Australian policy argument, tightly reasoned.
Centre for Independent Studies is a brisk policy and public affairs series built around interviews, research readings, and economic briefings. Its episodes test political claims against law, incentives, institutions, history, and consequences.
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Centre for Independent Studies is a policy-heavy Australian public affairs feed with a clear liberal and institutional frame. It works through interviews, narrated research, and compact economic briefings rather than relaxed roundtable chat. The usual movement is direct. A public claim is introduced, tested against incentives or history, and then pushed toward a judgment about consequences. Housing, tax, inflation, energy, antisemitism, welfare, universities, and social cohesion all appear as policy problems, but the show rarely treats them as technical problems alone. It keeps returning to culture, civil society, family, and the limits of law. In one conversation, Parnell Palm-McGuinness discusses young Australians whose aspirations for security, family, and home ownership remain conventional even as their circumstances become harder. In another, Robert Carling and Michael Stutchbury challenge arguments for raising capital gains tax, especially claims tied to housing and intergenerational fairness. The Stutchbury Sessions bring a sharper economic brief, linking Middle East oil shocks to fuel excise politics, inflation expectations, union demands, and the memory of the 1970s. Energy episodes treat security and affordability as forces that can overtake environmental policy in real time. The research readings are more severe. The episode on hate speech and antisemitism argues that legislation cannot rebuild weakened civic institutions, and that families, congregations, schools, and associations matter because they form habits the state cannot manufacture. The show can be repetitive by design. It restates claims until the policy test is clear. The tone is composed, dry, and occasionally grave. There is little warmth, but there is discipline. Centre for Independent Studies is for listeners who want Australian politics interpreted through markets, liberty, responsibility, institutional resilience, and skepticism toward expansive state action.
Made for: For listeners who follow Australian politics, public policy, economics, and liberal institutional debate. It especially suits those who prefer structured argument over pundit chatter.
What sets it apart: The show connects immediate political disputes to deeper tests of incentives, institutional resilience, civil society, and long-run economic effects. It is less a news reaction feed than a continuing argument about what policy can and cannot repair.
Let’s share good ideas. 💡The Centre for Independent Studies promotes free choice and individual liberty and the open exchange of ideas. CIS encourages debate among leading academics, politicians, media and the public. We aim to make sure good policy ideas are heard and seriously considered so that Australia can prosper.
Based on 5 episodes we listened to · September 2026
Policy arguments arrive with their assumptions exposed, giving Australian political debates an unusually clear intellectual structure.
Centre for Independent Studies moves between narrated research papers and hosted conversations, making policy disputes and arguments about liberal democracy unusually concrete.
A capital gains tax paper walks into a podcast, and your dinner-table argument leaves with footnotes.
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Short reviews from the PlayNext desk, based on the episodes we processed.
A focused look at young Australians, stalled aspirations, welfare mistrust and political disengagement.
Young Australians still want the familiar markers of stability: financial security, family and a home of their own. This episode turns that desire into a political story, tracing the gap between those ambitions and the lives many people aged 18 to 34 can realistically see ahead…
A firm argument that civic institutions, not legislation alone, are central to confronting antisemitism.
Antisemitism is framed as a measure of institutional health, with law treated as necessary but limited. The discussion starts with the Bondi Beach attack, then moves through parliamentary inquiries, proposed legislation, and the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social…
A policy interview tests the housing, fairness, and international-tax arguments behind Australia's capital gains tax debate.
Australia's capital gains tax debate gets a skeptical policy read, as Robert Carling makes the case against raising the tax or scrapping the 50% discount.
A measured policy case for keeping the capital gains tax discount, set against housing claims and wider tax trade-offs.
Australia's capital gains tax discount often gets pulled into big housing arguments, and this episode uses Robert Carling's case for leaving it alone to widen the frame.
A clear, measured look at why liberalism abroad can run hard into nationalism.
John Miesheimer makes liberalism feel less settled once nationalism enters the frame. He separates liberalism as a domestic political ideology from liberalism as a foreign-policy program, then follows the argument into the friction created when one state tries to reshape…
Personal psychology against public collapse.
Art talk with civic static.
Combative interviews for hard-edged culture fights.
Campus thought, ceremony, and civic dialogue.
John Mearsheimer, a political science professor, discusses the tensions between liberalism and nationalism.
Rob Forsyth interviews Mark Leach about the erosion of Australian values and the link between fighting anti-Semitism and renewing commitment to Western liberal individualism.
Rob Forsyth's Liberalism in Question interviews Parnell Palm-McGuinness about a study of Australians aged 18 to 34 that mixed conversational-AI interviews with a poll of a little over 2,000 people, including 1,200 young respondents.
A commentary on the contrast between Easter Monday and Trump's call to Artemis II, linking space exploration to environmentalism and religion.
Analysis of Australian politicians' response to Middle East oil price shock with fuel excise cut, criticized as panic vote-buying that distracts from needed policy reforms.
The episode discusses four lessons from the 1970s energy crisis, focusing on how current oil price shocks are driving energy security concerns and accelerating electric vehicle adoption.
The Centre for Independent Studies frames Dimitri Berstein's report, "The Legislative Fantasy," around the Bondi Beach attack of 14 December 2025 and the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion led by former High Court Justice Virginia Bell.
Robert Carling says Treasury's "$247 billion" figure is a "bit of a joke" because behaviour would change.
Robert Carling says the 50% CGT discount replaced "discounting by another name" in 1999.
Jennifer Buckingham traces her 1999 arrival at the Centre for Independent Studies to research on boys' educational decline and school choice.
Fred Roeder argues for deregulation and pro-market consumer advocacy, challenging traditional consumer groups that favor more regulation.
A debate between Peter Kurti and Jude Blik on whether Australia can maintain social cohesion amid moral diversity, hosted by Rob Forsyth on Liberalism in Question.
Rob Forsyth and Rohan McHugh discuss whether liberalism can be genuinely secular, critiquing Jordan Peterson's view that liberalism needs a broader foundation.
Rob Forsyth interviews Jamie Q.