Centre for Independent Studies

How do policymakers and regulators balance restoring trust in our financial system with maintaining the flow of credit? Australia’s banking industry had long had a reputation for being among the world’s safest for investors. Its reputation has been tarnished in recent times after the explosion of scrutiny from the Hayne Royal Commission. Hear from Anna Bligh, Chief Executive Officer at the Austral...

For sound analysis of the state of conservative politics, please join Sir Bill English (former New Zealand prime minister), Sir Craig Oliver (former director of politics and communications to British prime minister David Cameron and currently a Principal with global CEO advisory firm Teneo) and Jennifer Hewett (national affairs columnist with the Australian Financial Review). Plus, as Britain make...

With Britain’s ruling Conservative Party in disarray, and against the backdrop of a chaotic British exit from the EU, there is a real danger that Britain is lurching to the left. Join us to get an in-depth analysis of the British Conservative crisis and the rise of millennial socialism. Forty years ago, Margaret Thatcher led her Conservative Party to victory and set the scene for a wave of privati...

Pundits all too often call political fiascos “circuses.” But rarely does a political class oblige by providing several rings of entertainment at once. Such has been the British Conservative government’s attempts to leave the European Union by April 12. Meanwhile, the Tories under Prime Minister Theresa May plunge into one melodrama after another. The British Labour Party under socialist Jeremy Cor...

Managing Partner of McKinsey, Robert McLean AM and Belinda Hutchinson AM, Chancellor of the University of Sydney were at the CIS for the launch of Bulletproof Problem Solving: The One Skill That Changes Everything (Wiley). Co-authored by CIS director Robert McLean AM and Charles Conn. "Navigating ambiguity and solving complex problems creatively is the truth test for humans to complement rather th...

Join John Lee, former senior advisor to foreign minister Julie Bishop and senior fellow at the Hudson Institute in Washington alongside James Laurenceson, acting director of the Australia China Relations Institute for a wide-ranging discussion. Moderated by Sue Windybank, convenor of a new CIS project on China and free societies. For decades, it was widely held that China’s economic progress would...

One of the major battlegrounds in the upcoming NSW state election will be for the Upper House. After March 23, centre-right minor parties are likely to hold the balance of power. It raises the issue of why third parties matter. As the broader Liberal-National coalition shows increasing signs of splintering, what third party best represents the path to a sound governing and legislative agenda at bo...

Queensland LNP Senator Amanda Stoker visited the CIS for our first Leadership Lunch of 2019. With a strong desire to see Australia return to a country of opportunity based on centre-right beliefs, Senator Stoker hopes to actively engage with Australian’s on social issues and not just on its traditional economic strengths, suggesting that Australia’s current cultural trends reflect the centre-right...

As NSW prepares for the March 23 election, the “premier state” is in reasonably good condition. Retail spending and business investment are up, the budget is at $1.1 billion surplus and unemployment is at 4.3 per cent. Meanwhile, Sydney’s major public projects — from the new Sydney Metro to the WestConnex underground motorway scheme and Sydney Light Rail — are well underway. And yet opinion polls...

On Thursday, 31 January our panel of speakers thrashed out the issues surrounding women in politics. Are setting affirmative-action quotas the answer to boosting female representation? Or is a merit-based system of choosing candidates a better option? Are claims of a bullying culture inside the Liberal Party true? Is Labor playing the gender card and identity politics? Who’s had better policies on...

Join former High Court justice Michael Kirby and Geoffrey Lehmann for the launch of Leeward: A Memoir (NewSouth) at the CIS. Geoffrey Lehmann has been one of Australia’s leading poets and tax lawyers for several decades. A partner of PwC and chairman of the Australian Tax Research Foundation, he was involved in the design of Australia’s GST and other tax legislation. He was also short-listed for t...

Join Brendan O’Neill, one of Britain’s quirkiest, wittiest and liveliest commentators, in conversation with Jeremy Sammut, head of research at the CIS. The PC brigade continues to entrench itself in the western body politic. Waging war on the past is all the rage. Along with its various campus manifestations such as “safe spaces,” political correctness has become a kind of pathology that damages t...

For generations, we just assumed democracy is fixed and given. However, all across the world, democracies are sick and suffering from a crisis of confidence. Polls show just a third of Australians are satisfied with the way our democracy is working. Public trust in our politicians is at record lows. So, how do we restore faith in democracy? Is there too much corporate and foreign money involved in...

William McMahon was a significant, if widely derided and disliked, figure in Australian politics. Was he our worst prime minister? How did he get to the Lodge? Was he the first free-market “dry” politician to take on the orthodoxies of protectionism and economic interventionism? The first biography of our 20th prime minister tells the story of his life and his role in the great debates over Austra...

US midterm elections are usually bad for the President’s party, but amid a booming economy this year’s congressional races are more difficult to predict. The jobless rate recently fell to 3.7 per cent (the lowest since 1969) and the stock market (shrugging off the Trump tariffs) keeps surging to new highs. Meanwhile, both Republicans and Democrats will use Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the Sup...

The NSW Opposition leader visited the CIS to set out an overview of Labor’s vision ahead of the March 2019 state election and how his values of a fair go affect public policy. In 2010 Luke was elected to the Legislative Council of NSW. Since 2015 he has been leader of the NSW Labor Party and Shadow Minister for Western Sydney. Follow the CIS on Twitter @CISOZ or find us on Facebook 'The Centre for...

The vision of the John Bonython Lecture is to inspire Australians to advance principles that constitute a Free Society -- to promote free choice, individual liberty, defend cultural freedom, and the open exchange of ideas. This year's lecture was no different, as we welcomed Daniel Hannan to take the stage which has previously showcased Francis Fukuyama, Rupert Murdoch and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Daniel...

The vision of the John Bonython Lecture is to inspire Australians to advance principles that constitute a Free Society -- to promote free choice, individual liberty, defend cultural freedom, and the open exchange of ideas. This year's lecture was no different, as we welcomed Daniel Hannan to take the stage which has previously showcased Francis Fukuyama, Rupert Murdoch and Ayaan Hirsi Ali. Daniel...

Amidst the debate about Chinese influence in Australia, NSW Minister for Education, the Hon. Rob Stokes MP, sat down with CIS Executive Director, Tom Switzer to discuss a range of issues that are crucial to the future of free speech in Australian universities. Most discussion of threats to free speech in Australian universities focuses on the impact of identity politics and political correctness....

There is a natural impulse in people to bring the rich and powerful down - to create equality and a better, more decent society. The impulse was drowned out for the latter part of the 20th century by knowledge in the West of how horribly wrong the Communist experiments had gone. However, new generations are growing up knowing little or nothing about what happened. They have no intellectual defence...

A recent Productivity Commission report, Rising Inequality? A stocktake of the evidence, shows that although inequality has risen, Australia retains a high degree of economic mobility. With that, our panel - Jonathan Coppel, Melinda Cilento, Simon Cowan and Robert Carling - thrashed out the issues and sought to answer the question: Does inequality matter? ____________________ The Centre for Indepe...

Andrew Neil is the presenter of Daily Politics, This Week (the BBC’s leading political television shows), and is recognised as one of Britain’s most distinguished broadcasters and political journalists. Join Andrew Neil in conversation with CIS executive director Tom Switzer, about the state of politics in Australia, where political instability isn't really that bad, about the political landscape...

Tumultuous events in Canberra during the course of the last week, led to a change of Prime Ministers. Join Tony Abbott as he delivers his views on the current state of the Liberal Party, the potential of the new government announced and a broader discussion on the state of Australia’s political landscape. ____________________ The Centre for Independent Studies (CIS) promotes free choice and indivi...

University campuses throughout the West are in the grip of a troubling social phenomenon, now in danger of spreading beyond the ivy walls. Once bastions of intellectual rigour and freedom of thought, universities have become closed-minded and self-censoring, pandering to what appear from the outside to be ridiculously heightened sensitivities and undeserved entitlement. Safe spaces, trigger warnin...

Conversation with The Australian’s Foreign Editor Greg Sheridan and CIS senior research fellow Peter Kurti on the intellectual, historical and cultural case for belief in God. Australia and many parts of the West are losing faith in God. And yet the Judeo-Christian tradition has created and underpinned the moral and legal fabric of Western Civilisation. Where the moral certainties that underpin Au...