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.
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All Welfare State 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...
A Fair Go: Fact or Fiction?
The Australian ideal of a fair go is fact rather than fiction. By offering all individuals the opportunity to capitalise...
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...
Re-moralising the Welfare State
The welfare state should be fair as well as caring. Fairness requires that claimants are not treated more favourably than...
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...
Capitalism and Virtue: Reaffirming Old Truths
In the 2012 Annual John Bonython Lecture, eminent political scientist Charles Murray describes the larger historical forces...
Panacea to Prison? Justice Reinvestment in Indigenous Communities
High Indigenous incarceration has elicited a long list of so-called solutions over the years. Yet the percentage of Aboriginal...
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
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...
Submission to the COAG Select Council on Disability Reform on NDIS ‘eligibility and reasonable and necessary support’ criteria
Submission to the COAG Select Council on Disability Reform on NDIS ‘eligibility and reasonable and necessary support’...
Submission to the Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations References Committee
Submission to the Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations References Committee
Overcoming a Culture of Low Expectations
The most important thing we can do to encourage disadvantaged Australians into work – including people with disabilities,...
Do Not Damage and Disturb: On Child Protection Failures and the Pressure on Out-of-Home Care in Australia
This monograph shows that the rising size, cost, and complexity of the out-of-home care system in Australia is directly linked...
Working Towards Self-Reliance: Three Lessons for Disability Pension Reform
To successful reduce the number of pensioners on disability support, policymakers must apply the lessons of other welfare...
When Prophecy Fails
In their 2009 book, The Spirit Level, Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett argued for the ‘benefits’ of income redistribution....
Selection, Migration and Integration: Why Multiculturalism Works in Australia (And Fails in Europe)
Australia’s migrants are extremely well integrated by international standards, particularly Europe. The reason why multiculturalism...
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...
The Power and the Responsibility: Child Protection in the Post-Welfare State Era
Government-run child protection services in Australia are plagued by systemic problems, including a misguided emphasis on...
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...
What’s Next for Welfare-to-Work?
When jobs are hard to find, the incentive for unemployed people to move to other welfare payments such as DSP grows. There...
Supping with the Devil : Government Contracts and the Non-Profit Sector
Big-government corporatism is now in danger of smothering the third sector altogether. The temptation for non-profit organisations...
Fatally Flawed: The Child Protection Crisis in Australia
It is not underfunding or an overwhelming workload that has caused child protection services to fail the vulnerable children...
FEATURE: Jobless Families in a Recession
The government should resist moves to dilute welfare to work. For the 90 percent of jobless parents who don’t participate...
ROSS PARISH ESSAY: Liberty, Time Preference and Decadence
It is the welfare state—not liberty—that fosters decadence, says Ben O’Neill
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...
Baby Steps Toward Self-Funded Parental Leave
The debate about increasing the aged pension highlights the fact that, once again, government handouts lead to increasing...
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...
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...
The False Promise of GP Super Clinics Part 2: Coordinated Care
The report’s author Jeremy Sammut examines the evidence for the Rudd government’s plan to use GP Super Clinics to boost...
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...
INTERVIEW: The Swedish Paradox
Peter Saunders talks with Timbro CEO Maria Rankka about personal liberty and the welfare state in contemporary Sweden.
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...
BOOK REVIEW: Australian Social Attitudes 2: Citizenship, Work and Aspiration
Australian Social Attitudes 2: Citizenship, Work and Aspiration edited by David Denemark, Gabrielle Meagher, Shaun Wilson,...
What are Low Ability Workers To Do When Unskilled Jobs Disappear? Part 2
Despite low unemployment, working-age welfare dependency remains high, partly because demand for unskilled labour is in decline....
What are Low Ability Workers To Do When Unskilled Jobs Disappear? Part 1
Nearly two million working-age people are on welfare benefits. The fall in the unemployment figures has disguised a displacement...
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...
The Government Giveth and the Government Taketh Away: Tax Welfare Churning and the Case for Welfare State Opt-Outs
Australians are more prosperous than ever before, so the number of people needing government assistance should be falling....
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...
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: The Roads to Serfdom
The welfare state leaves many people with little important to decide for themselves.
Reform 30/30: Rebuilding Australia’s Tax and Welfare Systems
John Humphreys has a vision of how the tax and welfare systems could be refashioned to break through the dispiriting problems...
BOOK REVIEW: Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference
Fighting Poverty in the US and Europe: A World of Difference by Alberto Alesina and Edward Glaeser (Oxford, 2004).
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...
Clearing Muddy Waters: Why Vinnies are Wrong on Inequality
A recent St Vincent de Paul Society report claimed income inequality in Australia is dramatically widening. CIS suggested...
A Headlong Dash into the Chasm of Hyperbole
The St Vincent de Paul Society’s recent paper, The Reality of Income Inequality in Australia, warns of Australia’s ‘current...
Papua New Guinea’s Choice: A Tale of Two Nations
The recent withdrawal of the Australian police is disastrous for the people of Papua New Guinea. The police deployed under...
Lessons from the Tiwi Islands: The Need for Radical Improvement in Remote Aboriginal Communities
The governance structures created during the last 30 years for remote Aboriginal communities are so dysfunctional that the...
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...
A New Deal for Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders in Remote Communities
A New Deal for Aborigines: Private property rights, educational reform, health care privatisation, and the application of...
The Pacific is Viable!
Whilst all is relatively quiet in the Pacific, there is still no growth. With aid runing at more than $1.5 billion a year...
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...
REVIEW ESSAY: Third Sector Blues
Crafting a contemporary framework for Australian voluntary organisations. The Political Economy of the Voluntary Sector:...
FEATURE: Australia's Older and Wealthier Future
An ageing population need not lead to lower living standards, but it does raise issues of intergenerational equity.
State of the Nation: An Agenda for Change 2004
This book is now in its fourth edition. It offers independent views on Australia’s progress across a range of indicators...
Why We Must Reform the Disability Support Pension
There has been a big increase in people claiming the Disability Support Pension (DSP) although at least half of the claimants...
Lies, Damned Lies and the Senate Poverty Inquiry Report
A recent Senate Report claims that ‘poverty’ in Australia is widespread and has been getting worse is ‘seriously flawed’...
Poverty in Australia: Beyond the Rhetoric
This report challenges prevailing definitions and measurements of poverty, and calls for an alternative strategy for poverty...
How Union Campaigns on Hours and Casuals are Threatening Low-skilled Jobs
For several years now Australian unions have been waging campaigns to limit working hours and the growth in casual employment...
How To Reduce Long Term Unemployment
More than half the people claiming unemployment allowances in Australia have been on benefits for more than a year. Introducing...
The Tender Trap: Reducing Long-Term Welfare Dependency by Reforming the Parenting Payment System
Moving single parents whose children are at school off welfare and into work is a key component of a broader strategy to...
Is the ‘Earnings Credit’ the Best Way to Cut the Dole Queues?
The 'earnings credit' proposed by the 'Five Economists' in 1998 will not sufficiently decrease joblessness in Australia,...
Michael in a Muddle: Michael Pusey’s Bungled Attack on Economic Reform
Andrew Norton reveals many serious errors of fact and logic in his detailed critique of Michael Pusey's new book, The Experience...
Aid Has Failed the Pacific
The Pacific islands are an arc of instability threatening Australia’s security. While current problems are of considerable...
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...
BOOK REVIEW: Australia's Welfare Wars: The Players, The Politics and The Ideologies
Australia's Welfare Wars: The Players, the Politics and the Ideologies by Philip Mendes (University of New South Wales Press,...
FEATURE: Turning Back The Tide: Welfare Lessons From America
Welfare reform in America has worked, and nobody there is any longer even debating whether to reinstate the old system. So...
Poor Statistics: Getting the Facts Right About Poverty in Australia
Some welfare organisations suggest that poverty statistics are unimportant and that the CIS critique of the Smith Family’s...
The Social Foundations of a Free Society
A look at five main areas where current trends may be eroding the free society - family life, schooling, community relations,...
Poor Arguments: A Response to the Smith Family Report on Poverty in Australia
The welfare lobby, including The Smith Family and NATSEM, continues to inflate poverty statistics to advance a political...
FEATURE: The Politics of Envy
Contrary to widespread belief, the real value of low incomes in Australia has risen while the proportion of people living...
State of the Nation 2001: A Century of Change
This major report finds that Australia is in the midst of profound social and economic change sometimes for the better, sometimes...
FEATURE: Reforming Wages and Welfare Policy: Six Advantages of a Negative Income Tax
The replacement of all current welfare and wage provisions with a universal but minimal negative income tax would create...
COMMENT: The Crisis of Human Rights
The concept of human rights evolved to buttress liberty by protecting people from excessive state power. Now it is being...
FEATURE: The 'Fair Go' in Australia: Popular Support for Taxing and Spending
Are Australians prepared to tolerate higher taxes in return for increased social services as welfare lobbyists often assume?
Playing with Fire: Churches, Welfare Services and Government Contracts
Striking a balance between state funding and religious autonomy is the latest challenge for church-based welfare agencies....
Behavioural Poverty
The welfare debate is bedeviled by the failure to distinguish behavioural from financial poverty. The minimum income available...
REVIEW ARTICLE: The Quality of Mercy
Social Welfare and Individual Responsibility: For and Against by David Schmidtz and Robert E. Goodin (Cambridge University...
State of the Nation: Indicators of a Changing Australia 1999
The expanded and revised edition of State of the Nation: Indicators of a Changing Australia 1999 is a comprehensive guide...
Reconnecting Compassion and Charity
Supporters of big government and the welfare state regularly accuse their opponents of lacking ‘compassion’. But how...
BOOK REVIEW: in Praise of Commercial Culture
In Praise of Commercial Culture by Tyler Cowen (Harvard University Press, 1998.)
BOOK NOTES: Corporate Welfare Policy and the Welfare State
Corporate Welfare Policy and the Welfare State by Davita Glasberg and Dan Skidmore (Walter de Gruyter & co, 1997.)
FEATURE: A Macroeconomic Role for the IRC
Institutional redesign as a way to reduce employment.
FEATURE: Beyond Master and Servant
The new world of non-employment.
COMMENT: The Welfare State- Depreciating Australia's Social Capital?
Large-scale bureaucracies have difficulty providing highly personalised services; not just for reasons of their size but...
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...
State of the Nation: Statistical Indicators of Australia's Well-being
The first of a series of studies of the social condition of Australia in 1997.
SCHOOL'S BRIEF: Unemployment
It is widely accepted that the inability of many Australians to find paid work is a serious economic adn social problem and...
REVIEW ARTICLE: From Welfare State to Civil Society
Towards Welfare that Works in New Zealand by David G. Green (New Zealand Business Roundtable, 1996.)
FEATURE: Making Welfare Work
Place management as a key to welfare reform.
BOOK REVIEW: Radicalism, Feminism and Fanatacism: Social Work in the Nineties
Radicalism, Feminism and Fanaticism: Social Work in the Nineties by Brian T. Trainor (Avebury Publishing, 1996.)
BOOK REVIEW: Social Networks and Job Acquisition in Ethnic Communities in South Australia
Social Networks and Job Acquisition in Ethnic Communities in South Australia by Edgar Carson (Australian Government Publishing...
Civic Capitalism- An Australian Agenda for Institutional Renewal
A new political middle ground is forming around the idea that successful societies depend on ‘social capital’- the goodwill,...
The Social Roots of Prosperity
A society’s prosperity depends on its families. That is the central message of Brigitte Berger’s analysis of economic...
REVIEW: Where to for Welfare?
Sustaining the welfare state remains a major problem. Welfare and Inequality: National and International Perspectives on...
FEATURE: Buy Australian?
Buying Australian could cost jobs and lower living standards.
NOTES AND COMMENTS: The Volunteers' Movement
There are more than 100,000 not-for-profits organisations set up to help others or their own members, dealing with health...
FEATURE: Employment Policies Don't Work
Wage subsidies and public sector job creation are seen by some as a desirable response to the problem of unemployment.
BOOK REVIEW: Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws
Forbidden Grounds: The Case Against Employment Discrimination Laws by Richard A. Epstein (Harvard University Press, 1992.)
BOOK REVIEW: The Welfare Generation
Selfish Generations The Ageing of New Zealand's Welfare State by David Thomson (Bridget Williams Books, 1991.)
SCHOOL'S BRIEF: Unemployment: Dimensions, Causes and Policy Responses
An exploration of the dimensions and causes of current unemployment in Australia, and canvasses some policy responses.
BOOK REVIEW: A Man-Made Disaster
The Excluded Americans: Homelessness and Housing Policies by William Tucker (Regnery Gateway, 1990.)
BOOK REVIEW: Information, Privacy and the Welfare State
Redistribution by Smart Card: Information, Privacy and the Welfare State: An Integrated Approach To The Administration of...
From Welfare State to Welfare Society
The legitimacy of the welfare state has survived the shift in recent years towards smaller government and a greater role...
FEATURE: Microeconomic Reform and the Welfare State
An exploration of the scope for reforming the welfare state through a greater reliance on means tests and on private provision...
REVIEW: A Framework For Family Policy
The Family in the Welfare State by Alan Tapper (Allen & Unwin, 1990.)
NOTES & COMMENTS: Ending the Poverty Trap for Part-Time Workers
Unemployment has become a very real fact of life for many people in Australia today.
Equalising People: Why Social Justice Threatens Liberty
In this Occasional Paper, David Green challenges the pursuit of social justice on three grounds: It is based on a shallow...
FEATURE: The Forgotten Consumer: The Distorted Delivery of Child-Care Services
The persistences of informal child care in the face of increasing governent subsidies for child-care services suggests that...
FEATURE: Ending Aboriginal Poverty
Aboriginal self-determination and land rights policies have done nothing to stem the growth in Aboriginal unemployment that...
BOOK REVIEW: Public Choice and Public Interest
Wealth, Poverty and Politics by Gordon Tullock (Basil Blackwell, 1988.)
FEATURE: Australia's Economic and Social Immigration Policies: A Labour Market Perspective
In the Winter 1989 issue of POLICY, Mark Harrison and John Logan proposed that Australia's annual immigration quota should...
FEATURE: Failing Families, Vanishing Australians and the Welfare State
Australia's fertility rate, like that of several other Western countries, has fallen well below the level needed to sustain...
BOOK REVIEW: The Failure of Aboriginal Affairs Policy
Give and Take: The Losing Partnernship In Aboriginal Poverty by David Pollard (Hale and Iremonger, 1988.)
Welfare State or Constitutional State?
In this contribution to the CIS Social Welfare Research Program, Suri Ratnapala, Lecturer in Law at the University of Queensland,...
FEATURE: Aid For Employment?
Lack of employment opportunities is a major source of poverty in many developing countries. A discussion of whether and how...
REVIEW ARTICLE: The Economic of Status: Robert Frank's "Choosing The Right Pond"
How much welfare would we forgo to retain our social status? A great deal, according to Robert H. Frank, whose book Choosing...
FEATURE: The Failing Symbiosis: Labour Market Regulation and the Welfare State in Australia
'Symbiosis' is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as 'union between organisms each of which depends for its existence...
FEATURE: Are There Any Welfare Rights?
The standard arguments justifying the welfare state in terms of a moral right to welfare remain controversial and inconclusive....
FEATURE: Long-Duration Unemployment: 'Losers' or 'Choosers'?
Regulation of labour markets and the operation of the welfare state in Australia interact to encourage the emergence of long-duration...
CRITICAL REVIEW: Welfare versus Happiness: Charles Murray's 'In Pursuit'
Charle's Murray's book In Pursuit of Happiness and Good Government (Simon & Schuster, 1988), builds on the many insights...
FEATURE: How the Welfare State Undermines Constitutionalism
The welfare state necessarily operates by way of a mass of delegated and particular legislation and so undermines the general...
The Welfare State: Foundations and Alternatives
The central question for public policy in the 1990s is whether the state should retain its near-monopoly of welfare provision...
The Long Debate on Poverty
In The Long Debate on Poverty, Professor Hartwell analyses the debate on poverty and its historical roots; demonstrates the...
Social Welfare: The Changing Debate
David D. Green’s monograph Social Welfare: The Changing Debate, summarises the research findings and arguments of several...
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...
