“This pencil has parts from all over the world, brought together, stored at some place until you want it, and it’s so cheap you guys don’t even know what it cost. Markets do that.” This 12 min sample of Hillsdale College Professor Gary Wolfram’s lecture to the IPA Academy last week on the magic of the free market is a delight:
Twenty one young people from all over Australia attended the IPA Academy over five days last week in Melbourne. All the wonderful lectures from speakers such as Senator Amanda Stoker, Dr David Kemp and Lorraine Finlay will be publicly available in the coming weeks. Check out the IPA’s Instagram page for some photos from the Academy.
Race has no place in the Australian constitution. Here’s some of what the IPA has been saying about the Indigenous Voice to Parliament in the media recently:
Imagine being this obsessed with identity politics – on the 50th anniversary of the moon landing this week The New York Times wrote “the Apollo program was designed by men for men” while The Washington Post said the program was “mostly white and male“. Cheer up guys.
Financial regulator APRA “is unwilling to challenge itself, slow to respond and tentative in addressing issues that do not entail traditional financial risks” wrote Graeme Samuel in his long-awaited review of the financial regulator this week. The government could’ve saved time and money if they’d just read former ANZ director John Dahlsen’s IPA Review piece in August last year where he said that APRA is a cosy regulators club that needs busting up.
Radical political activists – I mean, the Australian Council for Health, Physical Education and Recreation – distributed a sample assessment answer to year 12 students around the country this week accusing Israel of persecuting religious minorities. If I was teaching students about religious discrimination, I’d tell them about an Israel much closer to home.
CPAC is coming to Australia and we are now offering half price “Iron Lady” tickets for Hey readers (now only $174!). If you’re in Sydney from August 9-11 come along to see Nigel Farage, IPA Chairman Janet Albrechtsen, Tony Abbott and Judge Jeanine Pirro. Be sure to use the promo code IPA50-CPAC at checkout. Details and tickets here.
Don’t miss Jacinta Price’s ‘Mind the gap: Bridging the Indigenous divide’ tour in cities and towns across eastern Australia in August and September. Dates, details and tickets here.
Article of the week:
“If the pissant scolds and hall monitors of the soul had been in power a generation ago” we’d have been deprived of Norman Mailer, Hunter S. Thompson and Leonard Cohen wrote Kevin D. Williamson in National Review on Tuesday in an excellent piece on the difference between journalism and activism.
IPA Staff Pick:
Each week an IPA staff member shares what they have enjoyed recently. Today: Daniel Wild
This week the inaugural National Conservatism conference was held in Washington, D.C. hosted by the Edmund Burke Foundation. The conference brought together leading intellectuals, academics, and media personalities from across the centre right spectrum, including Peter Thiel, J.D Vance, Tucker Carlson, Yoram Hazony, and Patrick Deneen. This Spectator US article by Daniel McCarthy argues that the conference was both a “sign of and a catalyst for the further transformation of the American right” in the Trump and post-Trump era.
Here’s what else the IPA said this week:
- Kurt Wallace, Why is NSW fining farmers under laws that no longer exist – The Spectator Australia
- Morgan Begg, Voice to Parliament carries the same risks it did two years ago – The Australian
- Scott Hargreaves, Chris Berg and Richard Allsop, Special Episode: Troy Bramston on his biography of Menzies – The Looking Forward Podcast
