19 December 2019
The Right Climate For Optimism
This article from the Summer 2019 edition of the IPA Review is by IPA Research Fellow and co-host of the Young IPA Podcast, Peter Gregory. Doom and gloom are rife among young people over the state of the environment. Tragically, we have seen children present with depression and anxiety over fears the world is ending. Young couples have announced they
2 May 2019
Urban Force
The growing vibrancy of Sydney and Melbourne will keep underwriting Australia’s growing prosperity well into the 21st century, provided bureaucrats don’t strangle our cities with red tape. So says John Carroll, Emeritus Professor of Sociology at La Trobe University, and author of 11 books on Australian culture. His latest, Land of the Golden Cities: Australia’s Exceptional Prosperity & the Culture
13 December 2018
Inside the Intellectual Dark Web
The intellectual dark web has outsmarted the cultural left’s gatekeepers by speaking directly to a growing audience of millions of conservatives, classical liberals and libertarians, writes Gideon Rozner. (originally published in the October 2018 IPA Review) For the first few seconds, you think you’re in for something incendiary, even faintly satanic. The YouTube video opens with the show’s emblem: a
1 December 2018
What a Wonderful World
Hans Rosling’s posthumous book Factfulness proves Louis Armstrong and Paul McCartney were right: it’s a wonderful world and getting better all the time, writes reformed pessimist Richard Conrad. The world is a much better place today than most of us realise and continues to improve every day. That’s a key message most readers will take away from Factfulness—a remarkable work
1 August 2018
Our English Inheritance
Stephanie Forrest traces the roots of the English parliamentary system back to the early Middle Ages, exploring the unique features of a key feature of our own liberal democracy. Today, parliamentary democracy is widespread and takes many forms. In Australia, we are fortunate to have inherited a particularly old parliamentary tradition with a long tradition of stability. Unlike many modern
23 May 2018
A New Kind of Rock Star
This column is a little different, as I thought I might tell you about the rock concert I went to in Melbourne back in March this year. It wasn’t actually a rock concert but it felt like one. The Melbourne Recital Centre (capacity 1,000) was sold out and outside on the footpath people were offering to buy $90 tickets for
22 December 2017
Paths To Democracy
‘Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time…’ So spoke Winston Churchill two years
10 October 2017
How Identity Politics Divides Us
The idea that Indigenous Australian’s should have a separate voice in our Parliament, the push to make Australia Day a representation of our divisions rather than our unity, and the calls for formalised diversity quotas are all manifestations of identity politics, where our legal rights are allocated according to our race, gender and sexuality. This identity politics movement seeks to
24 January 2014
The Dirty Dozen
This article from the January 2014 edition of the IPA Review is by Director of Policy at the IPA, Chris Berg. A great idea can change the world. But so can a terrible one. And all ideas need their advocates. In this list we’ve chosen the dirty dozen of Australian opponents of freedom: the most energetic, aggressive, influential, and outright offensive
