Archived publication for 2009 in IPA Review article
Recent publications
Why Europe?
Two new books try to answer the central question of Western Civilisation. Richard Allsop looks at what they find.
The underground Australian movie renaissance
There actually are good Australian movies, and they're popular, writes Dean Bertram. You're just never told about them. Almost two decades ago, a handful of young filmmakers were revitalizing American cinema. Included in their number were Quentin...
Wowserism may be different, but it's not dead
‘I'm not a wowser but...' Those words seem to have become the standard introduction for anyone proposing a new restriction on what should be matters of individual choice. The Rudd Government are masters of it. In an interview with 4BC last...
Greed is great
The message is simple. We are told that the age of ‘neo-liberalism' is over and that a new age of social democracy is dawning. Neo-liberalism has been destroyed and discredited by its greed. The state must step in and restore the balance in...
We have IDEAS!
In a democracy everyone has ideas for new public policy initiatives. But not every idea has equal merit. This is particularly the case when the ideas are solely marketed as coming from a certain group in society, as they are in a recent spate of...
The art of the forgotten people
In her essay titled ‘Human Nature: The Art of John Brack', Kirsty Grant, wrote that in Brack's work there is a ‘recurring theme of the inevitability of human nature and the idea that the mistakes made by one generation will not...
A slave obeys, a player chooses
When you escaped, not long ago, from the burning wreckage of a passenger jet crashed in the middle of the Atlantic, you entered a lonely obelisk rising from the water. Inside that obelisk, a bathysphere waited to take you down to the art...
Hitler's grotesque economics
Sinclair Davidson reviews The Wages of Destruction: The Making and Breaking of the Nazi Economy by Adam Tooze(Allen Lane, 2007, 799 pages). In the acclaimed television series Band of Brothers the Webster character abuses a column of German...
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...
Sporting prowess obscured by the history warriors
Richard Allsop reviews Tom Wills: His Spectacular Rise and Tragic Fall by Greg de Moore (Allen & Unwin, 2008, 336 pages). The 150th anniversary of the first game of Australian Football in 1858 has not passed without acrimony. Some historical...