Andrew Bolt clings to the IPA like a leech for their intellectual narratives
For the IPA, the history of settlement and dispossession, however lamentable, forms no part of the referendum proposition on the table. For them, the present disadvantage of Indigenous Australians, again however lamentable, owes more to the way that Indigenous Australians have allowed themselves to become pauperised and impoverished by welfare systems, and encouraged to think of themselves as helpless victims rather than actors in their own personal advancement. They want to persuade people that rights and assistance should be stripped away, arguing, that “woke” policies and government interventions, however well intentioned, have not improved their situation and generally have made it worse. For them, only policies based on personal responsibility, providing individual rather than collective rights and rewards for work, will create the wealth, human, social and economic capital, and incentives to lift people from their misery. The inequality, and material and spiritual poverty of the US is a testament to the truth of their gospel. Depriving the IPA and their sponsors of their special privileges and advantages, and their access to the power they enjoy should be one of the more com
How quick is a day in politics and media? There was Andrew Bolt bragging about the influence he had with the powers to be in Australia. His “besties” were Tony Abbott and the Dutchman John Roskam head of the IPA. He even got his son James a “mini-me” job with the think tank podcasting among other things.
But like puffing on a Dandelion, all that good fortune, or some might call arse-licking, has blown away. So much for being Murdoch’s top “influencer”. A legend in his own lunchtime Bolt is a squeak in a world of talking heads. Lachlan is suing “Crikey” for its public opinion. Just a sentence that Bolt once insisted was everybody’s “free speech” right. His boss obviously doesn’t agree. In America, there wouldn’t even be a case to answer, but Bolt’s boss a historic loser here thinks otherwise. Bolt now has turned to the “right of free silence”. He knows on which side his bread is buttered.
There was a time, not so long ago, when corporate Australia lined up…
“Twenty or 30 years ago,” says John Roskam, whose 17-year tenure as executive director ended a couple of months ago, “we had dozens of ASX 100 companies supporting the IPA. Now, there’s not one.
“Not one,” he repeats, for emphasis. “Not one of the ASX 100 companies supports the IPA.”
No wonder Roskam sounds dispirited. Big business created the IPA. It was set up in 1943 following the collapse of Australia’s major conservative political party, the United Australia Party, in opposition to the perceived “socialism” of the Curtin Labor government.
Its founders included the chairmen of BHP and Coles, as well as the head of the Herald and Weekly Times newspaper group, Keith Murdoch, father of Rupert, among many other business leaders.
The fact that corporate Australia now has largely abandoned the IPA – although the Murdochs, whose business is listed offshore, are still supporters, as is mining magnate Gina Rinehart, whose interests are held privately – may be the clearest indication of the declining influence of not just the IPA but right-wing think tanks in general.
“Many people, including myself as a Liberal Party member, are frustrated with the direction of the Liberal Party. The libertarian alternative through the LDP is becoming more and more attractive.”
The con: Is the delay. It is in and money to be made in distracting the transition to a more rapid closure of the fossil fuel industry even if the case for renewable clean energy has been proved. If you can’t beat the argument’s direction of progress then delay it for as long as possible. Just as the LNP, IPA and Murdoch are a coalition for the defense of fossil fuels and will now continue to be, while declaring they are on board with reducing emissions and profiting from their efforts.
the Institute of Public Affairs, a rightwing group with a history of climate science denial that is supported by fossil fuel and mining interests, released what it described as polling showing people were open to the idea of nuclear energy. News Corp newspapers ran its arguments uncritically.
Why does the case for nuclear energy persist?
There is an assumption by some people, including Coalition MPs, that renewable energy cannot do the job, despite the expert advice that says otherwise. These critiques rarely address that advice head on.
But there is also a long history of nuclear energy being used as a delaying tactic for acting on climate change in Australia, including by fossil fuel interests.
The Publicly owned broadcaster of our media News and Information service is the conservative’s enemy as far Morrison, the LNP, the IPA and Murdoch media are concerned. They are a coalition in Australia that simply view the ABC as the enemy of government rule. As far as they are concerned the ABC as News and Information service shouldn’t exist. Morrison’s and Abbott’s relationship with the ABC has been fractious and so for the past decade, their primary aim has been to extract revenue via an annual “efficiency review” which translates to always breaking the LNP promise of no cuts.
Scott Morrison has shown an aversion to appearing in ABC interviews, preferring to be represented by the right-wing mainstream media, writes Jeremy Epstein.
We have seen the IPA’s and Murdoch’s influence when it comes to attacking the ABC. They had Tony Abbott their puppet on a string as far back as 2013 with a list of 75 demands. He promised: “No cuts to the ABC”. a lie that turned into Treasurer Morrison’s claim that $1Bn wasn’t a cut but an efficiency review. or improvement.
Yes, Kennedy wasn’t assassinated either his heart merely stopped. “Alternative Facts” have been finessed by the LNP and Morrison is the major practitioner of the art. Remember when he couldn’t reveal anything of refugees because those questions were “On the Water Matters”?
The Institute of Public Affairs is seeking to harm the ABC’s reputation, while questions linger over its own operations and purpose, writes Anthony Klan. WELL-HEELED secretive lobby group the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), which seeks to influence Australia’s public debate, sway government policy – and is running an aggressive campaign against the nation’s most trusted news outlet – is refusing to say who actually funds it.
The LNP, IPA, News Corp and Sky News are part of a global Murdochian franchise and can be found in many forms in the UK and USA. The form a marriage to keep new barbarians, clean and cheaper energy from the gates. The planet, well that’s a secondary thought that can always be tweaked with money and spin spin as long as independent rational scientific information is kept under control. Information isn’t free but today it needs to be kept divided and anarchic. That’s their Art of the Deal. They sell division.
The Institute of Public Affairs paid to push targeted Facebook ads based on a “faulty analysis” claiming net zero would cause massive job losses in key Liberal and National seats during last month’s Coalition infighting. Last month, as the Coalition debated a net zero 2050 policy, the IPA paid for a series of Facebook and Instagram ads targeting the electorates of Nationals Barnaby Joyce, David Littleproud, Mark Coulton, Ken O’Dowd and Anne Webster, as well as the Liberal trade minister, Dan Tehan. The ads warned the policy “will destroy” huge numbers of jobs in each electorate. In Flynn, O’Dowd’s electorate, the ads warned “net zero emissions will destroy one in four jobs”. Other electorates would lose one in five, one in six or one in seven jobs, the ads claimed.
Students and academics at the University of Melbourne are mobilising against the opening of a Liberal-aligned research institute on campus that counts conservative commentator Peta Credlin and the chairman of right-wing think tank the Institute of Public Affairs as board members.
Tim Wilson LNP/IPA federal MP couldn’t give a running fuck about COVID-19 neither the cases nor the deaths concern him rather than how it all seems in the eyes of the public. Now that it’s obvious that the Immigration and the Aged-Care sectors both a responsibility of the Federal LNP were the epicenter of the spread and deaths of the virus due to their total mismanagement from Abbott to Morrison. Wilson’s complaint is that the process was and is political and somehow has gone easy on Dan Andrews. Wilson’s problem however the opposite would seem to be the case if one simply looked at the MSM media. (ODT)
Victorian Liberal MP Tim Wilson has waded into the fight over Daniel Andrews’ handling of the coronavirus pandemic, saying the state government has not been scrutinised enough over its response to COVID-19.
Mr Wilson said the federal coronavirus committee had met many more times than its Victorian equivalent and was chaired by an opposition politician whereas the Victorian inquiry is headed by a member of the governing party.
IPA?Murdoch/LNP the triumvariate of an unhinged and diminished Democracy (ODT)
What are some of the things they succeeded in?
Many of the items can be ticked off, as having been completed, or at least attempted. Most, if not all of them, as reactionary, elitist and nasty:
Repeal the carbon tax, and don’t replace it; Abolish the Department of Climate Change; Cease subsidising the car industry; Repeal the mining tax; Devolve environmental approvals for major projects to the states; Cease funding the Australia Network; and Privatise Medibank.
It seems like the sort of list that very young, privileged brats would produce before they actually encountered some real life. Let us just say it is a work of stupendous lightness and the Liberal Party has been captured by it for nearly eight years now.
There isn’t one thing that would materially improve the life of a single citizen. It is all self-aggrandisement writ large, with not a thought for the weak or the helpless. We have been blaming Abbott, Hockey, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton for a long time, but they are just dupes of three would-be intellectuals, who wouldn’t know what the words mutual obligation meant.
The IPA gave Abbott a plan for Australia and he bought it.
The Liberal senator James McGrath and the former Liberal candidate Jacinta Price have fronted an Institute of Public Affairs advertisement attacking any proposal for an Indigenous voice to parliament, claiming it will divide Australians by race.
The inflammatory intervention comes just a day after the minister for Indigenous Australians, Ken Wyatt, launched a co-design process with Indigenous people on the voice to parliament.
The negative advertising suggests the rightwing thinktank and aligned Coalition conservatives will continue to campaign against a voice despite the government’s repeated efforts to signal that the First Nations representative body will be legislated rather than enshrined in the constitution.
Nor do we need to kid ourselves that CPAC speakers are interested in debate. All we’ve seen and heard is personal abuse and an eagerness to win converts to conspiracies.
There is a world of difference between freedom of speech and being granted a licence to spread hate-speech. And the last thing our politicians need is to court the far-right or let themselves be used to legitimise your fear-mongering and your lies.
Forget the idea of a “multi-year, forever, project”. Once is way more than enough.
BRITAIN NOW HAS the most far-Right Government in its history with the ascension of Boris Johnson to Prime Minister. Johnson is the epitome of a Monty Python, upper-class twit but with more than a touch of thuggish bully. The UK press has given Johnson the moniker “BoJo” which is frighteningly similar to the moniker given to our very own far-Right ScoMo.
However, the similarities between Morrison and Johnson’s rise to the top go a lot further — both are part of a drive to install far-Right governments to advance the interests of U.S. imperialism. In both cases, the Murdoch press played a significant role in destabilising their predecessors.
“When I go into Downing Street they do what I say; when I go to Brussels they take no notice.”
A faction of the U.S. ruling class has decided the answer to the connected crisis of a struggling economy and rising social inequality domestically and declining power abroad is fascism. They are now attempting to reorganise the world to achieve this goal.
But is there a hidden motive behind the Murdoch media’s pro-Coalition frenzy? According to the Friends of the ABC, the secret agenda of News Corp and the Liberals is the post-election privatisation of the ABC.
Given the Coalition’s historical dislike of the national broadcaster, privatisation may well be the fate of the AB
THE FAILURE of negotiations between the Ramsay Centre for Western Civilisation and the Australian National University has ignited a culture war in the opinion pages of The Australian. One that has seeped into Federal politics and now poses a threat to the independence of universities.
The Ramsay Centre was launched back in 2017 with a $3 billion bequest from healthcare-magnate and top Liberal party donor Paul Ramsay. The half lobby group, half trust is staffed by Liberal party giants John Howard and Tony Abbott, among others.
To create this pro-Western degree, the Ramsay Centre advocated the establishment of new institutions and methods in breach of academic independence. Abbott said the group will form a committee inside ANU that will make staffing and curriculum decisions. The group’s CEO, Professor Simon Haines, reportedly said they would pull their multi-million dollar donation if the degree wasn’t sufficiently pro-Western, which would include not hiring academics who have been critical of the West. The group also wanted to send representatives to sit in on courses to carry out “health checks” on the teachers and removed “academic independence” from their memorandum of understanding with the university.
The AEF’s YouTube channel has just 11 subscribers and has posted only one video, from December 2016.
In May 2017, the AEF lent its logo to a letter to US President Donald Trump to offer “enthusiastic support” for his commitments to withdraw from the UN Paris climate agreement. But between July 2017 and February 2018, there was virtually nothing posted on its website.
Much of that website, including the “Climate News” section, is content from former Institute of Public Affairs fellow Alan Moran and postings that variously dismiss human-caused climate change and renewable energy, in particular wind power.
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Ridd has been a director at the AEF since 2005. That’s a neat segue into the AEF’s history.
In late 2004, the Institute of Public Affairs – by then already pushing out climate science misinformation – held its “Eureka forum” to work out how to push back against “environmental fundamentalism” that, it claimed, was “denying farmers, foresters, fishermen, prospectors, miners, beekeepers, 4WD enthusiasts and others access rights, property rights, water rights”.
The Public Service Commissioner, John Lloyd, has resigned, hard on the heels of the recent Senate estimates hearings that probed his relations with the right-wing think tank the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA).
1985 ABC Budget was $475 Mill = 2018 $ 1 Billion today The ABC is the most efficient media in Australia that 1) Deleivers News, 2) Australian Production and Content 3) Democracy 4) Trust (ODT)
Beware of IPA Corporatism dimming the lights on Australia for Murdoch. (ODT)
A new book authored by the influential Institute of Public Affairs calls on the Turnbull government to privatise the ABC by giving it away for free to the ABC’s employees or Australian citizens.
Against Public Broadcasting, released on Friday night, labels the ABC “an anachronism” whose rationale is now redundant and which has become a $1 billion-a-year drain on the public purse.
Just how many Cabinet Ministers and LNP Politicians are paid up menmbers of the IPA Fifeild is ? Why can Murdoch’s Pay to view Channels be allowed to also take in advertising revenue and when is it obvious that programs are little more than advertorials? (ODT)
You’d think the relationship between News Corp and the business lobby was cosy enough already. But the Business Council of Australia wanted more favourable coverage of its campaign for big business tax cuts. After talking to, but not using, Cambridge Analytica to improve its campaigning style, the BCA began raising funds and locked in the support of News Corp Australia.
As part of its political campaign, For the Common Good, the business lobby inked a media deal with News Corp and Sky News for which it paid Rupert Murdoch’s empire a reported $1m.
For the cash the business lobby gets coverage of its agenda in the form of a series of television programs over 12 months, newspaper articles and community events to promote the “positive contribution of business” to the nation.
Big Business hasn’t just decided to get into the political game, as some have claimed, it has been influencing our politics forever. But as managing editor David Donovan says, the methods it has lately adopted are highly troubling.
‘The Business Council of Australia (BCA), the lobby group representing Australia’s largest companies, has decided to do politics.’
So wrote Laura Tingle in an ABC online article accompanying her debut ABC 7.30 piece on Monday night, 30 April 2018.
Really? They have just decided to “do politics”?
Of course not. The Business Council has been doing politics every day since it was formed in 1983.
Indeed, the Business Council’s stated reason for existence is
‘… to give the business community a greater voice in public policy debates about the direction of Australian society’.
When Leigh Sales asked Malcolm Turnbull why Section 18C was getting more attention than things like “out of pocket medical expenses, the fact that suicide rate among teenage girls has gone up 45 per cent in the past year, the fact that the average Australian female worker loses nearly all of her take-home pay in…
By Christian Marx Australia is rapidly heading towards a completely stupefied populace. This is no accident! Rather, it is a concerted effort by the vested corporate interests that own all our mainstream media, and control the LNP, via their hardline, crypto Fascist organisation, the Institute of Public Affairs. If one believed the media narrative, one…
Sunday March 13 2016 The Insidious Invasion of the IPA into Australian Politics, or Public Apathy and 75 Ideas to Make You Shudder. The Institute of Public Affairs is a free market right-wing think tank that is funded by some of Australia’s major companies and is closely aligned to the Liberal Party. In April 2013…
In the wacky and dangerous world of the IPA and its backers, Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek rules and people like Tony Abbott are regarded as socialists, writes Ross Jones.
On a recent balmy Sydney evening, I was comfortably set up in a pub down near the Quay — about 6pm, the heat gone from the day, the beer cold.
Better, I was with a few old friends. Better still, one was still employed by a bank and we were drinking on its tab. What could go wrong?
Well, one chap, a man I’ve known for a long time and whose professional intellect I have always respected, informed me he was a paid-up member of the Institute of Public Affairs — the IPA. Apart from spurting beer, I handled it pretty well.
It was a tough night. In some pubs you can converse at normal conversational volume, but not CBD pubs in summer. You try arguing Hayek over classic rock played loud and proud.
The writings of Austrian-born economist and Anglophile (read suck), Friedrich August von Hayek, are the intellectual spine of the IPA. FA shuffled off the mortal coil back in 1992 but, in his 93 years of life, he left an intellectual legacy rubbery enough to be abused and misused by every opportunist who cared to do so.
Margaret Thatcher was fond of silencing her opponents with pithy Hayek quote.
But there are precious few of these. Das Kapital reads like manga comic in comparison to anything written by Hayek. Have a read and I defy you to stay awake for more than five minutes.
It’s not that he was a dill — far from it; out there flawed genius is more like it. Friedrich was awarded the 1974 Nobel prize for economics.
FA’s world view was formed through the depression and WWII tough times. Forget left and right, Hayek goes way outside the box and argues planning sucks and untrammelled spontaneity rules.
In the way of all economists, Hayek created a jargonised universe which, on first reading (zzzZZZ) sort of makes sense. But when you wake up, it’s a bad dream.
There is no room for the easily-manipulated in Hayek’s world. And because the suckers cannot dance with the elite, the elite have the absolute right to dance with the suckers. FA didn’t win a Nobel Prize for f’all.
Fred’s seminal (?) work, ironically-titled, The Road to Serfdom, published in 1934, really just recorded what was already happening — which, in the early 1930s, was not good.
In this regard, Hayek can be considered more perspicacious than Keynes or Friedman. But Thomas Piketty? I think not.
In much the same way, the tiresome Hayek, who was essentially a grasping parvenu happy to justify the avarice of his admired mates, simply recorded power as he saw it, Picketty records the simple fact that economic power is accreting to a few serious families at an accelerating rate. Thomas is a best seller, FA was not.
But despite his desultory sales, limited to economics-porn bookshops, the IPA brought FA to Australia in 1976, just in time to put the heat on Fraser.
In a commentary on the great man’s visit, the IPA noted:
Nut job.
Back to the pub.
Over free beer and rock’n’roll, my drinking-buddy said of the IPA, and I paraphrase:
Our political Venn diagram and the Prime Minister’s only have a small area of overlap. He is a socialist conservative and we are not.
So there you go. The IPA consider Abbott a socialist conservative. I believe the online jargon response is FMD.
I am betting none of the IPA backers – the movers and shakers – have ever really read Hayek. That sludge-like task is best left to the troops who have the time. But they love the idea of the ideas conveyed to them by these loyals.
So, when you see Abbott smooching up to Gina, or his right arm hovering over Rupert’s buttocks, you now know both are thinking:
Socialist Conservative! Get off me! But, okay, right now you are handy.
Economics 101, with its indifference curves, optimisation and efficient resource allocation, was never more than a charming fantasy — so much so that introductory students’ first model is often Man Friday and its attending parable of labour specialisation and serfdom.
Hayek would have it Man Friday’s inability to understand the words “Get coconut” seriously impaired Robinson’s ability to harvest every coconut on the island and flog them to every pirate ship that happened by. What else can you do with people like this? Point out every coconut? They deserve a life on the beach, left only to aspire to Robbo’s pirate-built condo high on the bluff.
Robbo’s big problem was that there are seven days in the week and he only had Friday — labour shortage looming.
The IPA noted in 1976:
Apart from the ‘grand climacteric’, the existential threats to our freedom, and ‘the wider threat whole of our civilisation’ are real.
BARRIE CASSIDY: Sure, but do you accept climate change potentially is one of the biggest impediments to growth?
JOE HOCKEY: No. No, I don’t. Absolutely not .
Well, I guess we can just accept that Joe Hockey could be right on this one. After all, climate change could lead to a lot of floods, fires and other devastation. This should be a real pick-me-up for the building industry, shouldn’t it? Impediment to economic growth? I don’t think so.
It’s just a shame that it’s still unclear that the climate even exists, let alone that man could have any effect on it. After all, we’ve been dumping stuff in the ocean for years and, in spite of what that upstart President from the USA has to say, the Barrier Reef is doing just fine, thank you.
As for those ABC cuts, well I think they’ve been well and truly dealt with. As Mr Turnbull implied, while Mr Abbott may have said no cuts to the ABC, the SBS and no changes to pensions, there was no reason to think that he was speaking on behalf of the Liberal Party. Or, indeed, was there any reason to think that he had the authority to deviate from the policies that had been so clearly spelt out by IPA prior to the election.
Of course, all these critics who are complaining (wrongly, of course) that Abbott changed his mind on the ABC, had no problem when he went against his election commitment on pensions. He clearly said they’re be “NO CHANGES TO PENSIONS” in the same interview. Yet, in spite of the fact that the intention was to eliminate all future rises, the government is still allowing some indexation, albeit at a lower rate. We didn’t hear a whimper out of the left on that one!
Now, to quote Scott Morrison from last week:
“And as former president Yudhoyono said, in advice to Australia, you’ve got to take the sugar off the table, and that’s what we’re doing.”
He pointed out that they were “taking the sugar off the table” so many times in that interview that I decided it must be some sort of metaphor and not simply a way off helping Joe to keep his weight down to somewhere near his IQ. A friend helpfully suggested that the metaphor was about making the table less attractive to ants.
“So, the asylum seekers are being compared to ants. What’s the table?”
“The table is Australia.”
“I see. I guess that means that the sugar is what makes Australia appealing. Affordable healthcare, a living wage and the Great Barrier Reef.”
So, I see it all now. Julie Bishop and Andrew Robb are right. The Liberals know what they’re doing with their Reef management. They’re taking the sugar off the table.
Silly old Obama. As if we want foreigners coming over here, telling us what to do. (And don’t say that Tony and Matthias are foreigners – that’s just racist – they’re as Australian as Anzac Biscuits with Vegemite!)
* * *
Peter Reith just wrote that he found it hard to believe that Labor would win this week’s Victorian election, in spite of the polls having them “slightly ahead” (on average, at 54-46%). It defied “common sense” according to Mr Reith.
This morning, Victoria’s Treasurer announced that – a few weeks ago – the Liberals signed a contract for the East-West Link which would entitle the consortium to over a billion dollars, even if Labor kept their election promise and didn’t build it OR the councils opposing it blocked it in Court.
Why did they sign a contract with such a big penalty clause so close to an election?
olddogthoughts 