Centre for Independent Studies

👉 Key points:  🔹Civic decline and identity-based education have fuelled the rise of antisemitism in Australia. 🔹Antisemitism grows when Australians stop seeing each other first as equal citizens with shared civic obligations. 🔹Rebuilding civic knowledge and a common national identity strengthens resistance to antisemitism and social division. 👉 Support CIS Research: 🔹 Become a member:  https...

👉 Watch Part 1: https://youtu.be/zhxJXyavYzI Is Islam compatible with liberalism? In this episode of Liberalism in Question, Dr Mark Durie joins the Centre for Independent Studies to examine the fundamental tensions between Islamic theology, sharia, and core liberal principles such as individual freedom, equality, and freedom of religion. Mark Durie is a pastor and academic. He writes and speaks...

👉Watch part 2 here: https://youtu.be/rIWyypaLy5k Is Islam Compatible with Classical Liberalism? | Dr. Samir Mahmoud What is the relationship between Islam and Classical Liberalism? Is there an incompatibility, or just a misunderstanding between manifestations of Islam on the margins?  Dr. Samir Mahmoud is the Education Advisor to the Office of the Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia. He has a BA...

Banana Republic Redux: How Australia is surrendering gains of the reform era | Alex Sanchez Read here: https://www.cis.org.au/publication/banana-republic-redux-how-australia-is-surrendering-gains-of-the-reform-era/ Key points • Australia is losing the economic gains achieved during the Hawke-Keating reform era of the mid-1980s after the Banana Republic shock comment. • High taxes and regulations a...

At the Centre for Independent Studies' annual Liberty and Society student conference, 38 students from Australia and New Zealand explored classical liberal philosophy, free markets and social cohesion through talks and debates led by leading scholars and former officials. Speakers traced the historical shift from Keynesian to pro-market ideas, discussed free speech and the rule of law, and challen...

Watch here: https://youtu.be/pfX-nzrgFPM "[Dahrendorf] had protected an idea: that intellectual work and practical engagement could combine without abandoning intellectual standards, that boundaries could be crossed with integrity intact." Join Dr Oliver Hartwich for a conversation about Dahrendorf, Trump and the multitudes of intellectuals who have abandoned their principles. .  👉 Support CIS Re...

In this Stutch Sessions episode Parnell Palm McGuinness, author of the CIS report Generation Trapped, explains how young Australians (18–34) split into six distinct 'tribes' all still aspire to homeownership, family, meaningful work and financial security, but feel blocked by high housing costs and limited agency. The conversation covers the political fallout from recent tax changes (capital gains...

What classical liberals get wrong about the rest of the World | Alexandre Lefebvre Professor of Politics and Philosophy at the University of Sydney and author of Liberalism as a Way of Life, Alexandre Lefebvre explores how classical liberalism shapes not just politics, but our everyday values, ethics, and way of life. 👉 Support CIS Research: 🔹 Become a member:  https://www.cis.org.au/membership-...

As Treasurer Jim Chalmers prepares to hand down his fifth federal budget on 12 May 2026, four of Australia's leading economists gather at the Centre for Independent Studies to ask: is this budget up to the challenge? Hosted by CIS Executive Director Michael Stutchbury, this roundtable brings together Robert Carling (CIS Senior Fellow, former Treasury and IMF official), Professor Richard Holden (UN...

People have a lot of opinions and a lot of anecdotes that may not necessarily be true. Politicians deal with feelings. Economists and analysts should deal with facts. We have looked at the data and things are becoming cheaper, more affordable, more abundant in Australia...  👉 Read more:  🔹 Humankind and the infinite resource base: https://www.cis.org.au/publication/humankind-and-the-infinite-res...

As much as anything, the Centre for Independent Studies’ first 50 years has been dedicated to restraining the growth in the size, reach and financing of government to provide room for private enterprise and individual choice.  Now, as in the mid-1970s, the size of government has been ratcheted up. And politicians are increasing taxes to pay for it.   This week, CIS senior fellow Robert Carling has...

Grim reality of the NDIS leviathan “It will start big and get bigger and grow to become the new leviathan of the Australian welfare state,” CIS scholar Andrew Baker further predicted of Labor’s National Disability Insurance Scheme in his  2012 policy monograph. Even the Productivity Commission failed to pick the looming NDIS fiscal disaster from the worthy goal of providing support to permanently...

The hard lesson of Australia’s protectionist past is that propping up uncompetitive and high cost industries invariably poses a burden on other sectors, including on the mining, gas and farm exporters that actually support our prosperity.   👉 Join CIS: 🔹 Become a member: https://www.cis.org.au/membership-2-step-1/ 🔹 Make a donation: https://www.cis.org.au/support/donate/today/ 🔹 Learn more: ht...

Over the past several decades, Australian society has undergone profound economic, social, and cultural change. Education pathways have lengthened, housing costs have far outpaced wages, family formation has been delayed or disrupted, and government intervention has expanded across nearly every stage of life. Public policy has attempted to keep pace with these changes. But there is a growing misma...

Donald Trump’s threats to destroy the ‘whole civilisation’ of Iran this week jarringly contrasted with the out-of-this world American achievement of sending a four-member crew as far from Earth as any humans had gone.    👉 Join CIS: 🔹 Become a member: https://www.cis.org.au/membership-2-step-1/ 🔹 Make a donation: https://www.cis.org.au/support/donate/today/ 🔹 Learn more: https://www.cis.org.au...

Australia’s new economic decline is colliding with the breakdown of the liberal rules-based orders for global trade and security. The post-pandemic and oil shock push for more sovereign capability and supply-chain self-reliance will eat into national income just as living standards are under pressure. Resolving this tension will require more, not less, of the pro-market —or neo-liberal — policy ag...

I was in Canberra this week, in part to hear International Energy Agency head Fatih Birol warn that today’s oil price shock will rival the twin Middle East energy shocks of the 1970s.  The 1973 and 1979 shocks promoted using smaller and more fuel-efficient vehicles. And it prompted a wave of nuclear energy development in Japan, Europe and North America. Today’s oil price shock will have comparable...

The Bondi Beach attack of 14 December 2025 forced a reckoning that many Australians had been quietly avoiding. Antisemitism was not, it turned out, a relic of European history or a pathology confined to the political fringes. It was here, active and emboldened. The question that followed — “what must we do about it?” — has since animated parliamentary inquiries, legislative proposals, and now a Ro...

RBA governor Michele Bullock has jacked up her cash rate by 25 basis points for the second month in a row because of two words that can strike fear into the heart of central bankers: “inflation expectations”.  What does this mean for you?  👉 Join CIS: 🔹 Become a member: https://www.cis.org.au/membership-2-step-1/ 🔹 Make a donation: https://www.cis.org.au/support/donate/today/ 🔹 Learn more: htt...

The criticisms and characterization of the 50% capital gains tax discount over many years have been full of misunderstandings, myths and distortions in the conventional narrative on how capital gains tax works, how it compares with the capital gains tax that it replaced in 1999, and the economic consequences of making the capital gains tax burden heavier. The myths and distortions are biasing the...

Read the paper at www.cis.org.au  Executive Summary. This paper is an expanded version of a submission to the Senate Select Committee on the Operation of the Capital Gains Tax Discount. The author gave evidence to the Committee at a hearing on 25 February, 2026. Although there is much public discussion of the capital gains tax discount, there is no proposal from government on the table for us to r...

Immigration and housing affordability have become politically inseparable in contemporary Australia. With rents high, home ownership increasingly out of reach, and housing supply persistently undershooting official targets, it is tempting to conclude that fewer migrants would mean lower prices. That argument has intuitive appeal. More people require more homes. In tightly-constrained markets, addi...

Join us on Liberalism in Question for an enlightening discussion with Dr. Jennifer Buckingham, former Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for Independent Studies and a leading voice in Australian education policy.  From critiquing barriers in public schooling to advocating for phonics-based reading instruction and greater parental choice, this episode examines the role of liberalism in fostering...

In this thought-provoking episode of Liberalism in Question, we delve into the rich tapestry of Australia's liberal history with esteemed guest Dr Greg Melleuish, Associate Professor of History and Politics at the University of Wollongong. Explore how liberalism shaped Australia's political landscape, influenced key figures like Alfred Deakin and Robert Menzies, and continues to inform contemporar...

In this thought-provoking episode of Liberalism in Question, we welcome Emma Dawson, Executive Director of the progressive think tank Per Capita (and formerly of the Chifley Research Centre), to offer a contrasting social democratic perspective. Challenging classical liberal skepticism toward government overreach, Dawson argues that the state can—and should—play a constructive, helpful role in add...