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Given the heated back-and-forth over the Trump Administration’s strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and continued support for Ukraine, it is clear that matters of foreign policy will be a major factor in defining the character of American conservatism moving forward.

There is bound to be disagreement over the relative geopolitical merits of supporting Ukraine or Israel, as well as the appropriate level of support. However, one principle is undeniable: an advocate of a given course of action must demonstrate its connection to the interests of the people of the United States alone. That doesn’t mean it can’t be mutually beneficial for an international partner. But the very purpose of statesmanship is to navigate events and relationships in a manner that maximizes the advantage accruing to one’s own nation. Absent a clear definition of the specific interests served by an existing alliance, there will always be a danger of the tail wagging the dog.

The first order of business is therefore to establish such a definition. What do we gain by a given course of action in service of a foreign nation? This is as much a question of theory as of practice: What are we fighting for, and what are the best means to obtain it? As so often tends to be the case, the best place to look for an illustration of the principles that can help guide our thinking is the American Founding—although perhaps not in the way it is normally considered.

The Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA) has a target to keep headline inflation between 2% and 3%. By any reasonable measure it has completely failed on this over the last decade.

The June quarter released this week shows that inflation has been within the band for the last four consecutive quarters. This is the first time we have seen four consecutive quarters in the RBA target band since 2014.

Since the end of 2014 there have been just eight quarters where inflation has been in the target band and half of those are the four most recent ones. That means just eight of the last 43 quarters have been in the band. How can that be judged as anything but a complete failure?

Most recently, the inflation rate has been higher than 3%, but for most of the past decade, it has been outside the band because it has been below 2%.

In the 43 quarters since December 2014, inflation has been too high for 12 quarters, but too low for 23 quarters.

You might think that inflation is bad, and so having inflation below 2% is a good thing. But there is a reason that the RBA inflation target has a lower limit.

Low inflation comes with sluggish economic growth and higher unemployment. The 2022 RBA review actually rebuked the RBA for not doing enough to increase inflation in the years before the pandemic. They said that the RBA had kept interest rates too high for too long when inflation was below 2% which resulted in more people being unemployed.

Summary To improve productivity Australia needs to shift taxes off work and enterprise and onto the economic rents from land, natural resources, and monopolies. This principle should be at the heart of any economic reform agenda. Income tax should be rebalanced to favour productive effort over unearned gains, beginning by scrapping CGT concessions. States should […]

By contrast, in 1903 there were just 25,000 voters per MP (this being the first election where most women could vote).

In the intervening 122 years, the federal parliament has significantly expanded twice: from 74 to 121 seats in 1949, and from 125 to 148 in 1984. Both times, the number of people per seat sat at a then record high: 64,000 and 75,000 respectively.

Voting rights have also expanded: women’s suffrage came in 1903 (though not for all women), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander voting rights took until 1963, and the voting age was lowered from 21 to 18 in 1974.

But while there are nine times as many registered voters today as in 1903, the number of electorates has only doubled.

As the number of voters per MP grows, the access any individual voter will have to their member necessarily decreases – Australia Institute polling research in 2022 found that only 15% of Australians had ever spoken to their local MP (and only 36% knew their name).

And the more voters there are in an electorate, the larger a campaign needs to be to make any difference to the result, giving communities less power to kick out an unrepresentative or under-performing MP.

On this episode of Dollars & Sense, Greg and Elinor unpack how the latest inflation figures only make it more obvious the RBA should have cut interest rates at their last meeting, and why some people who are unemployed are not looking for work (and it’s not because they’re ‘dole bludgers’).

This discussion was recorded on Thursday 31 July 2025 and things may have changed since recording.

Host: Greg Jericho, Chief Economist, the Australia Institute // @grogsgamut

Host: Elinor Johnston-Leek, Senior Content Producer, the Australia Institute // @elinorjohnstonleek

Show notes: 

Take a deep dive into the inflation numbers and the RBA’s decision not to cut rates seems inexplicable by Greg Jericho (July 2025)

Wrong call – RBA rate hold unfairly dashes borrowers’ hopes for relief, the Australia Institute (July 2025)

The American Mind’s ‘Editorial Roundtable’ podcast is a weekly conversation with Ryan Williams, Spencer Klavan, and Mike Sabo devoted to uncovering the ideas and principles that drive American political life. Stream here or download from your favorite podcast host.

Jeanetic Lottery | The Roundtable Ep. 278

On this episode of Follow the Money, Alice Grundy and Skye Predavec join Ebony Bennett to discuss how the Howard Government’s brave reforms in the aftermath of the Port Arthur massacre are falling short of its aims – and what federal, state and territory governments can do to keep Australians safe.

1800RESPECT is the national domestic, family and sexual violence counselling, information and support service. Call 1800 737 732, text 0458 737 732, chat online or video call via their website.

Correction: This podcast was updated to remove a reference to buying firearms and ammunition interstate when there is a limit on the licence, which does not appear in our research. What is possible is for a licence-holder to buy firearms and travel to another state.

Dead Centre: How political pragmatism is killing us by Richard Denniss is available for pre-order now via the Australia Institute website.

Guest: Alice Grundy, Research Manager and Managing Editor, the Australia Institute // @alicektg

Guest: Skye Predavec, Anne Kantor Fellow, the Australia Institute // @skyelark

ODOT’s claim that Oregon spends less on roads than neighboring states was a key talking point in trying to sell a higher transportation tax in the 2025 Legislature

Based on ODOT”s data, legislators repeatedly claimed that Oregon spends less on roads than  other Western states

The trouble is it’s not true.  Big state sales taxes on cars warp the comparison. Other states do charge sales taxes on car sales, but this money goes to general funds, not to road construction and repair

Independent national comparisons prepared by the widely respected Brookings Institution, using Census Bureau data from all 50 states shows Oregon spends almost the same on roads as neighboring states, about $630 per capita in 2021.

ODOT’s numbers are a bogus and deceptive sales technique, not an objective analysis

ODOT’s Big Lie:  Oregon spends less on roads than other states

The idea that Oregon’s taxes for transportation are much lower than neighboring states has become a widely repeated talking point in the State Capitol.

Listen to the full conversation on the Perspectives Journal podcast, available to subscribe on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Amazon Music, and all other major podcast platforms.

Today in the AFR, the head of the private health insurance lobby group “PrivateHealth Australia” showed the industry is very worried by suggestions by The Australia Institute and others that private health insurance fees should be subject to GST.

When the GST was introduced, John Howard ensured private health insurance fees were not subject to GST, and at essentially the same time, he introduced the “Lifetime Health Cover”, which meant if you did not join private health insurance by the time you were 30 you would have to pay higher fees were you to join it later.

The problem is that even with this virtual forcing of people onto health insurance, most people take out the minimum health insurance they need to qualify for the lifetime health cover, and usually this means lots of things are excluded from the cover, and also you have to pay a lot of excess payments should you actually need to use it. It is not health insurance in any true sense, but it is wonderful for private health insurers.

This interview is also available on podcast platforms and Rumble.

Fame and fortune are often corrupting forces, ones that beget power and comfort. To stand with the afflicted requires sacrificing this privilege and few embody that sacrifice more profoundly than the legendary musician of Pink Floyd Roger Waters.

For years, through his music and political action, Waters has amplified the voices of the oppressed. He has championed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, defended attorney Steven Donziger, demanded the closure of Guantánamo Bay, has long stood against the apartheid state of Israel and now unwaveringly against the genocide of Palestinians.

Currently, political parties are allowed to send postal vote application forms bundled with information about a candidate.

The forms are then returned to the political party, which forwards them to the Australian Electoral Commission.

The new poll has found that a vast majority of Australians would rather voters send their voting paper directly to the AEC.

Key findings:

In Sugar Land, Texas, a giant statue depicting the monkey-faced Hindu deity, Hanuman, was erected in August 2024. Officially titled Statue of Union, many Texans and Americans elsewhere have found this monument to be an aberration. For some it is the aesthetic unsightliness. For others it is a religious aversion to having a pagan idol be raised to such heights. And for others it is a demonstration of just how many foreigners now live in Texas.

I see each of these points as pins on a board that, when connected, reveal a fault line in American civic life: we are divided culturally—and the divide is widening.

‘Money talks, and fear is a great motivator’ — Christopher Rufo, 2025

This quote from Christipher Rufo, one of the most influential architects of Donald Trump’s current assault on ‘diversity, equity and inclusion’ in education, succinctly distils the key techniques in what has become a global war on higher education.

This war takes on different forms in different jurisdictions, but it finds expression, to a greater or lesser extent, right across the globe.

For Trump, it is now quite clear that the goal of this war is to eliminate academic freedom, and open enquiry – the bedrock of higher education. If this goal is not fully expressed outside of authoritarian regimes, it is nonetheless a lens through which to view how higher education, and higher education workers, are increasingly being regulated.

Like all workplaces, universities are sites of power and contestation, where managers have an imperative to exercise control over the labour process. It might sound odd to describe universities as workplaces, but that’s exactly what they are. It is workers – academic and non-academic – who teach the students, conduct the research that make universities what they are.

Yet, as higher education managers are impelled to control their workforces, there are constituent elements of universities this potentially conflicts with, especially academic freedom and collegial decision making.