Recently added articles from Review - Institute of Public Affairs:
FROM THE EDITOR
Sep 01, 2008; Berg, Chris ... Free-marketeers cannot refuse to engage and critique the emissions trading scheme just because they are not happy with the science. This edition of the IPA Review focuses on the federal government's new emissions trading scheme (ETS). It does not, however engage with the science behind ...
FROM THE EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR
Sep 01, 2008; Roskam, John ... Alexis de Tocqueville identified a paradox. The greater freedom we have, the more security we seek. The idea that the government should 'nanny' its citizens has been around since at least Plato. The Republic provides the outline for a system of government that controls every aspect of ...
CHRISTIAN KERR
Sep 01, 2008; Kerr, Christian ... 'If you don't understand the GST, don't vote for it.' That was Paul Keating's message days out from the 1993 election. It helped turn the poll around. Like all successful political lines, it was both shorthand and subliminal. What Keating really was saying was: 'If you don't know ...
Police publicity comes before police work
Sep 01, 2008; Shipp, John ... Law and order / Law and Order At a time when our freedoms are being further curtailed in the name of law, order and the Nanny State, police departments across Australia are spending more and more tax-payer dollars on public relations. The Australian reported in July that police ...
FACTS
Sep 01, 2008; Anonymous ... Half of children in Great Britain are not allowed to climb trees. Almost a fifth are banned from playing chasey. (Herald Sun, 5 August, 2008) Since the tax hike on alcopops in May this year, sales are down 30 per cent. But sales of full strength Spirits are up 46 per ...
Can polar bears be threatened if there are more of them?
Sep 01, 2008; Marohasy, Jennifer; Hoskin, Nichole ... Environment On May 14, 2008, the polar bear was listed in the US as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. This follows years of campaigning by activists who want to regulate greenhouse gas emissions, and is the first time the impacts of global warming have been cited as the sole ...
If you don't actually want to liberalise, why not just get out of the WTO?
Sep 01, 2008; Wilson, Tim ... International trade A s the Doha Round stalls yet again, it is time for members of the World Trade Organisation to put up, or shut up. Since the inception of the Doha Round, India has been a reticent negotiating party. If developing countries don't want to liberalise they should get out ...
Why not abolish the federal government?
Sep 01, 2008; Roskam, John ... Governance Joel Fitzgibbon, the Defence Minister recently claimed that Australia 'was the most over-governed country in the world'. Usually when anyone says this they're demanding the abolition of state governments in favour of bigger and more powerful central government. It's no ...
Drivers need speed limit certainty to drive safe
Sep 01, 2008; Murn, Christopher ... Transport A 2006 report undertaken by the Victorian road authority VicRoads found that motorists in that state were most concerned by fluctuating and inconsistent speed limits. This is hardly a surprise given that speed limits often vary dramatically over the same stretch of ...
Trainspotting not so productive without trains
Sep 01, 2008; Allsop, Richard ... Transport In Warrnambool in south western Victoria, the local water authority, Wannon Water, is extending the sewer system to a growing part of town. Naturally, when doing this sort of work, utility companies need to negotiate with road and rail authorities for safe access to roads, or ...
Sydney wins race to costliest housing
Sep 01, 2008; Moran, Alan ... Housing A good measure of housing affordability is the years of income an average family requires to buy an average house. In these terms, price collapses in Britain and California have left Sydney with the most unaffordable housing market of any major city in the ...
Class and casinos
Sep 01, 2008; Allsop, Richard ... Opposition to gambling and poker machines is a confused mixture of patronising 'compassion' and political rhetoric, writes Richard Allsop. Kevin Rudd hates them. Brendan Nelson has expressed deep concern about them. Bob Brown wants huge cuts to their numbers. And Senators Stephen ...
Liberal and Labor governments can't seem to restrain their spending
Sep 01, 2008; Fifield, Mitch ... The new government has been laying out excellent criteria for public policy, writes Mitch Fifield. But its own policies are failing these stringent tests. On a Brisbane stage in midNovember last year, Kevin Rudd positioned the final nail above the coalition government's coffin and drove ...
The Hollowmen and the sport of satire
Sep 01, 2008; Staley, Louise ... What does our television tell us about Australian democracy? Over time, spin becomes truth. In the ABC's new satire The Hollowmen, political advisors find that they can no longer tell the difference, even to themselves, between spin and the 'real' truth of an issue. Hollowmen is an ...
What's happened to modern art?
Sep 01, 2008; Hourigan, Benjamin ... The problem with 'controversial' art isn't that it is offensive, writes Benjamin Hourigan. The problem is that it is too often mediocre. Photographs of naked thirteen-year-old girls, crucifixes immersed in urine, and videos of chickens being decapitated: this is modern art. So ...
Is Facebook making our kids violent?
Sep 01, 2008; Tobin, Hugh ... Moral panic is never too far away from the Australian media. The widespread claims that the internet is corrupting youth and encouraging violent behaviour completely misunderstands technology, the people who use it and the nature of crime itself. In July The Australian reported ...
Flat tax in the Caucasus
Sep 01, 2008; Kennard, Neville ... 'We lost the twentieth century was how Paata Sheshelidze described Georgia's experience of the Soviet occupation from 1920 to 1990. Sheshelidze is President of die New Economic School in Georgia (NES), a free-market think tank in Tbilisi. I had met him and die NES Vice President Gia ...
Nanny state is a poor guide to policy design
Sep 01, 2008; Fisher, Mary Jo ... Living in a first world country, Australians are entitled to expect their governments to support the delivery of basic services and amenities-for a price. But now Australians are being told by state and federal governments that no matter the price, we cannot have access to certain ...
The intellectual gap goes to university
Sep 01, 2008; Davidson, Sinclair ... Major reform is needed to fix the problem of academic bias, argues Sinclair Davidson. Following a campaign by the Australian Liberal Students Federation, a Senate committee is investigating the level of intellectual diversity at Australian universities. It is well-known that academiaand ...
Building the Australian Nanny State
Sep 01, 2008; Murn, Christopher ... Free bibs Victorian Deputy Premier Rob Hulls has announced an additional $35,000 of funding for Auskick programs to provide bibs and waist bags to identify volunteers who had met working with children checks. V-chip for Australia The Senate Standing Committee on ...