The intense debate over the war in Iraq and American foreign policy has raised age-old questions about the rights and wrongs of intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign states, the pre-emptive use of force and the 'export' of democracy, but there has been little attempt to acknowledge and confront the special difficulties of discussing...

Caspar Conde criticises the way governments are increasingly legislating and regulating with a view to minimising all risks, no matter how small. It seems that whenever there is a problem, the government assumes that it has a duty to solve it. But even when it is well-intentioned, this increasing scale of government intervention erodes personal...

Advocates of higher taxation often point to OECD figures suggesting Australia enjoys lower than average tax levels. But in this paper Peter Burn argues these claims are misleading. He says that a careful reading of OECD statistics shows our tax levels are on a par with the OECD average. He also finds that Australian taxes...

A new report from ACOSS accepts that welfare dependency among working age Australians has reached 18 per cent, but denies this is a problem. It says that Australia still spends less on welfare than many other developed countries, and argues we should be expanding welfare rather than worrying about it. Peter Saunders says that the...

Thirty years after enjoying the world's second highest per capita GDP after Saudi Arabia, Nauru is on the verge of bankruptcy and was declared one of the first states listed under the US Patriot Act. Professor Hughes shows that Nauru's parlous state has been brought about by a complete disregard for basic economics and inappropriate...