Australia has the world’s best paid public servants. But guess which state has the most? (Hint: it’s where Bob Brown once saw a comet called ‘Global Democracy’.)

Please accept our humble apologies. Last month we put Will Smith on the cover of the IPA Review, as part of our story on the top 20 pro-freedom films you must see. And then he goes and does this.

This great chart from The Atlantic this week tells you everything you need to know about the Euro. It turns out a monetary union with all countries starting with the letter ‘m’ would make more sense!

And if you think Europe really is undertaking radical austerity then you haven’t seen this graph from the National Review Online on Monday. If this is austerity I’d hate to see what the new French President has in mind!

Oxford University is a very serious institution. Which is of course why the penalty for joking about your ‘great rack’ is a four and a half hour inquisition.

How many trees is one dead tree worth? One Victorian council thinks the answer is 200. Native vegetation laws are an outrageous attack on property rights, which is why we were pleased to see at least one state government finally willing to do something about it. (Surprise, surprise, it’s not the state with the most public servants.)

What better way to celebrate Friedrich Hayek’s 113^th birthday than by looking at these amazing photographs showing how capitalism transformed East Germany?

If you’re anything like me you’ve wondered why young people are so enthralled with dystopian fiction like The Hunger Games (recently released on the big screen). This long piece in The New Yorker tries to explain. And Learn Liberty reveals the hidden libertarian themes of the recent box-office hit.

Here’s what else the IPA said this week:

• Chris Berg, We can’t stop climate change – it’s time to adapt – The Drum
  
• Alan Moran, Despite tough talk, spending is on agenda - Herald Sun
• Alan Moran, The Rise of China is the Real End of History – Quadrant

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This is GOLD. On Bloomberg TV on Monday, Ron Paul debates Paul Krugman on the point of government. It’s 13 minutes long.

Also out on Monday was the US Budget in pictures from the Heritage Foundation. What caught my eye was US Presidents and deficits back to Kennedy – check out Reagan versus Clinton. It will surprise you. (Meanwhile Clinton’s review of the new LBJ biography I’ve told you about from Sunday’s New York Times is here).

It won’t surprise you that McDonald’s is the world’s 4th largest employer. Here’s the top ten – it’s a fascinating snapshot of global power.

What happens when regulations collide? Who gets to live? Environmentally-protected baby salmon or environmentally-protected cormorants who gobble the baby salmon? These are the big issues Oregon is dealing with.

And who gets to drink wine from glasses at a Adelaide festival? No-one!

Thinking, Fast and Slow is a new book by Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman that everybody is talking about. You don’t need to buy it. Just read this review in the Financial Times last year by William Easterly.

Easterly is a bit of a star himself. Here’s Virginia Postrel’s review of his ground-breaking book in the New York Times and here is Easterly turning Martin Luther King’s I have a dream speech into PowerPoint. But that’s not as good as this all-time classic, the Gettysburg Address in PowerPoint.

Finally. What’s happening at the ABC??? First this a few weeks ago on the evils of government regulation of potatoes. Now this amazing interview on Radio National’s Books and Arts Daily on Tuesday with Richard Bean. He wrote the play The Heretic about a climate change sceptic (shock, horror). It’s a very entertaining 18 minute podcast.

Here’s what else the IPA said this week:

• John Lloyd, Get used to a different way of working – The Age
  
• Richard Allsop, Defend nannies to oppose the nanny state - Online Opinion
• Julie Novak, Nudge nudge, wink wink, nanny soaks the poor to fatten the budget – The Australian
• Chris Berg, Convergence Review is clever, subtle…and worrying – The Drum
• Alan Moran, Rules distort energy market – The Australian
• Chris Berg, Manufactured crisis – The Sunday Age
• Tim Wilson, China’s stance could send climate policy up in smoke – The Australian
• John Roskam, Banks to get a green sheen – The Australian Financial Review

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Who do Nanny State taxes hit the hardest? The poor, of course.

Here is the IPA’s Julie Novak’s latest research on who pays the most Nanny State taxes and the press release.

On the subject of the IPA’s cutting edge research, in my column in the Australian Financial Review in January I said compulsory superannuation should be abolished. I got attacked for it. Funny then how a few weeks ago the person who invented compulsory superannuation came out and basically agreed with me!

This is from today’s Australian Financial Review on how everyone has been saying there should be transparency in superannuation. Ha! The IPA’s Louise Staley wrote a major report about greater transparency in superannuation TWO YEARS ago!

Ever stood in the rain at 2am waiting for a cab? This fascinating long article from next month’s Atlantic magazine explains why you should blame the government.

In North Carolina, your Paleo diet could send you to jail. Reason Magazine explains.

We’ve got two videos about America for you today. You’ll LOVE this serious one. And this is your Thursday afternoon bludge – the best Obama-eats-dogs gags on the internet.

Last Sunday was the 50^th anniversary of Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring – this is from the Washington Times last week on why we shouldn’t be celebrating.

Fitting then, that a few days later, the man who invented the ‘Gaia theory’ should admit that he (and Al Gore…and Tim Flannery) was actually a climate alarmist. And just for a laugh, here is the IPA Review’s cover story on Tim from June 2011.

Even if you’ve missed out on seeing James Delingpole (his events have completely sold out), you can still read about what he thinks of Australia – it’s not pretty.

Talking about not pretty, as Dan Hannan explains in this great blog post, it doesn’t matter who wins the French election. And I bet you didn’t know that 4 out of the 10 candidates were Trotskyists!

And I reckon this is really funny. From the BBC yesterday – the Euro crisis as a soap opera.

It’s not quite a soap opera for the Ex-PM of Iceland who was found guilty this week of not meeting with his cabinet during the GFC (in like, a real court and everything).

Here’s what else the IPA said this week:

• Tim Wilson, Baby boomers retire on a reverse inheritance – The Australian
  
• Chris Berg, Reward welfare a recipe for entitlement culture - The Drum
• James Paterson, Should the media censor Anders Behring Breivik? – The Sydney Morning Herald

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New Greens leader Christine Milne said the other day she wants to ‘decarbonise’ the Australian economy by 2050.

Before that she’ll have to deal with some of the other big issues the Greens have put on the legislative agenda of the Commonwealth Parliament. Like:

• banning junk food ads on the internet
• taxing plastic bags
• and (my favourite) the Special Broadcasting Service Amendment (Natural Program Breaks and Disruptive Advertising) Bill 2012. It’s nice the Greens don’t want our viewing pleasure of SBS shows like Food Safari and My Mum Talks to Aliens to be interrupted

At least the Greens don’t want to feed cocaine to monkeys (well, not to my knowledge). That’s what happened under Obama’s stimulus package. Here’s the story. And here’s the just-released cocaine-eating monkey election campaign ad. Go to the bottom – the ad’s 30 seconds.

These ads on billboards in Melbourne were pretty funny too – scroll to the middle of the story to see them. But you guessed it…they’ve been taken down after people didn’t see the humour in laughing at hungover stockbrokers.

This next item is no laughing matter. It’s an amazing 17 minutes of radio. It’s from the ABC Rural’s Bush Telegraph radio program three weeks ago. It’s about how Fidel Castro…sorry…the WA government has command and control of potato farming in the state. Listen and be shocked this still happens in Australia in 2012. Credit to the ABC for the story. Farm Weekly gives the incredible background.

This cartoon won the Pulitzer Prize on Monday. I don’t know why. Mark Steyn doesn’t either.

And we’ve told you about the 4^th volume of Robert Caro’s biography of LBJ out next month. There’s this fascinating 5800 word piece about Caro from The New York Times Magazine last week.

What happened to ManBearPig? is recent IPA visitor to Australia, Dan Hannan’s latest blog post. It’s a classic and he talks about fellow IPA guest James Delingpole. If you’d like to come to James’ IPA events in Australia next week – sorry – they’re all booked out.

The Heretic, a play about a climate sceptic who doesn’t have horns will also probably be booked out even before it opens in Melbourne. Here’s a review in The Telegraph of the London season. Even The Guardian didn’t completely hate it.

And our friends at the ABC’s Q&A have asked us to invite you to their climate change program on April 26 in Sydney – no, seriously. Click here for details.

And the Australian Taxpayer’s Alliance is launching in Sydney on May 1. RSVP here. There’s a $30 discount if you use the top secret code – IPA.

Here’s what else the IPA said this week:

• Chris Berg, Sport as propaganda: Bahrain’s vile Grand Prix – The Drum
  
• Tim Wilson, Keep Green policies out of business - Australian Financial Review
• John Shipp, Housing affordability key to northern growth – West Australian
• Chris Berg, Secular world has a Christian foundation – The Sunday Age
• John Roskam, Premiers, state your case – Australian Financial Review
• James Paterson, Not such a super idea – Think and Grow Rich

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Last week’s Hey was one of the most popular ever because of Tyler Cowen’s explanation for why American food is so bad. I guess we’ve all been wondering! Here’s two more reviews of his book, one positive, and one hostile, from the New York Times.

So then why is English food so bad? Paul Krugman famously offered his explanation that free markets and the industrial revolution are to blame! Cowen agrees. But in this fascinating series of posts here, here and here, the food historian Rachel Laudan says they’re both wrong. The IPA’s Chris Berg talked about Laudan’s research in praise of commercial and industrial food in the Sunday Age last year.

Never forget that food is serious business. A Spanish town has banned slurping soup too loudly and speaking with food in your mouth. No, seriously, they have.

But there’s good news in the world. The new Queensland premier, Campbell Newman, has done one of the best things a state government has done in the last few weeks: scrapped a literary prize! It’s unleashed a bizarre torrent of grief, and some truly weird arguments. Like the one between The Australian columnists George Megalogenis and Henry Ergas about whether the GST take will decline as a result. The IPA’s Sinclair Davidson sums it up.

In specially-commissioned IPA research, tax expert Bryan Pape explains why the carbon tax is more than just unpopular and unnecessary, it’s unconstitutional too! Here’s how it was reported in the National Times and Herald Sun. You’ll remember Bryan from his constitutional challenge against the Rudd government’s stimulus package.

Last year, the English writer Christopher Snowdon described Australia as the world’s leader in Nanny State measures. Well now we’re becoming known for our limits on freedom of speech! Here’s Hal G.P. Colebatch in the American Spectator on the Australian government’s war against free press and the internet.

That’s why defending free speech is more important now than ever. Please, sign up to the IPA or donate to the IPA’s new Freedom of Speech Fighting Fund today to help us protect your liberties.

The video of Mark Steyn’s speech on why freedom of speech is so important is now available, as is the panel discussion he did with myself, Janet Albrechtsen and Tom Switzer. Also available are some articles from our upcoming IPA Review, including David Kemp on the enemies of free speech and Peter Gregory on how in Cambodia the free market is the best weapon against poverty, a claim also recently made by the World Bank.

The IPA is bringing Author James Delingpole to Australia! Don’t miss your chance to see him. He will be in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. If you think that’s exciting, The Hon. Tony Abbott MP will be speaking in Melbourne on the 27th of April. For more details on these events or to book visit www.ipa.org.au/events.

Here’s what else the IPA said this week:

• Alan Moran, Earth Hour: the Majesty of Failure – Catallaxy Files
• Chris Berg, Regulatory failure of Titanic proportions - The Drum
• Alan Moran, State debt will rise despite budget cuts next month – The Herald Sun

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It’s only April but we’ve already got the quote of the year:

“I should not have to fight with my children every warm day on the playground just so someone can make a living!”

Yep, that’s right. Parents in New York City want to ban ice-cream trucks.

And one of the most-asked questions in the world has to be ‘Why is American food so bad?’ To find out read this fascinating summary in last week’s Spectator of Tyler Cowen’s new book An Economist Gets Lunch.

For Freakonomics fans there’s this podcast about it. I’ve told you about Cowen lots of times before – he does the Marginal Revolution blog which last month was rated third best financial blog in the world by Time. Here’s the full list.

Here’s the video you’ve all been asking me about. Mark Steyn on freedom of speech in Sydney last month at the IPA/Spectator Australia event. It’s 35 minutes long – enjoy it while eating an Easter egg.

Yesterday we launched the IPA Freedom of Speech Fighting Fund. Click here to learn more about it or to make a donation.

And there’s been uproar in England this week about UK government plans to monitor the internet. To find out just how terrible it is read this – but apparently now they’re backing down.

Ever wonder how taxpayers feel about the man they pay $180,000 a year to lecture them about climate change? So did we. Here’s our poll results.

Barack Obama has just nominated the next World Bank chief. The Lowy Institute says he has “a luke-warm attitude towards economic growth”. Huh? He’s practically a socialist! – you’ve got to read this from Commentary Magazine.

Speaking of socialism, I bet you can’t guess which developed country has had the highest company tax rate for a decade.

You think you’ve heard every half-baked excuse for protectionism? How about foreign books cause health problems?

And if you’re suffering withdrawal symptoms after Mark Steyn and Dan Hannan’s visit, we have the antidote: James Delingpole is coming to Australia! RSVP here for talks in Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. And for some classic Delingpole, check out his blog here.

Chris Berg will stand up for free speech at a debate on the Finkelstein Report next week. Details here.

Here’s what else the IPA said this week:

• Chris Berg, Offence against free speech – The Drum
• Sinclair Davidson, Counting the costs of higher taxes - The Conversation
• Chris Berg, Westerners consumed by tech toys wallow in misplaced guilt – The Age
• Sabine Wolff, If the government’s broken, dump it: votes of a disposable society – The Drum

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It’s Wayne Swan versus the IPA. A few hours ago Swan attacked the IPA’s Tim Wilson for criticising Swan’s rant in the Monthly as dumb and hypocritical based on media reports. Surprise, surprise! Tim was right. (And here’s what Tim actually said.)

Ever wondered what $25 million of taxpayer-funded government advertising buys you? Nothing. That’s how much (at least) the Gillard government spent on advertising for the carbon tax.

According to this exclusive poll taken for the IPA last weekend there’s almost no change in public attitudes on climate change in two years – if anything Australians are slightly more sceptical.

New York City has banned mentions of dinosaurs, birthdays, and dancing in school tests. They might cause ‘unpleasant emotions’.

Bob Brown’s 3^rd Annual Green Oration would have given me unpleasant emotions…if it wasn’t so spectacularly hilarious. Chairman Bob kicks off with ‘Fellow Earthians’. (Make yourself laugh on a Thursday afternoon and read it.)

You’ll of course know Australia recently joined the likes of Iran and North Korea on the Reporters Without Borders watchlist because of the government’s plan for internet censorship. Soon we’ll have people going to jail for drunken racist tweets…like in England.

While we’re on North Korea – this could have come from the DPRK government. But – it came from ours. The innovators at Australia Post have come up with a ‘Digital Mailbox‘. You mean like email? And ever wondered who invented email attachments?

There’s no such thing as bad publicity – just ask Etch-A-Sketch. Last week its share price tripled – click here to find out why.

If you like electricity, you’ll want to take part in Tim Blair’s hilarious 2012 Hour of Power this weekend.

Finally – the wait is nearly over…for the next instalment of Robert Caro’s monumental biography of LBJ.

If you’re in Melbourne, Sydney or Brisbane come to one of the launches of Right Social Justice: better ways to help the poor – a new book edited by Gary Johns. And those in Adelaide should come to the launch of Jeff Bennett’s new book Little Green Lies: Twelve Environmental Myths.

Yesterday the IPA released the fourth instalment of Horizons - Melvyn Bragg on the King James Bible.

Here’s what else the IPA said this week:

• Chris Berg, Defending Free Speech - Radio National. (Yes…even for Kyle Sandilands.)
• Alan Moran, Tap our rich CSG reserves – The Australian
• Julie Novak, Queensland election result and fiscal policy – Online Opinion
• Tim Wilson, Price Labor will pay for pricing carbon keeps rising – The Australian
  
• Chris Berg, Tasers: the non-lethal force that kills - The Drum
• John Roskam, Life experience key among advisers - The Australian Financial Review
• Tim Wilson, No granny chic in nanny state shtick – The Age
• Alan Moran, Financial market implications from the carbon tax – In Finance Magazine

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I thought feeding the homeless and giving them a job would be a good thing. Apparently not if the food is too salty or the job is to walk around at a music festival with Wi-Fi gear strapped to their back. These stories provoked howls of outrage in the US.

This is the other debate in the US at the moment. It’s tough being a 3-year-old in a wheelchair at an American airport these days.

You’ve heard how the Commonwealth government is spending half a billion dollars a year on consultants. It’s not as if there aren’t enough public servants already.

Elle Macpherson might be the body, but she might not have a brain. She loves Obama because “I’m socialist. What do you expect?”

The IPA’s recent visitor to Australia Dan Hannan has this great speech on the Anglosphere he made in Canada a few weeks ago. Watch it and then read this fantastic piece in the City Journal from January. It mentions this ridiculous Tom Friedman article in the New York Times from a few years ago.

Talking about China, this is the number you NEED TO KNOW – 660 million people out of poverty thanks to capitalism since the early 1980s.

But that doesn’t mean the Chinese can play soccer.

Mamma Mia! Italian unions represent more retirees than workers. Who said unions were outdated?

And apparently Chimpanzees have police!

And from the Nanny State files – kids banned from having ‘best friends‘.

Here’s what else the IPA said this week:

• Chris Berg, Newspapers tangled in politics…that’s yesterday’s news – The Drum
• Tim Wilson, Tax to the max on emissions – The Australian
• John Roskam, The Finkelstein Inquiry – Counterpoint
• Chris Berg, We’re bombarded with swearing but who #*@%*! cares? – The Sunday Age
• John Roskam, Diary - The Spectator Australia
• Sinclair Davidson, Government must live within its means – The Drum
• Tim Wilson, Should packaged alcohol display health warnings? – The Sydney Morning Herald

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Productivity is important – but it’s not everything – as Professor Sinclair Davidson says in a new IPA research paper released on Monday. It’s better to focus on lower taxes and less regulation to improve profitability.

Booming productivity in Ireland didn’t help the primary school teachers who copped a 20% pay cut in 2009. And you must read this short piece from Theodore Dalrymple in the City Journal on Ireland. 5% of the country’s working age population have emigrated in the last 2 years. Then read Michael Lewis on Ireland in Vanity Fair last year. It is absolutely fascinating.

The IPA has been going hard on the Finkelstein report of media regulation. I called it ‘totalitarian‘ in my Australian Financial Review column. Malcolm Turnbull went on Lateline that night and it was a ‘very dishonest effort‘. I was being soft! Naomi Wolf (yes – that Naomi Wolf – of Occupy Wall Street fame) called the Finkelstein report ‘step one to fascism‘ in Sydney the other day. Here’s a professor in The Age yesterday who thinks I’m getting carried away.

Still…credit where it’s due. Bob Brown had this great media release on freedom of speech…from 2001. How times change. A decade on he’s welcoming media censorship. (Guess how many times freedom of speech is mentioned?)

Remember the most sensible thing The Age has ever said from Hey in February? – it was a huge hit. This is another must-read from the same guy yesterday.

This video about compulsory embalming rooms is hilarious. And this is what I call interesting – The Economist three weeks ago on Linsanity, and why China will never produce a great team player.

If you like The West Wing you’ll like this on the Sorkinization of politics.

Here’s what else the IPA said this week:

• Chris Berg, Foreign investment and the whims of politicians - The Drum
  
• Ken Phillips, Score one for retail super - Business Spectator
• Julie Novak, Finding a focus for disability policy reform efforts - The Canberra Times
• Alan Moran, Mining tax set to clip wings of Australia’s golden goose – The Herald Sun

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In 2007 the government declared its ‘one in, one out‘ policy on regulation. That worked (not). They’re only 12,777 regulations off the mark. Since 2007 there’s been 12,835 new regulations and just 58 were repealed.

Meanwhile hot off the press is Chris Berg’s just-released count of pages of federal legislation up to the end of 2011.

The report of the Gillard/Greens media inquiry (the Finkelstein report) came out last Friday. Here’s a two word summary: ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE.

We issued this press release hours after it came out. This afternoon I sent this letter and briefing paper to every federal MP telling them to reject Finkelstein. Here’s what Chris Berg said about it in his column in The Sunday Age and in Britain’s Telegraph James Delingpole explains why he thinks Finkelstein’s a ‘total bloody hero‘. (By the way Delingpole will be in Australia later this year – details soon).

And how Blade Runner is this? Japanese inventers have come up with the ‘speechjammer’ – watch the video. (Promise me you won’t tell Finkelstein or Bob Brown).

Everyone’s been talking about Wayne Swan’s diatribe in The Monthly, (here’s the IPA’s James Paterson on it). This is the essay they should be talking about, Is Socialism Finished?, by Bob Carr in the 1986 IPA Review. (Guess his answer.)

From the Nanny State files this week. In Canada a father arrested because his son drew a picture of a gun. In England emergency crews can’t get their feet wet and someone probably died because of it.

And there’s this great Illegal Everything 42 minute video from John Stossel that came out a week ago. You don’t need to watch the whole thing – just go to the 2 minute 35 second mark and watch the Midway police chief.

A joke? No – it’s a headline, ‘Global warming is making the world colder’ from Adelaide Now which has gone viral.

Dan Hannan and Mark Steyn have left the country. In case you missed it last week, here is Hannan in full flight (and this is what he thinks of a weird new EU propaganda video). And here’s Mark Steyn at his best in an interview on the ABC’s Counterpoint last week.

And this week two lucky IPA Facebook fans and Twitter followers won a signed copy of Steyn’s After America. Make sure you can enter the next competition by liking us on Facebook or following us on Twitter.

Here’s what else the IPA said this week:

• Chris Berg, Regulating from a distance: Finkelstein, politics, power  – The Drum
  
• Sinclair Davidson, Mining tax bungle: the blame game over poor policy - The Drum
• Sinclair Davidson, A spending bonanza that lingers in the mind but not in bottom lines – The Australian
• John Roskam, Old-school ideas not on the money – The Australian Financial Review

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