Australia remains in recession on a GDP per capita basis. Yesterday the ABS reported a third straight quarterly decline in GDP per capita:
The Coalition should implement the economic policy agenda outlined in the IPA’s latest Parliamentary Research Brief released on Monday. Daniel Wild and Andrew Bushnell argue for economic policy in line with mainstream Australian values including cutting red tape and enabling more Australians to experience the dignity of work.
It has been a troubling week for Australia’s press, with raids on the ABC and News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst. Today at Spiked, IPA Adjunct Fellow Matthew Lesh called the raid of the ABC “a national embarrassment ” that “would be expected in an authoritarian regime, not Australia.”
The ATO have started a hotline encouraging everyone to dob in businesses suspiciously trying to keep their own hard-earned money, yet the ATO don’t like the whistle being blown on them. One ex-employee is facing up to 161 years in jail after exposing the abuse of power involved in an aggressive debt collection practice.
In a resounding victory for free speech on campus the University of Sydney this week announced they will be taking disciplinary action against feminist students who violently protested a Bettina Arndt event last year. Bettina discussed the intimidation she faces speaking at universities on The Young IPA Podcast in January.
“I wasn’t a hero, I was a little cog in a big wheel. When you add all those little cogs together – then we became important. We all worked together towards peace” said Frank Mouqué who disposed of bombs at D-Day for the Royal Engineers. Read other incredible stories from veterans on the 75th anniversary of D-Day in The Guardian. And take a look at the Sky News minute by minute live feed of the invasion as it happened.
According to a group of Canadian academics, dodgeball is a tool of oppression as “it encourages students to aggressively single others out for dominance, and to enjoy that exclusion and dominance as a victory.” Something tells me that these academics didn’t enjoy high school.
Article of the week:
On the 30th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre “China remains a regime willing to stifle the freedoms that Westerners regard as a birthright,” wrote Maura Moynihan in City Journal on Sunday. Moynihan speaks about China’s ongoing crackdown on peaceful protest and free speech, and the expansion of the surveillance state.
IPA Staff Pick:
Each week an IPA staff member shares what they have enjoyed recently. Today: John Roskam
Burgess Owens is a Super Bowl champion with the Oakland Raiders, writer, and entrepreneur and his great-great-grandfather, Silas Burgess, was a slave in America. In this article in last week’s Wall Street Journal – ‘I Didn’t Earn Slavery Reparations, and I Don’t Want Them’ – Owens explains why reparations are about white guilt – not black opportunity (click on the link and scroll to the bottom of the page and you’ll see ‘WSJ Opinion’ and you can click to read the article).
Here’s what else the IPA said this week:
- Daniel Wild and Morgan Begg, A violation of racial equality – The Sydney Morning Herald
- John Lloyd, Bureaucrats immersed in Canberra bubble out of touch with nation – The Australian
- Gideon Rozner, The higher pay paradox – The Daily Telegraph
- John Roskam, Death or greatness – IPA Review
- Augusto Zimmerman, Left speechless – IPA Review
