As part of the Centre for Independent Studies annual Christmas Soirée, this episode explores the ever expanding reach of the modern nanny state through the lens of the 2025 Nanny State Award shortlist.

Presented by Peter Kurti, Director of CIS’s Culture, Prosperity and Civil Society program, the discussion surveys some of the most striking examples of government and institutional overreach from the past year. A recurring theme emerges around food, drink and lifestyle choices, with growing efforts to regulate not just behaviour but taste, advertising and personal preference.

From bans and planning controls to warning labels, taxes and compliance schemes, the episode examines how well intentioned policies can slide into excessive paternalism, often at significant cost to taxpayers and civil liberties. It also touches on expanding regulation beyond government, including activism that seeks to reshape sport, family life and everyday habits.

Witty, sharp and unapologetically sceptical, this conversation asks a larger question. When does public interest become intrusion, and how much control over ordinary life are Australians prepared to accept.

Recorded live at the Centre for Independent Studies annual Christmas Soirée.

Senator Andrew Bragg and economist Peter Tulip join Michael Stutchbury for a wide-ranging conversation on Australia’s housing crisis, the politics of supply, and the future of home ownership. Senator Bragg outlines a centre-right vision for reviving the Australian dream, arguing that housing policy should prioritise freeing up land, cutting red tape, and empowering the private sector to build. Tulip, whose research has reshaped the national debate, examines why zoning restrictions, construction bottlenecks, and infrastructure delays have made housing increasingly unattainable for younger Australians.

This discussion explores the causes and consequences of Australia’s housing shortage: soaring construction costs, record migration, stalled supply, and the interaction between demand-side subsidies and house prices. Bragg critiques Labor’s Housing Australia Future Fund, expanded 5% deposit scheme, and regulatory approach, questioning whether these measures inadvertently inflate prices rather than improve affordability. Tulip contrasts these views with economic evidence showing that planning reform, density, and infrastructure provision are crucial to increasing supply — and highlights surprising areas of bipartisan agreement that have emerged in recent years.

Despite their shared commitment to increasing housing supply, Bragg and Tulip offer contrasting perspectives on key questions: Should governments play a larger role in public and community housing, or should policy overwhelmingly rely on markets? Do deposit guarantees and super-for-housing empower first-home buyers or simply push prices higher? And can the political system overcome entrenched NIMBY resistance to allow the density required to bring prices down? The conversation reveals a genuine debate within centre-right thinking — Bragg’s call for an “unabashed YIMBY” movement meets Tulip’s economic analysis of migration, productivity, and supply-side reform. Together, they examine red tape in the National Construction Code, the tradie shortage, the politics of leafy-suburb resistance, and the risk that declining home ownership poses to Australia’s social contract. This is a candid exchange that doesn’t shy away from hard policy disagreements or the urgency of the crisis.

Senator Andrew Bragg is the Shadow Minister for Housing and Homelessness and Shadow Minister for Productivity and Deregulation, known for his advocacy of housing supply, deregulation, and intergenerational fairness. Peter Tulip is Chief Economist at the Centre for Independent Studies and one of Australia’s leading housing policy researchers, whose work on zoning and supply constraints has shaped national debate.

This event was presented by the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney, Australia. Recorded live at CIS’s Macquarie Street lunch forum.

Three leading education ministers — Sir Nick Gibb (UK), Erica Stanford (New Zealand), and Jason Clare (Australia) — come together for a rare and deeply insightful conversation about how to rebuild school systems, lift student achievement, and close the disadvantage gap. Hosted by the Centre for Independent Studies at NSW Parliament House, this discussion explores the real evidence behind what works in classrooms and what doesn’t.

Sir Nick Gibb shares the inside story of England’s education turnaround: the nationwide shift to phonics, a knowledge-rich curriculum, explicit teaching, strong behaviour standards, and school autonomy. He explains how these reforms reversed years of decline, elevated England to 4th in the world for reading, and empowered teachers to teach with confidence. Gibb also recounts the political, ideological, and institutional battles required to replace ineffective progressive approaches with methods proven to work — especially for disadvantaged students.

Erica Stanford, New Zealand’s Education Minister, offers a compelling and urgent account of reform in a system where half of 15-year-olds fail basic reading, writing, and maths standards. She outlines New Zealand’s shift to structured literacy, explicit teaching, phonics checks, and a knowledge-rich curriculum designed to stop “lost generations” of students. Stanford emphasises how every year of delay condemns tens of thousands of children to long-term educational failure, and why rigorous evidence, data, and teacher training are central to reversing the decline.

Jason Clare, Australia’s Education Minister, focuses on the country’s widening achievement gap and the need to ensure every child gains strong foundational skills by Year 3. He explains how early education access, phonics screening, tutoring programs, and teacher-training reforms are critical to helping struggling students catch up. Clare describes education as the great equaliser — the “superpower” that shapes life chances — and argues that overcoming entrenched disadvantage requires bipartisan commitment, sustained evidence-driven policy, and system-wide consistency.

Recorded live at NSW Parliament House, presented by the Centre for Independent Studies.

Veteran broadcaster Andrew Neil joins CIS Executive Director Michael Stutchbury for a sweeping conversation about the future of the West at a moment of profound geopolitical danger. Drawing on five decades in journalism, Neil examines the rise of a newly assertive “axis of autocracy,” the retreat of American leadership, and the mounting strategic dilemmas facing democracies from Europe to the Indo-Pacific.

This discussion moves far beyond the headlines to explore the deeper forces reshaping world order: China’s ambitions, Russia’s war in Ukraine, America’s unpredictable foreign policy, Europe’s economic stagnation, the Middle East’s shifting power balance, and the urgent question of whether liberal democracies still have the resolve to defend themselves. Neil explains why the 21st century so far has been “the century of the autocrats,” how Europe became weakened by complacency, and why Australia may need to rethink long-held assumptions about US security guarantees.

At the centre of the conversation is a stark dilemma: Can the West rebuild the alliances, military strength, and economic dynamism needed to withstand a united bloc of authoritarian regimes? Or must democracies learn to operate in a world where America may no longer be the indispensable ally it once was?

This is a frank and at times sobering exchange — a clash of realism and hard geopolitics — but also one that insists the democracies are not yet destined to lose. Neil argues that the West can still push back against rising autocracies, provided it rediscovers strategic seriousness, economic competitiveness, and the will to act.

Andrew Neil is one of Britain’s most accomplished journalists, having served as editor of The Sunday Times, chairman of Sky News UK and The Spectator, and a long-time BBC political presenter.

Michael Stutchbury is Executive Director of the Centre for Independent Studies.

Recorded live in Sydney on 14 October 2025 for the Centre for Independent Studies’ annual John Bonython Lecture and Gala Dinner.

Education writer Natalie Wexler, New Zealand Education Minister Erica Stanford and literacy expert Lorraine Hammond discuss why phonics alone isn't for reading success. Recorded at @CISAus in Sydney, this conversation reveals the realities about how schools teach reading comprehension and what needs to change.

In this presentation Wexler presents evidence from US literacy reforms: states that fixed phonics instruction saw test scores improve in early primary years, then fade completely by middle school. "Do kids just forget how to decode words?" she asks. Schools spend years drilling students in abstract strategies like "finding the main idea" or "making inferences" without giving them the subject knowledge these strategies depend on. As Wexler puts it: "We're trying to build students' comprehension skills by having them read random stuff." A student who knows nothing about the Roman Empire can't comprehend a text about Julius Caesar, no matter how many comprehension strategies they've memorised.

The conversation tackles the resistance to knowledge-rich curriculum head-on. Education academics often oppose explicit teaching and knowledge-based approaches even as literacy outcomes stagnate. Hammond recounts pushing back against school leaders who prioritise their own preferences over student data showing poor reading and writing outcomes. The panel discusses why some affluent parents resist knowledge-focused education in favour of vague "critical thinking skills", even as their children benefit from the cultural capital they bring from home, while disadvantaged students fall further behind.

Minister Stanford discusses New Zealand's curriculum overhaul while the panel explores why AI makes subject knowledge more important than ever, the challenge of reforming teacher training programs, and what it will take to shift a system where the crisis isn't low literacy rates—it's that policymakers are finally doing something about it. This is essential viewing for anyone who cares about why Australian kids can't read and what actually works to fix it.

Natalie Wexler is an American education writer and author of "The Knowledge Gap: The Hidden Cause of America's Broken Education System" and "The Writing Revolution: A Guide to Advancing Thinking Through Writing". Erica Stanford is New Zealand's Minister for Education and Immigration, leading comprehensive curriculum and literacy reforms.

Lorraine Hammond is Associate Professor in Early Years Literacy at the University of Notre Dame Australia and one of Australia's leading voices on evidence-based literacy instruction.

In this episode, Opposition Leader Sussan Ley delivers a major economic address on restoring Australia's productivity and living standards, followed by an extended Q&A with CIS Executive Director Michael Stutchbury.

Recorded live in Sydney, Ley argues Australia has reached an economic "turning point," with productivity growth at its weakest in 60 years and the biggest fall in living standards in the developed world according to OECD data. As Member for Farrer since 2001 and former minister across Health, Aged Care, Environment and Regional Development, she outlines the Coalition's alternative economic strategy centered on lowering personal income taxes and repairing the budget through spending restraint.

Ley examines how the average worker now pays 24.3% of their income in tax, up from 22.3% under John Howard in 2007, and the impact of government spending and regulation reaching historic highs. She opposes Labor's multi-employer bargaining laws, advocating instead for enterprise-level bargaining. Her address provides insight into the Coalition's approach to lifting productivity, rewarding aspiration, and ensuring intergenerational fairness as Australia faces mounting economic challenges.

Broadcaster Andrew Neil and commentator Dave Rubin ‪@RubinReport‬ join Michael Stutchbury for a wide-ranging conversation about Donald Trump's presidency, the state of Western politics, and the future of free speech.

This discussion explores Trump's character and policies, the January 6th controversy, media bias, climate change and net zero policies, and the battle for free speech reshaping Western democracies.

Despite their shared scepticism of mainstream media and progressive politics, Neil and Rubin offer contrasting perspectives on crucial questions: Does Trump's character matter as much as his policies? Was January 6th a genuine threat to democracy? And can traditional journalism be reformed, or must it be replaced entirely?

The conversation reveals a genuine debate between two different strands of conservatism. Neil's traditional emphasis on character, civility, and institutional respect meets Rubin's focus on cultural warfare and challenging the establishment. They discuss Elon Musk's Twitter/X transformation, the mainstream media's credibility problems, why working-class voters shifted away from Democrats, Trump's appeal to minority communities, the costs and feasibility of net zero climate policies, and the impact of progressive politics on Western societies. This is an honest exchange that doesn't shy away from real disagreements between two thoughtful observers of the political landscape.

Andrew Neil is one of Britain's most respected political interviewers, with decades at the helm of BBC political programming. He's famous for his forensic questioning style (and his viral 2019 interview with Ben Shapiro, during which Shapiro accused Neil of being a "leftist" before walking out of the interview).

Dave Rubin is the host of the‪@RubinReport‬, one of the most influential political talk shows on YouTube with 3+ million subscribers and hundreds of millions of views. A former progressive who worked on The Young Turks, Rubin's journey from left to right became a roadmap for many disillusioned liberals.

This event was presented by the Centre for Independent Studies in Brisbane, Australia. Recorded live in Brisbane on 27 October 2025.

The Liberals are in their deepest political valley while Labor sits atop the highest mountain after their emphatic May 2025 federal election victory. But history tells us this certainty is an illusion.

At this CIS forum, Tom Switzer presented his analysis of political upheaval and the unpredictability of democratic politics, before joining CIS Executive Director Michael Stutchbury and former NSW Premier Bob Carr onstage for a wide-ranging Q&A. Together, the panel explored how unforeseeable events derail governments, the cyclical nature of political fortunes, and why no party's dominance is ever permanent.

Tom Switzer argued that history shows what's down can only go up, and what's certain can only come unstuck — from Churchill's shock 1945 defeat to Trump's unlikely comeback, from Whitlam's dismissal to Morrison's miracle win. The apparent hegemony of any political party is always largely illusory. Governments stuff up; and when they do, a capable opposition with a sound public-policy agenda can take advantage.

Michael Stutchbury and Bob Carr drew on their extensive experience in politics and media to examine how ideas, decisions and unexpected events shape political outcomes in ways pundits rarely predict.