The IPA blog has a round-up of some of the media interest in my latest report, including my interviews with ABC News 24, ABC RN Drive, and 774 Melbourne Drive.
I was also interviewed for the 8 August edition of PM, the ABC’s flagship news program.
Author Archives: Andrew Bushnell
NSW Reforms Point Way To Reducing High Rate Of Indigenous Incarceration
This article originally appeared in The Australian on 28 July 2017.
A report from the NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research shows the incarceration of indigenous Australians in that state has increased by 25 per cent since 2013. The report attributes this rise to more indigenous people being charged with, and imprisoned for, stalking and intimidation offences, defendants spending more time on remand and more breaches of good behaviour bonds and suspended sentences leading to imprisonment.
Recent reforms announced by the NSW government will help. In May, the government unveiled plans to abolish suspended sentences and expand the use of intensive corrections orders, giving judges more options for imposing conditions on low-risk offenders, such as home detention, curfews and movement restrictions.
Ideological Evasion
This article originally appeared in the Spectator Australia on 22 July 2017.
Malcolm Turnbull’s speech to London think tank Policy Exchange on 11 July provided an insight into his government’s ideology, and there was little to like for conservatives.
In a speech dedicated to Benjamin Disraeli, one of the founders of the United Kingdom’s Conservative party, Turnbull mounted an argument for the state’s role in securing the borders and fighting terrorism, rightly framing this as necessary for defending liberal values. The speech, though, ultimately showed a government bereft of sound philosophy and trapped in the language of its opponents, its leftward drift distinguished by vague gestures towards pragmatism.
Remember when art was beautiful?
This is a review of Sohrab Ahmari’s book, The New Philistines. It was originally published in the IPA Review in June 2017.
Corrupted by identity politics, high culture in the West is no longer about the search for truth or beauty, but merely a tool for the advancement of leftist social engineering. So argues Wall Street Journal editorial writer Sohrab Ahmari in The New Philistines, a polemic about contemporary art.
Lionel Messi is a White-Collar Criminal
This piece originally appeared on the IPA FreedomWatch blog on 9 June 2017.
Lionel Messi is in Melbourne with his Argentinian teammates to play Brazil at the MCG tonight. But should he actually be locked up in a Spanish jail?
Messi was convicted last year of evading millions of euros in taxes. His appeal was denied last month and his sentence of 21 months in prison and a €2 million fine was upheld. Messi, however, is likely to avoid jail because in Spain, first offences carrying sentences of less than two years are usually suspended.
Andrew Bushnell 