Recent publications in IPA Review article
The Biggest Loser is the Nanny State
The recently concluded reality TV show, The Biggest Loser, contains some surprising lessons for public policy. Of all the reality television shows bombarding us, The Biggest Loser best combines entertainment with the spectacle of social...
Taxi mess an old, stubborn failure of government
The complaints are endless. The taxi driver didn't know the way; the taxi driver did not speak English; the taxi was dirty; the fare was too high: and, if it was after the office Christmas party on a Friday night in December, there was no cab at...
Identity crisis
IPA Review, June 2011 These are dark days for the Australian Labor Party. Its consistently bad opinion polls-the party's primary vote hovers in the early 30s-is but one of the symptoms of its seemingly incurable malaise. Just under a year ago,...
The Outsider
He seems like the ultimate political insider. Influential and prolific; with a regular syndicated column in the nation's largest selling daily newspapers, television and radio segments, and a blog that receives two million hits a month. But in...
China under Mao - What we know now and what we should have known then
There's no longer an excuse for any illusions about the horrors of China under Mao Zedong. Frank Dikötter, Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong and Professor of the Modern History of China at the...
Better safe?
At the beginning of 2010, the British and US governments approved the introduction of body scanners at international airports. In both cases, the impetus behind their implementation was the case of Nigerian Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, who tried to...
Why we love Mad Men
Turning up the heat on climate change alarmists
In February this year, Penny Wong, the then climate change minister said: ‘Globally, 14 of the 15 warmest years on record occurred between 1995 and 2009' and she argued that the Bureau of Meteorology had concluded that ‘2009 was the...
The rise and rise of the Tea Party
When Barack Obama won the White House and his Democratic Party increased its majorities in both houses of Congress in 2008, the conventional wisdom pointed to a political realignment in the United States. Conservatism, which had shaped much of...