Connor Court Publishing

Australia’s Red Tape Crisis: The Causes and Costs of Over-regulation

Edited with Darcy Allen. Connor Court Publishing, 2018

Red tape costs the Australian economy as much as $176 billion a year. Governments create and enforce thousands of regulations on our workplaces and our communities. These rules slow and prevent businesses forming, people from flourishing, new technologies from being adopted, and hold back Australia’s global competitiveness.

Australia’s Red Tape Crisis is an exploration into the economics, politics and culture of over-regulation. How should we structure our federation to achieve reform? Why should political responsibility sit with the elected? Does Australia have a deep desire for a federal bureaucracy? What is the future of red tape reduction policies?

Together, the contributions of economists, philosophers, politicians and lawyers help define a path for overcoming Australia’s red tape crisis.

Available from Connor Court Publishing

Against Public Broadcasting: Why we should privatise the ABC and how to do it

With Sinclair Davidson. Connor Court Publishing, 2018

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation is a media colossus with a reputation for integrity and quality. It is also a billion-dollar government program that lacks any coherent justification for its existence. Chris Berg and Sinclair Davidson provide a highly readable account of how and why the ABC has come to be in this position. This is the first serious analysis of the rationale for the ABC and its existence in decades.

When the ABC was founded in the 1930s the problem was a scarcity of media. Now that we live in a world of media plenty, it is hard to see why the government is still subsidising a media empire. This book provides an outline of how policymakers can dispose of the ABC, while at the same time preserving its value and realising that value for the benefit of taxpayers.

Available from Connor Court Publishing

Liberty, Equality & Democracy

Connor Court Publishing, 2015

No one has the right to rule. If we don’t believe our fellow citizens are intellectually capable of deciding what and how much to eat, whether to drink, or how to arrange their financial affairs, then why do we think they are capable of voting?’

We live in a fundamentally undemocratic age. Governments treat their citizens as incapable of making decisions for themselves. Policy-making power has been taken out of the hands of elected politicians. Poll after poll shows the public are unhappy with democracy itself. In this wide-ranging book, Chris Berg makes the case for radical democratic equality, and a democracy order that truly respects the equality and rights of its citizens.

Available from Connor Court Publishing and Amazon.com

100 Great Books of Liberty: The Essential Guide to the Greatest Idea of Western Civilisation

Edited with John Roskam and Andrew Kemp, Connor Court Publishing, 2010

100 Great Books of Liberty is a comprehensive and accessible guide to the books which made liberty the most important idea of Western Civilisation. From Plato’s The Republic and The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, to Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead and A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, these 100 books have laid the foundation for the modern world.

Covering history, biography, philosophy, politics, and fiction, 100 Great Books of Liberty is the indispensible guide to the foundations of Western Civilisation.

100 Great Books of Liberty is a joint project of the Institute of Public Affairs and Mannkal Economic Education Foundation.

100 Great Books of Liberty is the essential guide to: The Republic, Two Treatises on Government, The Wealth of Nations, The Western Canon Reflections on the Revolution in France, The Rights of Man, On Liberty, Leaves of Grass, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion Democracy in America, The Federalist Papers, The Civilisation of the Renaissance in Italy, Animal Farm, Witness, Capitalism and Freedom, The Tyranny of Distance, The End of History, A History of the English-Speaking Peoples, Darkness at Noon, The Fountainhead … and eighty other great books of liberty.

Available at Amazon.com