People & associates
John Roskam
An opportunity to hit ‘Control + Alt + Delete’ on Government policies
The Institute of Public Affairs hopes that in changing leadership the Labor Party has effectively hit ‘Control + Alt + Delete' on important policies and issues that were mishandled by her predecessor, according to John Roskam, Executive...
Clock is ticking on Henry
Ken Henry seems to find the role of Secretary of the Treasury too constraining, and now is the time for him to offer his resignation, according to John Roskam, Executive Director of Australia's most influential think tank, the Institute of Public...
An open letter to all parliamentarians
A carbon emissions trading scheme as proposed by the federal government has enormous economic and social consequences. This was acknowledged by Penny Wong, the Minister for Climate Change who last year said that responding to global warming...
Valuable, but not complete
John Roskam reviews The March Of Patriots: The Struggle For Modern Australia by Paul Kelly (Melbourne University Press, 2009, 720 pages) Paul Kelly transformed himself from journalist into historian with the publication of his The...
Open letter: Institute of Public Affairs climate change research
In this letter sent to Federal senators, John Roskam and Alan Moran outline the results of the Institute of Public Affairs climate change research program, which has been going since the 1990s.
Russia and the parable of the rear gunner
John Roskam reviews The Rebellion of Ronald Reagan: A History of the end of the Cold War by James Mann (Viking, 2009, 396 pages) These days Ronald Reagan's leadership style has been given a name and there are whole books written about it. It's...
The ideological baggage of old Europe
John Roskam reviews The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648 to 1815 by Tim Blanning (Penguin, 2007, 736 pages). On the television show Backyard Blitz, household gardens are designed and built in a couple of hours. In Britain in the eighteenth century...
Did global warming send Lehman Brothers broke
NOVEMBER 2008: There's much debate about the causes of the global economic crisis. According to the popular media some of the chief suspects include ‘greed', ‘obscene executive salaries', and ‘predatory lenders'. But maybe the...
Australian history's forgotten capitalists
John Roskam reviews Colonial Ambition: Foundations of Australian Democracy by Peter Cochrane. Melbourne University's strategy for marketing Peter Cochrane's Colonial Ambition: Foundations of Australian Democracy is almost as interesting as the...
Fear of school profit holding quality back
In Australia, schools are operated either by the government or by not-for-profit private organisations. It is prohibited to run a school to make a financial profit. In the United States there is no such prohibition. And a recent study published by...