Des Houghton has a magnificent write-up of the AIP in Saturday’s Courier Mail entitled “Free radicals rally to Australian Institute for Progress to challenge the Left“. And in case you can’t read it because it is behind a paywall, we’ve uploaded it here (pdf 1.8mb).
AT LAST. Queensland has a think tank set up by an ensemble of intellectuals and business leaders not in the thrall of the Left.
The Australian Institute of Progress is on a mission to promote small government and the principles of freedom of expression, freedom of association, property rights, freedom of worship and free markets.
The institute has directors from the Liberal and Labor gene pools. And I am happy to report it is bristling with dangerous ideas.
The Green Left, the Socialist Left and the soft Left will hate it. So will many journalists I know.
Part of the article is a pitch for the visit of Patrick Moore to Brisbane (if you haven’t booked you still can by clicking here).
He also does a good job of laying out our initial agenda.
Young said AIP would soon be debating privatisation, education, debt and the Queensland Plan, the environment, social media and cultural trends. The institute would explore the giant leap to the Left in universities in the teaching of humanities.
He was especially critical of the “postmodern destruction of the enlightenment” in universities. An example was the rise in peace and conflict studies which had usurped international relations studies.
“There are people in our universities who think you can [beat a terrorist] by hugging [them],” he said.
He warned universities were producing cultural illiterates unfamiliar with Shakespeare, the Bible or Tennyson.
Young said the institute would also back the reintroduction of negative gearing.