Free Market

15 December 2022

This article was originally published in The Australian Financial Review on or about 1 December 2022 and was written by the author in their capacity as a contributor for that publication. It has been republished on the IPA website with permission. The views expressed are those of the author alone. When business stops advocating for the benefits of competition and the danger of

30 March 2022

The damage done to the American psyche through unrelenting attacks on its core values. For Australia, it is a cautionary tale. Our way of life has faced some serious challenges over the past year. For a long time, for many of us, it changed. And so this discussion is as pertinent as it is important. I suppose you must start

22 November 2018

The Federal Government’s proposed $2 billion small business loan scheme is the wrong response to a real problem. The decline of small businesses in Australia presents a substantial policy challenge. In 2017 there were 6,000 fewer new businesses than a decade earlier, despite Australia’s working age population growing by 20 per cent, according to a recent report by my colleague

24 April 2018

IPA Director of Policy, Simon Breheny, and Research Fellow, Daniel Wild, today appeared before the Senate Economics Committee inquiry into the commitments made by the Business Council of Australia to stronger wages and employment. To read their submission to the inquiry please click here

24 April 2018

Below is an extract from the IPAs submission to the Senate Economics References Committee This Senate Inquiry is highly questionable. It refers to an undertaking made by private companies in relation to a public policy. Decisions which companies make around remuneration, pricing, and investment are the preserve of those companies. Businesses are not communal property to be intervened with at

24 April 2018

Writing in these pages Professor Peter Swan AO has forwarded several arguments against the federal government’s proposed company tax rate changes. While he is a giant of the profession and a treasure to the nation, I hope he has made a rare error. Professor Swan suggests the government modelling in favour of the company tax rate cuts is entirely flawed. Undoubtedly, based on

9 March 2018

When companies get religion on the “social purpose” of business, they are only going to end up looking bad. If business isn’t careful it will go the way of Christianity. Of course Christianity still exists and people still attend church on Sunday, but the Christian voice in public debate in Australia is now either ignored or non-existent It’s difficult to

28 November 2017

Professor Sinclair Davidson, IPA Senior Research Fellow and Professor of Institutional Economics at RMIT University, joined us on The Young IPA Podcast this week. Here’s some of what he had to say: Why Australia hasn’t seen meaningful tax reform since 2007 Well there’s two things that have really happened. The first is we’ve had a lack of economic leadership. Peter

3 November 2017

It’s the bad idea that just won’t die. Even a century after the Russian Revolution, many including local activists are celebrating the birth of a system that murdered tens of millions in the name of equality Next week marks 100 years since one of the most consequential events of the 20th century: the Russian Revolution. The takeover of the Russian

28 March 2017

The Turnbull government’s diverted profit tax has passed the Parliament. Introduced in response to the moral panic that, somewhere, somehow multinational corporations don’t pay a fair share of taxation, this new tax is at odds with the government’s professed belief in lowering the corporate tax burdens, is at odds with our international competitors, and (as we learnt just this month),