Publications
Our publications are the most important means of contact between the Centre's ideas and its general readership. Since 1976, The Centre for Independent Studies has produced some of the most authoritative publications in Australasian academia. From the influential Lands of Shame to the authoritative Will China Fail? CIS has published hundreds of publications covering topics from the social policy to legal affairs to religion and education.
In addition to books, the CIS publishes a range of shorter publications: Issue Analyses deal with controversial and current issues and Policy Mongraphs investigate and offer policy solutions. Since 1984, Policy magazine has published feature articles and reviews authored by some of the foremost national and international thinkers on public policy and ideas. The quality of writing and the diversity of topics in Policy ensure its status as a 'must read' by leading politicans, businesspeople and academics.
Hard copies of our publications are available for purchase through the bookstore. Many of the smaller publications are also available for download.
CONTRIBUTIONS
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All Government Spending Publications
TARGET30: Reducing the burden for future generations
TARGET30 is a campaign promoting smaller government and cutting government spending to less than 30% of GDP in the next 10...
Saving Medicare But NOT As We Know It
High growth in health spending is the area of public expenditure that will unsustainably increase the size of government...
TARGET30 SNAPSHOT: Saving Medicare But NOT As We Know It
High growth in health spending is the area of public expenditure that will unsustainably increase the size of government...
After the Welfare State: Politicians Stole Your Future … You Can Get It Back
History, economics, sociology, political science, and mathematics are the tools to understand and evaluate welfare states,...
Tax Welfare Churn and the Australian Welfare State
The welfare state currently consumes $316 billion a year; however, much of this spending is not targeted at those who need...
TARGET30 SNAPSHOT: Tax Welfare Churn and the Australian Welfare State
The welfare state currently consumes $316 billion a year; however, much of this spending is not targeted at those who need...
TARGET30: Towards smaller government and future prosperity
TARGET30 is a campaign promoting smaller government, supported by a series of research reports providing policy solutions...
TARGET30 SNAPSHOT: Towards smaller government and future prosperity
TARGET30 is a campaign promoting smaller government, supported by a series of research reports providing policy solutions...
Australia and the Asian Ascendancy: Why Upskilling is Not Necessary to Reap the Rewards
Government programs to upskill the Australian workforce for the Asian Century are a solution to a non-problem. With more...
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Bill 2012
Submission to the Senate Community Affairs Legislation Committee into the National Disability Insurance Scheme Bill 2012
Book Launch: 'The Modest Member: The Life and Times of Bert Kelly'
While Liberals, and certainly liberals, should be proud of Bert Kelly’s legacy, it must not be forgotten that his greatest...
The New Leviathan: A National Disability Insurance Scheme
The National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has been touted as the biggest social reform since Medicare. Currently, there...
Future Submarine Project Should Raise Periscope for Another Look
Australia should not spend $40 billion to repeat the mistakes of the Collins Class submarine. Nuclear submarines, such as...
Australia’s Future Fiscal Shock
Government is facing the arduous task of securing sustainable expenditure, revenue and debt beyond the current four-year...
Australia's Asia Literacy Non-Problem
New large-scale Asia literacy programs are not necessary for Australia to prosper in the Asian Century. There are approximately...
Indigenous Education 2012
Indigenous Education 2012 reviews the lack of progress by states and territories in improving Indigenous literacy and numeracy....
The Condensed Wealth of Nations and The Incredibly Condensed Theory of Moral Sentiments
In The Condensed Wealth of Nations, Eamonn Butler condenses Adam Smith’s work and explains the key concepts in The Wealth...
The Henry Tax Review: A Liberal Critique
The public release of Australia’s Future Tax System—known as the Henry review—in May 2010 sparked an ongoing debate...
A Waste of Energy: Why The Clean Energy Finance Corporation is redundant
The federal government’s plans to establish a Clean Energy Finance Corporation (CEFC) should be scrapped. As a commercially...
FEATURE: More Tracks, Slower Trains
The Victorian Regional Rail Link project is hobbled by inefficient planning and wasteful spending.
Trans-Atlantic Fiscal Follies: The Sequel
What started as the US subprime crisis became the global financial crisis and has now developed into the Trans-Atlantic sovereign...
The Decade-long Binge: How Government Squandered Ten Years of Economic Prosperity
Government spending in New Zealand has increased enormously over the past decade in order to meet social goals. From 2000-2010...
Free-Trade Ferries: A Case for Competition
Sydney needs a network of ferries that is able to cater to the city’s changing demographics but is also financially sustainable...
When Prophecy Fails
In their 2009 book, The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett argued for the ‘benefits’ of income redistribution....
Australia’s Angry Mayors: How Population Growth Frustrates Local Councils
To understand the effects of a growing population on Australia’s councils, CIS surveyed local authorities from all over...
Why Does Government Grow?
This paper examines some of the stylised facts in relation to the growth of government in the Western world generally, and...
FEATURE: How Useful is the Productivity Commission?
The Productivity Commission doesn’t always get it right, but it has made major contributions to policymaking in Australia.
The Multi-layered Hayek
Friedrich August von Hayek was one of the intellectual giants of the 20th century. His contributions ranged from economics...
FaHCSIA Indigenous Economic Development Strategy 2010
Governments state that their objective is for Indigenous townships to develop and prosper like mainstream Australian towns....
FEATURE: Free and Fair—How Australia’s Low-Tax Egalitarianism Confounds the World
Australia has found a politically viable way of keeping the state relatively small.
Empires on the Edge of Chaos: The Nasty Fiscal Arithmetic of Imperial Decline
In the 26th John Bonython lecture, Niall Ferguson, one of the world’s leading geo-economic thinkers and best-selling author...
Submission to Native Title Leading Practice Agreements Discussion Paper 2010
The Native Title process is only one of the processes returning land to traditional owners. The lack of benefits to the Indigenous...
Populate and Perish? Modelling Australia's Demographic Future
Since the publication of the 2010 Intergenerational Report, Australia has been debating its demographic future and whether...
Defeating Dependency: Moving Disability Support Pensioners Into Jobs
The focus of welfare reform efforts should be on encouraging some of the 750,000 existing disability support pensioners back...
Like the Curate’s Egg: A Market-based Response and Alternative to the Bennett Report
The National Health and Hospital Reform Commission (NHHRC) has acknowledged the need to ensure health services are responsive...
On the Right Track: Why NSW Needs Business Class Rail
Rail connections between Sydney and neighbouring cities need to improve substantially and business class carriages would...
Fiscal Shock and Awe in the United States
The relative economic standing of the United States, and therefore its place in the world, may decline as other less mature...
Fiscal Fallacies : The Failure of Activist Fiscal Policy
Editor, Stephen Kirchner ; Contributors, John B Taylor ; Tony Makin ; Robert Carling The global financial crisis that emerged...
FEATURE: Is Government the Best Risk Manager?
Some risks are better managed by the private sector. Governments typically bear high costs in admitting failure, yet failures...
Fiscal Rules for Limited Government: Reforming Australia’s Fiscal Responsibility Legislation
The paper outlines the rationale for fiscal responsibility legislation and a rules-based approach to fiscal policy. It examines...
In Defence of Non-Government Schools
Non-government schools are providers of public education and deserve adequate public funding. The purposes and functions...
FEATURE: Choosing Between Classical Liberalism and Social Liberalism
Social liberals support markets, but also government action to promote a firm safety net and equal opportunity, with more...
With No Particular Place To Go: The Federal Government's Ill-conceived Support for the Australian Car Industry
With the US car manufacturing industry faltering further, the Rudd government’s massive taxpayer-funded support for the...
In Defence of Civil Society: The Virtue of Prescribed Private Funds
The Commonwealth government is looking to change the rules governing charitable funds which may harm philanthropic giving...
Are We All Keynesians Again?
The revival of activist fiscal policy ought to be highly controversial because the 1970s and 1980s saw a new consensus emerge...
Radical Surgery: The Only Cure for New South Wales Hospitals
Wolfgang Kasper argues that the hospital malaise can only be remedied by removing the central, bureaucratic control of hospitals...
A Streak of Hypocrisy: Reactions to the Global Financial Crisis and Generational Debt
Dr Jeremy Sammut says that ‘household savings have collapsed due to an unnecessary dependence on welfare handouts. A new...
Million Dollar Babies: Paid Parental Leave and Family Policy Reform
Support for the introduction of paid parental leave has been so vocal that rather than being a means to an end, paid parental...
Government Intervention in Mortgage Finance: The Case Against 'AussieMac'
An Australian GSE and the mortgage securitisation industry would likely expand only at the expense of other financial intermediaries,...
The Bipolar Pacific
Guest-worker schemes, which have been proposed as a development solution for the Pacific, no doubt benefit the individuals...
Declaring Dependence, Declaring Independence: Three Essays on the Future of the Welfare State
In a time when governments are running up enormous welfare bills and intrusively regulating everyday life, this series of...
Child Care and the Labour Supply
This report investigates whether child care is unaffordable and if government funding is contributing to its affordability...
House of Representatives Standing Committee on Employment and Workplace Relations Inquiry 2008
We currently employ a bigger proportion of the working-age population (70%) than ever before. Nevertheless, to increase participation...
A Whiff of Compassion? The Attack on Mutual Obligation
The Rudd government is planning to water down the existing work requirements and mutual obligation policies that have helped...
KiwiSaver or KiwiSucker? A Critical View
The promised benefits of KiwiSaver do not match the high cost of the taxpayer subsidies. With KiwiSaver and New Zealand Super...
The False Promise of GP Super Clinics: Part 1: Preventive Care
Dr Jeremy Sammut examines the evidence for preventive care programs to help make the Medicare system sustainable, given the...
FEATURE: Six Social Policy Myths
Policy experts often think alike, even when the evidence contradicts them. This is how billions of dollars get spent on government...
REVIEW ESSAY: Control Without Command
Julian Le Grand makes a social democratic case for choice and competition in The Other Invisiible Hand: Delivering Public...
The Coming Crisis of Medicare: What the Intergenerational Reports should say, but doesn’t, about health and ageing
The demographic and medical realities of the twenty-first century mean that Medicare can no longer provide every citizen...
Child Care: Who Benefits?
Child care has gone from something that families would use sparingly and only if necessary to being an alleged human right....
FEATURE: Cargo-Cult Railway Proposals
Mega-railway project defy economics, logic and reason.
FEATURE: The Service Economy- Success in a Market Democracy
Many of the service economy's problems come from the government.
The Organisation of Residential Aged Care for an Ageing Population
At the heart of this new paper is the re-assertion of the need for a system of accommodation bonds. Hogan reiterates that...
Lands of Shame: Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ‘Homelands’ in Transition
Some 90,000 of Australia’s 500,000 Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders live appallingly deprived lives in ‘homelands’...
FEATURE: Not So Big Government
In responding to POLICY articles by Andrew Norton and Des Moore, the then-Treasurer Peter Costello argued that governmnet...
FEATURE: The Tax Take Is Up
The mantle of 'highest taxing Treasurer' may go with the job, but the government's tax record is still disappointing.
Taming New Zealand’s Tax Monster
New Zealanders now pay an extra $20 billion per year in tax than they did in 2000. There needs to be a proper review of...
BOOK REVIEW: Giblin's Platoon: The Trials and Triumph of the Economist in Australian Public Life
Giblin's Platoon: The Trials and Triumph of The Economist In Australian Public Life by William Coleman, Selwyn Cornish and...
Reinventing New Zealand’s Welfare State
New Zealanders are much richer than when the welfare state was founded. People’s incomes should therefore be sufficient...
New Zealand’s Spending Binge
Government spending in New Zealand is now $20 billion higher than it was in 2000, yet the available social indicators show...
A Welfare State for Those Who Want One, Opts-outs for Those Who Don't
A system of welfare state opt-outs will help increase people’s independence from government and reverse the unrelenting...
State Taxation and Fiscal Federalism: A Blueprint for Further Reform
This paper identifies major structural flaws in our current taxation system and develops a set of radical proposals to put...
FEATURE: When Will Leviathan Fade Away?
The federal government has failed to curb discretionary spending.
Taxploitation: The Case for Income Tax Reform
In this book edited by Peter Saunders, 10 authors explain why and how Australia's system of personal income tax needs reforming.
FEATURE: Should Monetary Policy be Transparent?
There is an overwhelming consensus that monetary policymaking should be transparent: an evaluation of the arguments.
HELPless: How the FEE-HELP Loans System Lets Students Down and How to Fix it
Three new loans schemes were introduced in 2005 to fix omissions in the HECS system, but a more realistic FEE-HELP loan...
Make Poverty History: Tackle Corruption
The results of the latest international survey of corruption reveal huge international differences. Poor countries tend to...
Twenty Million Future Funds
The government’s claim that we need a Future Fund to pay for public servants’ superannuation is bogus. In fact, the Future...
FEATURE: Why Still Worry About the Capital Account Surplus?
An arbitrary percentage of GDP is not the right measure of an unsustainable current account deficit.
Welfare Reform and Economic Development for Indigenous Communities
Noel Pearson's lecture is to set out a case for a comprehensive reform agenda in Cape York Peninsula.
The Economics of Indigenous Deprivation and Proposals for Reform
For remote Indigenous communities to have productive employment opportunities with mainstream earnings, decent health outcomes,...
The Free Market Case Against Voluntary Student Unionism (But for Voluntary Student Representation)
The federal government plans to introduce ‘voluntary student unionism’ (VSU) into Australia’s universities by banning...
Six Arguments in Favour of Self-Funding
The welfare state served us well in the past but is decreasingly relevant to current conditions. It came into existence to...
The $85 Billion Tax/Welfare Churn
Given the government’s newly-won control of the Senate, most attention is focused primarily on the next 18 months, but...
Australia's Welfare Habit and How to Kick It
Forty years ago only 3% of working age Australians depended on welfare payments as their main source of income. Today it...
Only 18%? Why ACOSS is Wrong to be Complacent about Welfare Dependency
A new report from the Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS) accepts that welfare dependency among working age Australians...
Sweet and Sour Pork Barrelling: The Case of Queensland Sugar
For nearly 100 years, pork barrelling has propped up a recalcitrant sugar industry that has refused to reform despite evidence...
Poverty in Australia: Beyond the Rhetoric
This report challenges prevailing definitions and measurements of poverty, and calls for an alternative strategy for poverty...
RESPONSES BY INVITATION: Three Cheers for the Anglosphere
(In response to American Grand Strategy: The Imperial Logic of Bush's Liberal Agenda by Edward Rhodes in POLICY Summer 2003.) Three...
A Self-Reliant Australia. Welfare Policy for the 21st century
In this paper Peter Saunders suggests that the time has come to turn back the growth of this expensive, damaging, demeaning...
The Unchained University
Australia's universities are not preparing students adequately for their futures. Report author and higher education expert...
What Governments Can't Know: The Knowledge Economy and the Market
Are governments well placed to foster the infusion of different types of complex knowledge to create new or better goods...
BOOK REVIEW: Howard's Agenda
Howard's Agenda edited by Marian Simms and John Warhurst (UQP Australian Studies, 2000.)
FEATURE: Reforming Public Funding of the Performing Arts
Public funding of the arts throws up a range of economic, social and political problems.
FEATURE: Taxi!! Reinvigorating Competition in the Taxi Market
Anecdotal evidence suggests that there is room for improvement in the state of taxi services in NSW.
REVIEW: Learning From The Communist Experience?
The Reds: The Communist Party of Australia from Origins to Illegality by Stuart Macintyre (Allen & Unwin, 1998.)
FEATURE: 'League Tables' of School Performance
A legitimate tool of public policy.
BOOK REVIEW: Private Prisons and Public Accountability
Private Prisons and Public Accountability by Richard Harding (Open University Press, 1997.)
Democracy and the Welfare State
The welfare state has now been experienced by several generations. In this Occasional Paper, Professor Kenneth Minogue looks...
REVIEW ARTICLE: Whither Development Assistance?
One Clear Objective: Poverty Reduction Through Sustainable Development (Simons Committee Report) AusAID (Australian Government...
SCHOOLS' BRIEF: Government in a Mixed Economy
Why does government exist?
FEATURE: 'Two Point Something': The Credibility of Australian Monetary Policy
A missed inflation targeting opportunity.
SCHOOLS' BRIEF: Fiscal Policy
Fiscal policy has reassumed prominence in macroeconomic policy making since the election of the Coalition Government in March...
FEATURE: In For The Long Term: The Time Horizons of Australian Corporations
What might cause investment short-termism?
FEATURE: Special Events- Are They Beneficial?
The cost to taxpayers of the Gold Coast Indycar Grand Prix.
FEATURE: Wanted! Miore Australian Entrepreneurs
Can the Australian Government promote the emergence of entrepreneurs?
FEATURE: Fees, Subsidies and the Market for Higher Education
Mark Harrison argues that despite major reforms since 1988, the continuing absence of price signals and market incentives...
DEBATE: Comparing Governments and Markets
The Private Interest Theory Debate: Gordon Tullocks argues.
Social Welfare: The Changing Debate
David D. Green’s monograph Social Welfare: The Changing Debate, summarises the research findings and arguments of several...
Restraining Leviathan: Small Government in Practice
This collection seeks to increase our understanding of the scope and opportunities we have for making substantial and permenent...
Beyond the Current Pessimism
Professor Ray Ball gives a personal interpretation of the historical roots of Australia’s economic malaise.
The Economics of Bureacracy and Statutory Authorities
This book looks at how government enterprises and regulatory agencies are evaluated by their efficiency and in terms of...
Lessons from the Ord
The Ord Scheme, indeed, offers ample ammunition for those who take the extreme view that responsibility is directly proportional...
The Rhetoric and Reality of Income Redistribution
In this survey of a variety of aspects of income redistribution, Gordon Tullock asks not that we should necessarily change...
