Review - Institute of Public Affairs

From the Editor

From the Executive Director

Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd might have learned a thing or two from Louis XIV. The Pursuit of Glory: Europe 1648-1815 is a magisterial new history by Tim Blanning, Professor of Modern European History at the University of Cambridge. In The Pursuit of Glory, Blanning examines how the 'Sun King' attempted to control and regulate every aspect of his nation's political, intellectual, and cultural life. In France, the creativity and ingenuity of most of its artists and craftsmen was devote...

Budget Holidays Matter, of Course

While Western Australia could go to the polls from late June, the next scheduled election is in the ACT, on October 18. It should be livened up by a sudden schism that appeared in the Territory Liberals late in February. Opposition, though, has been hard. Like their counterparts elsewhere, the ACT Liberals have been characterized by infighting and mediocrity. At the election last year, the Liberals were snookered. They could not rely on their traditional pitch. They could not claim Labor tech...

Castro's Retirement Brings Out the Narcissism of the Western Left

After half a century in power President Fidel Castro resigned in March this year. The opportunity for Cubans to get the political, social and economic freedom they desperately need has never been greater. Certainly, the romanticization of Castro's Cuba has waned since the fall of the Soviet Union. The immediate reaction to Castro's resignation from the Western media was one of surprising calmness and solemnity. In a retrospective of Castro's reign, The Guardian did not discuss Castro's legacy...

Reflections On the 'Howard Project'

The Howard Project spanned the full spectrum of economic, social, cultural and international affairs. It reflected his distinctive blend of liberal and conservative instincts, ideas and values. In a way no other Australian politician had attempted before, John Howard challenged many of the comfortable verities of late twentieth century Whitlamite progressivism so beloved by Australia's self-proclaimed 'public intellectuals'. Social and cultural issues were central to the Howard Project. Howar...

How the Left Made Sport the New Battlefield in the Culture Wars

Anybody who thought the election of the Rudd government meant the end of the culture wars was not looking closely enough at the summer's cricket. While many in the community had strong views about the rights and wrongs of the behavior of both the Australian and Indian teams, few would have thought to place it all within the context of the culture wars. The left, of course, found a way. For many years, much of the Australian left managed to exclude sport from intellectual discourse on elitist ...

Rudd's Summit Misses the Point of Policy

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's government was inspired early into its term to call upon Australia's 'one-thousand most intelligent people' to nominate themselves to be invited to a talkfest in Canberra to harvest ideas. Leading opposition politicians quickly approved. The purpose of the 2020 Summit was not to give the newly elected government ideas about the immediate future. Policy planners must realize that not everything is feasible. A political community is, after all, not an organization wh...

Can Government Be Restrained?

Nobel Prize winner James Buchanan suggested in his 1990 John Bonython lecture that, while it took about a century for the widespread faith in socialism to die, no widely shared organizing principle seemed to have replaced it. Rather, the Leviathan of interest-driven politics had emerged, one which he opined as difficult to dislodge. Given that Australia has one of the smallest government sectors, a policy designed to move towards to an even smaller government would require a change in the sti...

Breaking Through Medical Myths

Earlier this year, the new Minister for Health referred to the need to rebuild health services after the last decade of neglect as only 73.4% of all Medicare vices were being bulk-billed. Apparently, it is a disaster that only three quarters of Medicare services were provided at no out-of-pocket costs to patients. One of the major elements of the health debate in recent years has been the growth in concern about an ageing population. While Australia's ageing population is a factor in driving ...

Can We Starve the Government Beast?

The Rudd government is not going to be a small government, but then neither was the Howard government. Voters had a choice of two-large government parties at the election and seemed to prefer the party that offered slightly lower tax cuts with slightly less spending. James Buchanan famously said that while socialism was dead, Leviathan lived on. In some respects this comment missed the point. Leviathan is not going to be shamed into submission. Running massive budget deficits with the associa...

The Republic: Has Labor Got the Perfect Wedge?

Liberal Party politicians probably only have two or three years to decide what to do about the republic issue before the federal government puts it firmly on the agenda. If they want to avoid being completely alienated from their support base, they will need to support a republic with a directly elected president. Until now coalition politicians have generally been either monarchists or have favored a republic where the president would be selected by the members of federal parliament. The pre...

Can Regulation Be Reduced?

Numerically, Australia now has more regulations than at any time since federation. Regulation, like taxing and spending, brings about a redistribution of costs and benefits across the community. Regulations increase or decrease in response to their political acceptance. In Australia there may well be strong support for eliminating 'economic' regulations covering price controls, selective subsidies and barriers to competition. This area has been where the great gains have been made in Australi...

Voting for the Leader Is Next Step for Liberal Reform

In 2007, the Australian Labor Party successfully created a narrative that the Howard government had lost touch with working Australians. Issues such as climate change and industrial relations reinforced this narrative. During the campaign, this perception was one of the most difficult to overcome around the country. Regaining the connection with the community will take more than just aesthetic changes to the Liberal Party message -- it will require a major change to how the party engages its ...

Australian History's Forgotten Capitalists

Colonial Ambition: Foundations of Australian Democracy, by Peter Cochrane, is reviewed.

Microtrends May Be Small, but That Doesn't Mean They Are Important

Microtrends: The small forces behind today's big changes, by Mark J. Penn, is reviewed.

'God Is Love': The Politics of Bills of Rights

Bills of Rights and Decolonization, by Charles O.H. Parkinson, is reviewed.

Kevin Rudd's Asia Hypocrisy

Contrast and compare the grandstanding of the Rudd government over Japanese whaling to its relative quiescence on the human rights crackdown in Tibet. This yawning disparity in the Rudd government's approach to the two major powers in East Asia has not been a good look, serving only to compound the worst fears in Tokyo about Rudd's decision to include China, but exclude Japan, as a destination for his first major overseas trip as Prime Minister. As Australian prime minister, Rudd is entitled ...

John Stuart Mill's Odd Combination: Philosopher Kings &Amp; Laissez Faire

John Stuart Mill: Victorian Firebrand, by Richard Reeves, is reviewed.

Misbehaving Models and Missing Mammals

Science and Public Policy: The Virtuous Corruption of Virtual Environmental Science, by Aynsley Kellow, is reviewed.

Why Smart People Believe Stupid Things

In February this year, the author organized a colloquium on what he called 'Weird History.' One of the things that came out of that colloquium was that many of the writers of weird history, and those who take it seriously, are intelligent and sophisticated people. Three recent books provide different perspectives on the human capacity to believe in things that on close inspection are weird, fraudulent or simply unbelievable. In Counter knowledge: How we surrendered to conspiracy theories, qua...

News Flash: War Exciting, Federation Dull

History's children: History wars in the classroom, by Anna Clark, is reviewed.

A Hatchet Job and the Holocaust

Suite Francaise, by Irene Nemirovsky, is reviewed.

The Left Needs to Get Social Capital Right, Read Ipa Review

Strange Times

Shorts

Labor Flirting with Neo-Protectionism in Trade Policy

It is only early days, but the Rudd government's pro-growth reform credentials are already being put to the test. Since the 1980s, both major parties have favored free trade. At the last federal election, then Shadow, now Minister for Trade, Simon Crean, committed a Rudd government to a trade policy overhaul that would promote Australia's economic interests. Included in Labor's trade policy is a review of the effectiveness of Australia's 'export policy and programs', including a flagged expan...

How Many Football Teams Should There Be?

Competition is good for consumers -- it leads to lower prices and better quality, with less efficient firms exiting the industry. Sports, apparently, are an exception to that rule. The 'solution' is to allow sporting associations to form cartels. The Australian Football League (AFL) is such a cartel. The objective of the sports cartel -- like any cartel -- is to grow the market, and ensure that weaker teams (firms) do not fail. The AFL has recently announced plans to grow the market by an add...

Parking Beyond the Pale of Planners

It took a car users group to blow the whistle on the stupidity of public transport planners restricting the potential growth in public transport. A recent NRMA report found that a critical shortage of commuter car parking at railway stations is the key factor that stops Sydney car commuters getting out of their cars and onto the rail system. The results of the NRMA survey provide a pretty clear strategy to increase public transport patronage -- more car parking at stations. One can only hope ...

New Satellite Data Casts Doubts On Global Warming Models

New NASA data from their Aqua Satellite throws doubt on the validity of climate change models currently being used by the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. For the first time scientists have found a strong negative cloud feedback when there is warming in the lower atmosphere. This is significant as most climate models have always suggested a strong positive feedback. Given current technologies, a large cut to emissions in developed countries including Australia is poss...

Fear of School Profit Holding Quality Back

In Australia, schools are operated either by the government or by not-for-profit private organizations. It is prohibited to run a school to make a financial profit. In the US there is no such prohibition. And a recent study published by the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, Impact of For-Profit and Non-Profit Management on Student Achievement: The Philadelphia Experiment, confirms exactly what would be expected. For-profit schools produce better educational outcomes for thei...

Baby Bonus Rise Bad for Babies

Sometimes a policy is so irredeemably bad that nothing short of abolition is the appropriate course. Unfortunately, sometimes the awful policy is a political superstar, beloved by all but the worst curmudgeon. The baby bonus is such a policy. Since its introduction governments have progressively tightened the screws on the payments. Teenage mothers must receive it as fortnightly payments, as do many aboriginal mothers in remote communities. While the government is very keen to prescribe some ...