Last week, the government’s proposed reforms of section 18C were blocked in the Senate. If you want to know which Senators are to blame, here they are.
This image has now been seen by 110,000 people on social media.
Do you want another sign of how bad free speech is in Australia? Ayaan Hirsi Ali can’t tour Australia because of security concerns. Mark Steyn wrote this brilliant post on his blog on Monday on why the cancellation shows the marketplace of ideas “is shrinking fast”. Gillian Triggs must be thrilled it’s shrinking: last week she said that “sadly you can say what you like around the kitchen table at home“.
If only Charles Murray had a Pepsi on hand. If you can stomach it, you have to watch every excruciating second of Pepsi’s terrible ad. Hilariously, the ad they cultivated to appeal to Twitter slacktivists was pulled after pressure from… Twitter slacktivists.
Article 50 has been triggered, and Brexit has begun. Here are the 29 charts that explain why Brexit happened. Former IPA guest Frank Furedi wrote this great article in Spiked on how ordinary people no longer defer to the elites in order to form opinions.
A crushing blow for Western progressives this week – a new poll found two out of three Cubans are crying out for more free markets. I wonder why. On Tuesday, Reason published this great article by Marian Tupy on how socialist governments inevitably slide into dictatorship.
Laguna Hills High School in California has removed all mirrors in female bathrooms and replaced them with the messages “you are beautiful” and “you’re doing better than you think!” Personally, I think receiving compliments on my appearance from a stranger in a public bathroom is more disconcerting than a mirror.
This week’s long read is a fascinating 9,500 word article from The New Yorker on Silicon Valley’s quest to make death optional.
There are still tickets available to our event with the IPA’s CD Kemp Fellow Andrew Shearer in Adelaide on 11 April. Andrew Shearer will be speaking on securing Australian freedom and values. Andrew is also a Senior Adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC and was formerly National Security Adviser to Prime Ministers John Howard and Tony Abbott.
Article of the week:
Andy Puzder, the former CEO of CKE Restaurants – a large restaurant conglomerate in the US, wrote this insightful article in the Wall Street Journal on why the minimum wage should actually just be called the Robot Employment Act.
IPA Staff Pick:
Each week an IPA staff member shares what they have enjoyed recently. Today: Dr Bella d’Abrera
Recently I’ve recently been researching the decline of European history subjects available to university students, building on the IPA’s 2015 report “The End of History… in Australian Universities“. It led me to this wonderful article by Daniel Pipes on his blog where he notes that what is happening in Australia is not unique – it is a phenomenon felt all over the world.
Here’s what else the IPA said this week:
- Peter Gregory & James Bolt, Episode 5 – The Young IPA Podcast
- Georgina Downer, No escaping Brexit lesson – The Daily Telegraph
- Georgina Downer, What Australia stands to gain from Brexit – ABC News Breakfast
- Daniel Wild, Why we should abolish the RET – Sky News Politics HQ
