Opinion & Commentary
Opinion and Commentary contains media articles written by CIS researchers.
Categories
Talking Trash: When Standards are set by the Underclass
Many elites in the United States are disavowing what is best in our culture and imitating what is worst. Over the past several decades American life has coarsened. The late historian Arnold Toynbee...... Read More
The Ascendancy of Economic Rationalism
A spectre is haunting the world - the spectre of economic rationalism. All the powers of the world have entered into a holy alliance to hunt down and exorcise this spectre...’. This is how Karl Marx...... Read More
GDP stands the test of time
Ed Mishan, a leading English economist, writing when Simon Kuznets was complaining about the shortcomings of GDP as an indicator of growth, bewailed that growth meant that the Riviera, art galleries and...... Read More
Bilateral trade pact the way to go
The government is actively seeking a bilateral free-trade agreement with the US. Foreign Minister Alexander Downer and Trade Minister Mark Vaile intend to travel to Washington to pursue this matter, possibly...... Read More
Smaller government the answer for Fiji
Fiji has scored rather poorly since independence on economic growth, security and social harmony. The country has suffered from backsliding, racial distrust, fear and pessimism. Last Thursday’s Court...... Read More
Time to fit the crime
The first duty of government is to protect the citizen’s person and property, and to do so consistently, humanely and effectively. Balancing these requirements is not easy. Rising crime rates in Queensland,...... Read More
A Fair Go for all Schools
It is possible to deceive people without telling lies. In support of their campaign against the federal government’s education policies, an Australian Education Union advertisement in The Australian...... Read More
The Paradox of Australian Liberalism
In colonial Australia the majority of people called themselves liberals and saw liberalism as the means of attaining political and social progress. Yet for a large part of the twentieth century Australian...... Read More
Pass the Bucks
The idea that Australia’s universities are dumbing down is gaining currency. The latest argument is the widely reported claim by the Australia Institute that fee-paying students are passing when they...... Read More
Children Missing in the Young Country
To keep the level of Australia’s population steady, without immigration, an average of 2.1 births per woman is needed. Today, our birth rate is 1.7 births per woman—well below the level needed to reproduce...... Read More
Commercialising highways
Most people consider the modern auto-highway system a great success. In the United States, automobiles provide 95% of all individual surface trips, and trucks transport an ever-larger majority of all freight....... Read More
Democracy's Dark Shadow
The collapse of communist regimes in east central Europe in the revolution of 1989, followed within 20 months by the collapse of the Soviet Union itself, seemed to vindicate the most exuberant claims of...... Read More
Why Think-Tanks Are Here to Stay
Pamela Bone's backhanded compliment to the success of The Centre for Independent Studies and the power of its ideas ("Why think tanks are full of bias", The Age, October 12) is inaccurate and unfair in...... Read More
Spending More on Healthcare is Good For You
Australian health care spending has increased in real terms every year since Medicare was introduced. Rationing, exemplified by the current freeze on elective surgery in Victoria’s public hospitals,...... Read More
Homework Needed on School Funding
The fracas over federal government school funding documented by the media in the past few weeks presents a compelling case for a complete overhaul of the school funding system, both state and federal....... Read More
Trading Phobias: Governments, NGOs and Globalisation
Almost any dispassionate analysis of the evolution of the world economy will find that the past few years have seen better economic performance by almost all measures; that the past fifty years have witnessed...... Read More
Staying in the Dark on School Performance
There is a movement in Australian education for increased assessment and accountability. Assessment and reporting strategies are being developed in most States, and testing has been implemented to develop...... Read More
It's time for a return to duty, not rights
"The moral foundation of political economy is not the satisfaction of appetite, but the fulfillment of duties". This observation, penned by Lord Acton in 1864, goes to the heart of the contemporary debate...... Read More
Stop Subsidising a Failure
John Quiggin is a well- known microeconomic reform sceptic, and in these pages last week questioned whether competition was a practical policy for improving investment in human capital.... Read More
A degree of uncertainty
We often hear about a crisis in our universities, but the crisis is older and deeper in Arts faculties than elsewhere. ... Read More
