IPA Review – Summer 2022

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

The remarkable story of Australia’s pioneers should once again be treasured by Australians, argues historian and author Doug Morrissey. God bless America. God save the Queen. God defend New Zealand and Thank Christ for Australia! – Russell Crowe The Australia of my childhood during the 1950s was a very different Australia from the country we live in today. It was

The Chinese Communist Party’s use of Chinese Language Schools to spread its propaganda must be stopped, argues proud immigrant and former federal politician Gladys Liu. That the textbooks used by most taxpayer-funded community Chinese schools are published and provided for free by the government of the People’s Republic of China is not a secret. It is also well known, for

The rise in unproductive labour drives economic decline, argues businesswoman and councillor Kaylee Boccalatte. Productive labour is key to our economic sustainability but these days jobs that do not produce any value underpin many of the fastest growing areas of employment. The Jobs and Skills Summit convened by the Albanese government in early September 2002 was intended to lay the

University reform is needed urgently to improve teaching standards, curricula, and academic freedom, writes theology professor Matthew Ogilvie. Three news stories tell a lot about contemporary higher education. In 2020, Pearson Educational, the 177-year-old educational publisher, was overtaken in value by Chegg, a subscription service widely used by students for cheating. Perhaps the students should not have wasted their money:

Electric vehicles are fun but expensive and not the sole future of motoring or a climate change solution, writes marketing expert John Kananghinis. The Electric Vehicle (EV) revolution is about to hit. Or is it? Full disclosure: I am a lifelong petrol-head. The type who loves sophisticated thoroughbred German, Italian and, sometimes, American V8s and V12s. A believer in the

Australia’s worker shortage can be addressed through no-regret policies that increase labour supply, writes IPA Research Fellow Saxon Davidson. Australia is currently facing an unprecedented worker shortage, and the Albanese government is failing to act on sensible measures it could take right now to unlock additional labour supply within Australia. Increasing the participation rate—the proportion of potential workers who make

Taking the Global Methane Pledge will harm Australia’s economy and have no impact on climate change, argues Professor Emeritus of Government Aynsley Kellow. I recently described climate policy by drawing on Scottish author Charles Mackay’s 1841 essay Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, the title of which should give you the idea. The delusion seems to continue after

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