Ideas@TheCentre 31

Vol. 8 No. 31 (August, 2010)

Freedom quote of the week

“A society that puts equality before freedom with get neither.
A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both"

— Milton Friedman 

  • Living victims to drive child protection change
    Jeremy Sammut | 13 Aug 2010

    The unexplained disappearance of Kiesha Abrahams from her mother’s Mount Druitt home has once more put the spotlight on NSW child protection services.

  • Radical findings or radical propaganda?
    Peter Saunders | 13 Aug 2010

    Last year, two socialist academics, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, published a book called The Spirit Level which has had a huge impact in ‘progressive’ circles. In Britain, The Guardian’s Polly Toynbee likened Wilkinson to Charles Darwin, and The Independent was so impressed by the book it wanted to make ‘free-marketeers memorise it cover to cover.’

  • ‘Small capacity for a great city, properly so-called’
    Stephen Kirchner | 13 Aug 2010
    On 24 July 1912, an article on page 16 of the Sydney Morning Herald noted on the occasion of the opening of a new state parliament that ‘there were few more really vital concerns referred to than that of the traffic of Sydney.’ With a population of only around 700,000 people, it seemed Sydney could not cope. The article described Sydney as a ‘criminally congested city’ and declared that ‘the streets of Sydney … are a disgrace to a modern community.’