Recent publications
Gillard government's new censorship regime worse than internet filter
The Gillard government's new online censorship policy may result in Australians having even more restrictions on their internet use than under the government's original internet filter policy, according to Simon Breheny, Director of the Legal...
25 more ideas for Tony Abbott
Following on from our 75 ideas in the last edition, John Roskam, James Paterson and Chris Berg offer 25 more ideas to reshape Australia. 76 Have State Premiers appoint High Court justices 77 Allow ministers to be appointed...
A roadmap to peace in the war on drugs
The war on drugs has been raging for decades. Tens of millions of lives have been lost or ruined. Because both the effect of the drugs and the effect of criminalisation have contributed to the toll, both prohibitionists and those for...
Power and the years of LBJ
There is almost a cult amongst readers of political history and biography: those who count down the years until the release of the next volume of Robert Caro's totemic biography of Lyndon Johnson. Commencing with The Path to Power in 1982,...
The essence of successful nations
Tolstoy famously wrote that while happy families are all alike, unhappy families are uniquely unhappy in their own way. In their latest book, MIT economist Daron Acemoglu and Harvard political scientist James Robinson have found the Russian...
Why capitalism is awesome
Each year the glossy business magazine FastCompany releases a list of what it considers to be the ‘World's 50 most innovative companies'. This list is populated much as you would expect. In 2012, the leader is Apple, followed by Facebook,...
Regulator lets the cat out of the bag: data retention not just about national security
"The Australian Competition and Consumer Commission's demand to access Attorney-General Nicola Roxon's proposed data retention regime reveals how dangerous this regime could be," said Simon Breheny, Director of the Rule of Law Project at the free...
Roxon's data retention scheme worse than Australia card
"Attorney-General Nicola Roxon's proposal to force internet service providers to log details of every Australian's internet usage is one of the most significant threats to individual liberty in Australian history," said Simon Breheny, director of...
Submission to the Inquiry into potential reforms of national security legislation
The Institute of Public Affairs believes many of the national security proposals contained in the Attorney-General's Department's Equipping Australia against Emerging and Evolving Threats Discussion Paper are unnecessary and excessive. Many of the...
Be like Gough: 75 radical ideas to transform Australia
If Tony Abbott wants to leave a lasting impact - and secure his place in history - he needs to take his inspiration from Australia's most left-wing prime minister. No prime minister changed Australia more than Gough Whitlam. The key is that he did...