Archived publication for 2008 in IPA Review article
Recent publications
Would you swap climate change for acid rain?
‘Climate change is happening so quickly that mankind may need to pump sulfur into the atmosphere to survive', argued Tim Flannery, 2007 Australian of the Year, in May. Flannery has suggested the sulfur be dispersed by jet fuel as a last...
Alexander Solzhenitsyns challenging legacy
It would not be possible to stare down the Soviet Union for as long as Alexander Solzhenitsyn had without deep personal courage. When he died in August this year, he had out-lived the regime that imprisoned him by nearly two decades. For nearly...
Editorial, July 2008
Last year, the IPA Review had its sixtieth birthday, making it the oldest continuously published political magazine in the country since the demise of The Bulletin. And this year we were awarded the Sir Anthony Fisher International Memorial Award...
FuelWatch is the sort of stunt only a state government can try
Why is petrol so politically potent? It might not just be because of price. There seems to be a whole psychology of purchasing petrol that gets ignored. If you read the IPA Review, it probably means you believe in freedom of choice. But how much...
How long until our pubs have no beer?
Australians are consuming the same amount of alcohol per person as they were 20 years ago. Nevertheless, we are suddenly being told by the federal government that the country is in the grip of a binge drinking ‘epidemic'. In March Kevin Rudd...
The rise of pop economics
The classical economists of the nineteenth century were largely concerned with wealth creation. David Ricardo developed theories of wages, rent and profit. Thomas Malthus wrote the consequences of population growth. Karl Marx looked at the moral...
Empty spaces: Government regulation is killing Australian culture
There is now an increasingly significant barrier to a vibrant Australian culture-nanny state regulations and bureaucratic red tape. The most difficult time for any artist is at the beginning of their career. Artistic entrepreneurs don't hold the...
The covert return of the Industrial Relations Club
One of the few positive results of the Howard government's WorkChoices reforms was that the old ‘Industrial Relations Club'-the Australian Industrial Relations Commission (AIRC), Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU), Australian Chamber...
Has the ALP shifted too much for the Liberal Party?
Let's be blunt: at the state level, it seems like the Liberal Party is achieving little more than self-destruction. Why is this so? The answer can be found in the Australian Labor Party. The ALP has completely transformed itself. Certainly, the...
How humanity outflanked starvation
Sinclair Davidson reviews A Farewell to Alms: A brief history of the world by Gregory Clark Sometime in the last 200 years there was a fundamental shift in the human condition. Our lives changed from being somewhat ‘nasty, brutish and short'...