Archived publication for 2008 in IPA Review article
Recent publications
Building the Australian Nanny State
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...
The intellectual gap goes to university
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 academia-and more often than not those who are university...
Who should take the blame for the biofuels tragedy?
In Mexico early last year, 75,000 people took to the streets in protest of the increasing cost of basic grain, in what were branded the ‘tortilla riots.' In March 2008, there were food riots in Egypt. And in April, Haitians rioted over the...
Federal government ads misleading on climate insurance cost
In order to prepare the nation for the introduction of the ETS, the federal government has begun a large advertising campaign to argue that, without action, climate change will have a significant economic impact. In particular one of their most...
Climate change is not our #1 problem
It is easy to forget that climate change is not the only issue facing the world today. In ignoring other problems we run the risk of introducing inefficient solutions that make other problems worse. A good example is the promotion of biofuels...
Taking apart Australia’s last single desk
After more than two decades of economic reform there were few truly egregious examples of government sanctioned protection left to greet the incoming Rudd Government. Perhaps the most outstanding was the monopoly granted to a publicly listed...
Emissions Trading: Towards the biggest economic change in Australian history
‘Placing a limit and a price on emissions will change the things we produce, the way we produce them, and the things we buy', states the Federal Government's Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Green Paper, which compares the economic impact...
So now you have bought an emissions trading scheme
What is it? The emissions trading scheme, or ‘Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme', is a ‘cap and trade' system. This requires firms to obtain a government ‘permit' if they emit greenhouse gases. The government caps the level of...
What has happened to modern art
Photographs of naked thirteen-year-old girls, crucifixes immersed in urine, and videos of chickens being decapitated: this is modern art. So you'd think, at least, if you went by what gets the most attention in the news, and never visited art...
Flat tax in the Caucasus
‘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 the New Economic School in Georgia (NES), a free-market think tank in Tbilisi. I...