The brilliant journalist, author and poet Clive James died on Sunday aged 80 after a long battle with cancer. You can read the full chapter that he wrote especially for Climate Change: The Facts 2017 online here and you can print a PDF here .
It is filled with funny lines (my favourite was his line about wombat extinction expert Tim Flannery: it is “dangerous to stand between him and a TV camera. If the giant wombat could have moved at that speed, it would still be with us”) and you should send it to all your sceptic and warmist friends!
We hope to honour his memory with our upcoming edition of Climate Change: The Facts 2020 to be released early next year.
If you want to silence conservatism online, then Attorney General Christian Porter has just the law for you – extending defamation law to social media. The IPA’s Chris Berg and Aaron Lane wrote in The Sydney Morning Herald on Tuesday “it is hard to imagine a legislative proposal that would more effectively, and immediately, cut down the Australian conservative movement online”.
Maybe Sacha Baron Cohen wants to be our AG instead of Ali G? He has also voiced support for censorship of social media. As Robby Soave wrote in Reason on Friday, it’s “hypocritical for Cohen to be so worked up about Zuckerberg’s refusal to purge misleading content from his platform. He’s literally made a career out of duping people”
Disney’s Frozen 2 released this week is about… reparations? Princesses Elsa and Anna, while investigating their grandfather’s misdeeds against the ‘Northuldra’ tribe, discover they’re half Indigenous. It’s sure to replace Disney’s Pocahontas as Elizabeth Warren’s personal favourite.
There’s still time to book your tickets for the IPA’s Melbourne screening of The Rise of Jordan Peterson on Tuesday the 3rd of December. We’ve had both previous events sell out so far so grab your tickets now!
The former Deputy Prime Minister John Anderson and our own former Chairman Rod Kemp will be launching Restoring Hope: Practical Policies to Revitalise the Australian Economy by Dr Andrew Stone, former economist to Tony Abbott, on Thursday the 5th of December at The Hotel Windsor in Melbourne. Click here to book your tickets.
Don’t miss the 2019 IPA Members’ Christmas Party on Tuesday, 17 December in Melbourne where we will also be launching The Solidarity Challenge by John Burgess, Australia’s ambassador to Poland during the 1980’s Solidarity movement. Tickets available here.
Article of the week:
The media was ablaze last week with stories about 20 million people living underwater by 2050. Except they forgot to mention that 110 million people already live below sea level. As Bjorn Lomborg wrote in Project Syndicate last week, if we want to help people dealing with rising sea levels, “the real solution is to lift the world’s poorest out of poverty and protect them with simple infrastructure”.
IPA Staff Pick:
Each week an IPA staff member shares what they have enjoyed recently. Today: Scott Hargreaves
What is the best way to help children growing up in poverty? Could it really be a UBI when children of parents who derive their incomes from work have better life outcomes? Maybe it’s education, but by the age of 18 a child will have spent only 13% of his or her life in school. This interview with Susan Mayer on her book What Money Can’t Buy with EconTalk host Russ Roberts from Monday is a fascinating listen.
Here’s what else the IPA said this week:
- John Roskam, The woke bank asleep at the wheel – The Australian Financial Review
- Dr Jennifer Marohasy – Why deny the beautiful coral reefs fringing Stone Island? – Jennifer Marohasy Blog
- Gideon Rozner – Extending defamation law to social media companies is a dumb idea – Sky News Paul Murray Live
- Kurt Wallace – Gambling our future – IPA Review
- Dayne Eckermann – New clear future – IPA Review
