IPA Review Articles

30 May 2019

This article by John Roskam first appeared in the April 2019 edition of the IPA Review. According to The Guardian there are more than 1,000 biographies of Churchill. There’s probably not much more that’s new about Churchill’s life that’s going to be discovered. In a world before Facebook and Instagram, Churchill lived as public a life as anyone ever has.

30 May 2019

This article by David Cragg first appeared in the April 2019 edition of the IPA Review. David Cragg is a Life Member of the ALP, and a Trustee of the Victorian Trades Hall & Literary Institute. Anne Applebaum is probably the most renowned Sovietologist writing today. Bursting out of academia with the publication in 2003 of Gulag – A History,

9 May 2019

Universality is a key tenet of Christianity which has led to human rights as we know it today, the abolition of slavery, the idea of the individual, feminism, equality before the law, and democratic secular politics. Christianity bequeathed us these great institutions of Western Civilisation. Christianity’s influence is overwhelmingly positive not only for those of faith, but also for those

9 May 2019

The futility of attempting to measure the immeasurable is familiar to many government workers. Before coming to the IPA, I had a small role in a Victorian Education Department team implementing Gonski school reforms. The department developed school performance targets and a reforms package that would, among other things, help schools identify their strengths and weaknesses. To what extent would

29 April 2019

When one hears about the development of the principles of liberty, the story generally begins with the ancient Greeks who invented philosophy and democracy, and then moves on to the Romans with their finely balanced republic. After that we enter the Dark Ages, and with the exception of Magna Carta in the 13th century, nothing happens until the Renaissance of

1 December 2018

The simple solution to the burden of constant tax increases is for Australian governments to spend less, argues finance company director Dimitri Burshtein. Among the many theories of the development and origins of government, there is one theory in particular worth considering in the current economic and political climate. In his Power and Prosperity book, American economist Mancur Olson depicted

1 December 2018

Former OECD Chief Economist David Henderson (1927-2018) was alert to growing threats to economic liberalism, writes Michael James. In the mid-1990s, economic liberalism seemed likely to become the established policy consensus in Australia and NewZealand. Remarkably, centre-left political parties initiated the reform programs of the 1980s; their centre-right counterparts had not opposed them, and in New Zealand the national government

1 December 2018

Returning to the true purpose of education can reverse plummeting academic standards, argues the IPA’s Foundations of Western Civilisation Program director Bella d’Abrera. The evidence is in. Dramatically falling standards in reading, science and mathematics across every economic quartile and in all schools indicate the National Curriculum—introduced nearly 20 years ago—is simply not working. The recent cabinet reshuffle resulting in

1 December 2018

Being a conservative or libertarian at uni can be tough these days, so here are six rules for making the most of student life, from the IPA’s National Manager of Generation Liberty, Renee Gorman. As a campus coordinator for the IPA at the University of Sydney, one of the most common questions I was asked is what advice I would

1 December 2018

Government meddling—not greed or deregulation—caused the GFC and 10 years on we’re no safer, warns Competitive Enterprise Institute policy analyst Daniel Press. This year marks a most unhappy tenth anniversary—the onset of the global financial crisis. What began as a meltdown of the American real estate market quickly turned into a widespread financial crisis that brought the world economy to