Cis Podcast

Gordon's book is available on Amazon now; https://www.amazon.com.au/dp/B0817QK9KR Rob and Gordon discuss issues arising from Gordon’s 2020 book Western Fundamentalism in which he critiques the unquestioning, and therefore ‘fundamentalist,’ adoption of democracy, free marked economic liberalism and sexual freedom as basic. Rob and Gordon discuss why liberalism has been so effective in producing economic prosperity but why it is ineffective if spread to other areas of human life. They discuss the nature of freedom and whether liberalism itself may be naive about evils – especially in relation to issues of aggressive woke politics. Good policy leads to great outcomes. CIS promotes free choice and individual liberty and the open exchange of ideas. CIS encourages debate among leading academics, politicians, media and the public. Follow CIS on our Socials Twitter - https://twitter.com/CISOZ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CentreIndependentStudies/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-centr

Rob and Simon discuss how important liberalism is as philosophy of freedom and equality, despite concerns it is not applied uniformly across the board. Simon is particularly concerned about what he sees as a widening divide between haves and have-nots. Although there are limits to liberalism, larger government is not the solution. Business leaders and the community need to have a stronger voice in terms of some of the policy settings that are required to create a better society. Long-term strategic vision is essential. Good policy leads to great outcomes. CIS promotes free choice and individual liberty and the open exchange of ideas. CIS encourages debate among leading academics, politicians, media and the public. Follow CIS on our Socials Twitter - https://twitter.com/CISOZ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CentreIndependentStudies/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-centre-for-independent-studies/

Rob and Warren discuss at length why Warren believes liberalism is good for indigenous Australians, why the voice to parliament proposal is not a good idea, and why the unjust deprivation of the lands of the First Australians, as regrettable as it is, does not delegitimise our nation. Good policy leads to great outcomes. CIS promotes free choice and individual liberty and the open exchange of ideas. CIS encourages debate among leading academics, politicians, media and the public. Follow CIS on our Socials Twitter - https://twitter.com/CISOZ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CentreIndependentStudies/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-centre-for-independent-studies/

Rob and Andrew discuss some of the provocative ideas in his recent book Buraadja; The liberal case for national reconciliation (Connor Court 2021). Andrew is concerned that it is an anomaly that there are a number of special laws for a particular people in Australia but no proper way that they can have a say in them. He believes that a voice to parliament can be consistent with liberal principles and answers criticisms of his position. Good policy leads to great outcomes. CIS promotes free choice and individual liberty and the open exchange of ideas. CIS encourages debate among leading academics, politicians, media and the public. Follow CIS on our Socials Twitter - https://twitter.com/CISOZ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CentreIndependentStudies/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-centre-for-independent-studies/

Rob and Chandran discuss Chandran's journey from a young socialist to a thoughtful liberal. Chandran understands the essence of liberalism as a commitment to individual freedom but also a commitment to equal freedom. Chandran and Rob discuss how differently liberalism expresses itself in different cultures and how liberal institutions and ideas are all over the world, even in countries like Singapore, which explicitly disavows liberalism. Good policy leads to great outcomes. CIS promotes free choice and individual liberty and the open exchange of ideas. CIS encourages debate among leading academics, politicians, media and the public. Follow CIS on our Socials Twitter - https://twitter.com/CISOZ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CentreIndependentStudies/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-centre-for-independent-studies/

Rob and Hannes discuss everything from the pirate radio station he once ran to important thinkers like medieval theologian Thomas Aquinas and Friedrich von Hayek. Hannes believes that the best kind of liberalism is what he calls conservative liberalism, which is a long tradition, which combines the price mechanism with the decentralisation of knowledge on one hand and traditional morality on the other. Much of the discussion arises from Hannes’ recent book Twenty-Four Conservative-Liberal Thinkers (New Directions 2020). Good policy leads to great outcomes. CIS promotes free choice and individual liberty and the open exchange of ideas. CIS encourages debate among leading academics, politicians, media and the public. Follow CIS on our Socials Twitter - https://twitter.com/CISOZ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CentreIndependentStudies/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-centre-for-independent-studies/

Rob and David discuss the remarkable story of ‘the liberal project’ in Australia. David has written a five-volume history of the liberal project from the days of the arrival of Governor Philip in 1788 to the end of the Menzies prime ministership in 1966. Good policy leads to great outcomes. CIS promotes free choice and individual liberty and the open exchange of ideas. CIS encourages debate among leading academics, politicians, media and the public. Follow CIS on our Socials Twitter - https://twitter.com/CISOZ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CentreIndependentStudies/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-centre-for-independent-studies/

South Korea’s president Moon Jae-in has called for a final settlement of the 1950-52 Korean War, but North Korea's Kim Jong-un is having none of it. Or is it his little sister, the increasingly outspoken Kim Yo-jong, who is the real power in Pyongyang? She seemingly left the possibility open -- if the United States is willing to meet her price.

Rob and Simon discuss why, despite the unparalleled success of international liberalism in lifting people out of extreme poverty, we are now in danger of abandoning the very policies that made this possible. Simon describes the move away from liberalism as a worldwide phenomenon affecting both the left and right of politics. As Simon puts it, is “Liberalism is losing its ground support and also it political and financial might.” Good policy lead to great outcomes. CIS promotes free choice and individual liberty and the open exchange of ideas. CIS encourages debate among leading academics, politicians, media and the public. Follow CIS on our Socials Twitter - https://twitter.com/CISOZ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CentreIndependentStudies/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-centre-for-independent-studies/

In a wide-ranging discussion, Rob and Henry explore the heart of the liberal project. Liberalism emerged as a philosophy and ideology that afforded people freedoms and an alternative to civil war. Yet, it is the balance between order and freedom, which requires both tolerance and responsibility. Liberalism does not bring a single overarching purpose to society but rather ways of proceeding together. Good policy leads to great outcomes. CIS promotes free choice and individual liberty and the open exchange of ideas. CIS encourages debate among leading academics, politicians, media and the public. Follow CIS on our Socials Twitter - https://twitter.com/CISOZ Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/CentreIndependentStudies/ LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-centre-for-independent-studies/

Australian student achievement has declined more steeply and more consistently than almost any other country, most notably in mathematics. At the same time, it’s clear that maths is now more critical than ever, to the success of students – both at school and beyond. Recent CIS research identifies that Australian teachers often have an unbalanced approach to how maths is taught in classrooms. This appears to be because teachers are victims of poor preparation from university-based Initial Teacher Education. In a concerning echo to the “reading wars” that CIS has been engaged in for many years, it’s clear there is also a great divide in maths education too.

we welcome Dr Michael Johnston from the Victoria University of Wellington. He will discuss how education systems can better promotive active and informed democratic citizens. Michael argues that doing so requires more than drumming a curated narrative about nationhood and nationalistic ideals into school curricula. Rather than recourse to “history wars” and the like, he recommends that education systems help young people to revere the cultural values that underpin liberal democracy – political equality, free speech and free expression. This requires promoting the contestability of ideas and ensuring that civic ideas are “culturally esteemed”, not just legally protected, so that future generations share enthusiasm for a flourishing liberal democracy.

The Chinese Communist Party is at the peak of its power as it enters its second century and Xi Jinping’s ‘New Era’ policy is a high-stakes revolution that is triggering alarms. These are gloriously red days for Chinese communism. But are they marking dawn or dusk, as this dangerous narrative unfurls?

In the Great Panic of early 2020, nearly every government in the world restricted the movement of its population, disrupted the education of its children, suspended normal individual liberties, and hijacked its healthcare system, to assert control of people’s lives in the name of fighting Covid.

We talk to Paul Fletcher MP, Minister for Communications, Urban Infrastructure, Cities and the Arts. We'll discuss Paul's recent book Governing in the Internet Age (Monash University Publishing). Over the past thirty years, the internet has transformed virtually every area of human activity, presenting enormous boosts to economic activity. For ordinary Australians, the internet provides an unprecedented opportunity to shop, work, and communicate online. It has become fundamental for daily life. Yet, digital platforms can also be forums for the wide circulation of abusive, defamatory material, for scammers to access sensitive data, and they disrupt many traditional forms of economic activity and business models. All this presents a rich set of policy challenges for governments. So, should we be concerned about the many unproductive hours spent scrolling through social media? What has been the impact of the internet on our sovereignty? Moreover, how to do we ultimately protect our citizens?

This week as we talk to classicist Dr James Kierstead about the pasts and futures of ancient Athenian democracy. The Western world likes to trade its democratic institutions to ancient Greece, but the Greek model of citizenship was very different from our own, and Athens was far from the only democracy in the Greek world. We'll be asking Dr Kierstead about the Athenian constitution, how it operated in practice in the era of high democracy, the meaning of ancient Greek citizenship, and what it meant to be ostracised in a world without refugee conventions.

We talk to Natasha Kassam, director (Public Opinion and Foreign Policy Program) at the Lowy Institute, about China's military pressure, economic coercion, diplomatic isolation on Taiwan in recent years. In most international fora, China’s participation is a given, and Beijing has the upper hand. Australia and other countries advocate Taiwan’s inclusion on the margins. Yet this time Taiwan may actually be a better candidate for the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) than China.

We talk to Peter Jennings, executive director of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), about submarines, China, and the future of the Australia-UK-US security partnership. Hot on the heels of the AUKUS announcement and the nuclear-powered submarines deal, Scott Morrison hitched a ride with Marise Payne and Peter Dutton to attend the Australia-United States Ministerial Consultations (AUSMIN) in Washington, DC last week. While the foreign and defence ministers met their US counterparts Antony Blinken and Lloyd Austin, Morrison was in close conference with Joe Biden, discussing the future of US-Australia relations. What was on their agenda? What decisions were made? And what does AUKUS really mean for Australia?

This month marks 50 years since the first Indigenous Australian delivered a maiden address to federal parliament. This was a great achievement for Neville Bonner, who served as a Liberal senator from 1971 to 1983. Bonner, according to a new biography, understood the tension, even chasm, between protest and compromise. “If you want to beat the system, you do it in a sensible, quiet way,” he argued. At a time when we are becoming accustomed to outbreaks of acute racial sensitivity – trigger warnings, micro-aggressions, the need for safe spaces – what would Neville Bonner make of identity politics today?

We welcome Richard Alston former Liberal Senator for Victoria and senior cabinet minister in the Howard Coalition government. He is also author of recent CIS paper Reflections on the EU Project and its Flaws: A fatal conceit about markets and the real world. With worthwhile intentions, The EU, and its predecessor bodies, were set up with the aim of ending the long history of frequent and bloody wars between European neighbours. Its fundamental purpose was to promote greater social, political and economic harmony among the nations of Western Europe. Yet nowadays, nothing in its founding documents is advocated or even aspired to. Indeed, The European Union shows all the signs of worsening economic, social and political decline — from tepid economic growth and chronically high unemployment to social unrest and rising political extremism.