19 originated in a laboratory. Sharri Markson is an exception, and deserves credit for this. When the new coronavirus emerged in late 2019 and early
21 January 2022
Freedom Writ Large
Zachary Gorman’s study of Magna Carta explains the historical context for societies defending their freedoms, writes historian Adam Wakeling. On 13 November 1945, British Prime Minister Clement Attlee assured the US Congress not to fear his recently-elected Labour Government. “We, in the Labour Party, declare that we are in line with those who fought for Magna Carta, habeas corpus, with
8 December 2021
Borders Are Back
The many new borders drawn recently make a mockery of rhetoric about a world without boundaries, argues theologian Phillip Tolliday. ‘Papers, please.’ In my imagination I connect this request to a scene from one of those Cold War movies. A long line of people, some anxious, many cold and shivering—because the scene in my mind is always cold and drizzly—all
