Prologue:
This post has been a very very long time in coming. The original text document which eventually was too large for my text editor to handle, was created on the 19th of August 2021.
During the general sort of calamity, mish-mash and malaise that 2021 brought and gave to us, it was really obvious at the time, that the policies being taken by the State Government of NSW were based more upon the exacting of power against the people who had voted differently to them, rather than public health measures. Power was exacted and wielded in a partisan fashion and in a punitive fashion, under the guise of public health.
I found it interesting at the time that the IPA was more than prepared to yell at the Victorian Government which used blanket measures and treated people living in electorates of all political colours equally but sang the praises of the NSW Government which took partisan measures. In times of national crisis, the IPA demonstrated that it is a highly partisan organisation; concerned with wielding power for power’s sake and making sure that its enemies do not have any access to it.
When you have hours where you can not go far except for ‘essential reasons’ and can not go to work except if you are an ‘authorised worker’, then you begin to question the motivation of the policies which are being enacted. Is this a new thing which we are currently experiencing? Hardly. Still, it is interesting to look back at the policies demanded on the past because the game of politics never changes much.
- Horse, Feb 2022
Horse 2979: 75 Demands To Really Send Australia Down The Toilet From The IPA
Back in 2012, the trio of John Roskam, Chris Berg and James Paterson (the last of the three who was subsequently parachuted into the Senate by the IPA and into the Liberal Party list; thus, proving who really runs the show) fired off a list of demands that the IPA has for the future of Australia. This list of demands reads rather like the manifesto of a terrorist organisation, which let's be honest, the IPA's frequent demands to defund, degrade, destroy, and privatise everything that the Commonwealth of Australia has, may as well be.
My mother (now departed) said that you shouldn't “hate” something unless you wanted it dead. I can not stress how much I hate the IPA. My strong wish is that it faces bankruptcy and disappears forever; never to return again. My wish is that everything that it has ever achieved is unraveled and people see it for the self-serving and destructive force to society that it is. I really want the IPA dead, cremated, and hurled into the sun.
This list of demands is still available on the IPA’s website and in the not quite decade which has followed, the Liberal Party has been ticking them off like a shopping list. It is worth remembering that the IPA was conceived by Sir Keith Murdoch and Sir Bob Menzies in 1944 and the Liberal Party of Australia IPA was conceived by Sir Keith Murdoch and Sir Bob Menzies in 1945. Legend has it that the Liberal Party was informally formed at a particular table in the dining room of the Kurrajong Hotel in Canberra. It was not formally formed until a meeting several months later.
This then, is the article and the list of demands, with my running commentary in the light of a decade of downright terrible and borderline evil government.
https://ipa.org.au/ipa-review-articles/be-like-gough-75-radical-ideas-to-transform-australia
Virtually none of Whitlam’s signature reforms were repealed by the Fraser government. The size of the federal government never fell back to what it was before Whitlam. Medicare remains. The Racial Discrimination Act – rightly described by the Liberal Senator Ivor Greenwood in 1975 as ‘repugnant to the rule of law and to freedom of speech’ – remains.
It wasn’t as if this was because they were uncontroversial. The Liberal opposition bitterly fought many of Whitlam’s proposals. And it wasn’t as if the Fraser government lacked a mandate or a majority to repeal them. After the 1975 election, in which he earned a 7.4 per cent two-party preferred swing, Fraser held 91 seats out of 127 in the House of Representatives and a Senate majority.
...
When Mark Steyn visited Australia recently he described political culture as a pendulum. Left-wing governments swing the pendulum to the left. Right of centre governments swing the pendulum to the right. But left-wing governments do so with greater force. The pendulum always pushes further left.
And the public’s bias towards the status quo has a habit of making even the most radical policy (like Medicare, or restrictions on freedom of speech) seem normal over time. Despite the many obvious problems of socialised health care, no government now would challenge the foundations of Medicare as the Coalition did before it was implemented.
...
So the policies we suggest adopting, the bureaucracies we suggest abolishing, the laws we suggest revoking should be seen as symptoms, rather than the source, of the problem.
Conservative governments have a very narrow idea of what the ‘culture wars’ consists of. The culture of government that threatens our liberty is not just ensconced in the ABC studios, or among a group of well-connected and publicly funded academics. ABC bias is not the only problem. It is the spiralling expansion of bureaucracies and regulators that is the real problem.
- John Roskam, Chris Berg and James Paterson, IPA (5 Aug 2012)
It should be said from the outset that the IPA (Institute for Public Affairs) was the inbred son of Sir Keith Murdoch and Sir Bob Menzies. Sir Keith Murdoch hated the existence of the ABC from its inception and actively tried to kill off its news service before it began. The ABC proved its worthiness as a vital part of the news environment during the Second World War and that meant that it couldn’t easily be killed.
Sir Bob Menzies who had been Prime Minister at the beginning of the war, eventually decided that the United Australia Party had reached the end of its useful life and spent the last part of World War II coagulating the fourteen or so anti-Labor parties into one giant putrid blob.
At the formation of the IPA, the United Australia Party was rudderless and effectively leaderless, while John Curtin did an excellent job as Prime Minister. The IPA was formed in 1944 as an outside political force by Sir Keith Murdoch and Sir Bob Menzies and was then followed by the Liberal Party as the inside political force.
The 75 ‘ideas’ read more like a list of demands and in the light of the IPA’s history, don’t actually look like new demands at all but rather, the same list of demands that they always wanted.
1 Repeal the carbon tax, and don’t replace it. It will be one thing to remove the burden of the carbon tax from the Australian economy. But if it is just replaced by another costly scheme, most of the benefits will be undone. (achieved)
If we look back over the last ten years, did repealing the Carbon Tax actually provide any benefit? Maybe it returned a few dollars back into people’s pockets but one of the points and aims of taxation policy, is to shift the behaviour of people acting within a market. Markets ultimately only determine the volume of goods and services sold and bought and at the price where that happens. Markets are an amoral instrument and do not have any notion of goodness, fitness, or any ability to look forwards to any point in the future.
Maybe if there had been real cultural change here, which the imposition of a Carbon Tax would have achieved by changing people’s behaviour, then we’d be looking back over a decade where energy companies changed their practices, where business became more efficient and where households demanded more efficient goods. None of this happened though.
2 Abolish the Department of Climate Change (achieved)
The Department of Climate Change was an Australian Government department that existed between 2007 and 2010. In 2013 when this list of demands was published, it didn't even exist. That means that the IPA who likes to trumpet loudly from the rooftops that they do research, was so unbelievably incompetent that they couldn't even be bothered to do due diligence to see if a thing that they wanted abolished, even existed at the time and could be abolished.
3 Abolish the Clean Energy Fund
The 2010s in Australia are a lost decade when it comes to changing Australia’s approach to climate change and the environment. Call it providence or justice but I think that there is something apt and just about Australia reaping the reward for its stupidity, when in 2019 the country was visited by the biggest bushfires by land area, in recorded history. It is also fitting and proper that the Prime Minister (Scott Morrison) who was installed after an internal factional squabble, chose to run away and show Australians exactly what he thought of them, by taking a holiday to Hawaii. His classic quote when he came back and was questioned about public policy of “I don’t hold a hose”, is perfectly fitting.
4 Repeal Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act
The only reason that this very specific section of a very specific piece of legislation is on this list is because Andrew Bolt of the Herald-Sun fell afoul of the legislation and was found guilty. What the IPA was is unfettered free speech; without the ability of those injured top be able to claim any kind of damages or justice.
Eatock v Bolt (2013) is the point at which the IPA decided to go on this very specific crusade to attack this very specific piece of legislation. As this list was published before the 2013 General Election, I imagine that the IPA had hoped that the then future Abbott Government would make good on its list of demands. This didn't exactly happen but the rise of rightist politics in the United States might very well bring this particular line-item back in future.
5 Abandon Australia’s bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council
I have no idea what the IPA hoped to gain from this. Is the IPA suggesting that Australia is a pathetic little podunk country whose voice isn't worth hearing on the world stage? If this is true, then what is the net benefit that we derive from sending Australia's sons to be blown up in pointless wars around the world? Does the IPA want us to cower to the United States like the stupid little lap dog that they probably imagine us to be?
The truth was that from 2013-14, Julie Bishop did quite a respectable job on the UN Security Council and represented us well. I don't much care for the domestic politics of her party, but Ms Bishop actually made this nation look respectable and competent.
I would hope that the government of the day in 2029/30 when we can have another tilt at being on the UN Security Council, makes the effort and applies for the job. The United Nations might very well be a clunky and inefficient organisation, but it was created after the scourge of war twice ravaged the world and claimed more than a hundred million people's lives. Between the efforts of the UN, NATO, ASEAN, the EU, NAFTA and the like, pouring treacle into the gears of war has to some degree stopped those gears of war from spinning as quickly. The United States still appears to be cruising for a war at any opportunity it gets and since the Liberal Party seems intent on chaining us to that war machine, the very least that the people of Australia deserve is some representative say so before we get dragged off again.
At this current moment in time when Russian troops are on the verge of invading the neighbouring sovereign state of Ukraine, it would be handy to have some kind of say on the UN Security Council, if for no other reason than Australia will be committed to sending troops there if the United States asks us to. Australia has basically had no foreign policy since it was formed in 1901, other than what our big brother directs us to do at the time.
6 Repeal the renewable energy target (failed)
I would like to give a glorious two-finger salute to the IPA because in June 2015, the Australian Parliament passed the Renewable Energy (Electricity) Amendment Bill 2015.
Admittedly the “Large-scale Renewable Energy Target” was reduced from 41,000 GWh to 33,000 GWh in 2020 with interim and post-2020 targets adjusted accordingly, which means to say that Australia gave itself an easier target to meet and got there but it did mean that it was the Abbott Government who didn’t bow down at the feet of the IPA. I think that this is probably a contributing factor in why the Festival Of The Thirsty Knife visited him in September 2015 and he was gone.
7 Return income taxing powers to the states
I can tell you that having to work with the United States' Tax System is a labyrinthine nightmare. Every State and Commonwealth (yes, there are some) in the Union has their own set of taxation rates, upon everything from income tax to sales tax, to property and land taxes, and everything else in between. Ordinary people who live within one state (and I need to make this distinction) are mostly fine, except for the inconvenience of having to file two sets of tax returns (State and Federal) but anyone who has a multi-state business, with varying degrees of sales tax across borders, is well and truly bamboozled. A multi-state business needs to file taxation returns across multiple states and account for the varying rates of taxation across them.
The Income Tax Assessment Act 1936 was passed as a second income tax to the ones already operating in the states. It was a UAP Government (and the precursor to the modern Liberal Party) which passed ITAA 1936, because it did a bad job of managing its books. In 1942 when Australia was in the middle of the Second World War and after Curtin's Labour Government came to power, that the states surrendered the power of income tax to the Federal Government because they saw the benefit of the shared project of the Commonwealth. In many respects it wasn't the First World War that galvanised the nation, it was the Second World War.
There is a semi-sensible argument to be made that having the states raise their own income tax means that they're not reliant on the Commonwealth and that it might encourage some degree of competition between them. This does also mean that there would have to be the equivalent of six sets of bureaucracy in order to collect and manage the proposed states' income taxation; so any benefit would more than likely be immediately killed off due to the burden of extra administration required.
8 Abolish the Commonwealth Grants Commission
This looks a bit strange when you consider the sports rorts affair and the car parks affair. Maybe in 2013 the IPA were looking to curb and future Labor Party but in the 10 years which has followed this document, they have said exactly nothing in relation to their own party distributing barrels of pork to their own electorates.
9 Abolish the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
The ACCC exists to protect the rights of consumers and to enforce business’ rights and obligations to consumers; to perform industry regulation and price monitoring, and to prevent illegal anti-competitive behaviour.
All I can think of is that the IPA doesn’t think that there is a problem with business gouging the wallets of people for private gain and would in fact like to see nobody even brought to heel for anti-competitive behaviour. That says to me that they want power to go to the rich, quite literally at the expense of the general public.
They may as well demand that highwaymen be deemed legal.
10 Withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol
The point of the Kyoto Protocol was to control emissions of human emitted greenhouse gases, with references and concessions to countries’ ability, wealth, and capacity to make the necessary reductions. I can understand that the IPA whose donors include mining corporations and in particular coal mining and oil companies, would want to get out of the Kyoto Protocol because it would cost them money.
While individual points of data don’t actually make a set and events don’t actually inform long-term policy, the 2019/20 bushfire season should have been a warning by now. I do not think that the IPA of 2013 could have foreseen such a thing because they simply refuse to read reports which have repeatedly said that the direct effects of climate change on fire weather and fire regimes are likely to get worse (such as Cary 2002, Flannigan et al. 2009, the Bushfire CRC workshop at ANU 2011). You can not forsee a thing if you refuse to look, or admit that a thing exists. Out here in the real world, we call that kind of thing ‘lying’.
Repeatedly we find that the IPA is anti-science; including if it means that ignoring warnings places economic assets in danger.
11 Introduce fee competition to Australian universities
Given the other demands in this list, I think that this is one step inside of actually calling for the privatisation of Australian universities.
Fee Competition in principle is probably fine if the various universities were offering fungible courses of study. Not only are university courses not fungible but people’s choices aren’t necessarily comprehensive. Someone from the country might go to the closest university but it is less likely that someone from Brisbane will up sticks and decide to go to a university in Adelaide.
Also, when you consider that there isn’t a national curriculum because school education is the responsibly of the states, then the pathway to university is going to be different in all cases.
Students more or less, have to suck up whatever fees universities charge. They don’t have a lot of economic power and introducing fee competition to Australian universities is just as likely at add an even further degree of signalling to employers about a prospective employee. Such a thing already happens with high schools.
12 Repeal the National Curriculum
13 Introduce competing private secondary school curriculums
Why? What exactly is this supposed to accomplish? Let’s take demands 12 & 13 together.
In theory, one of the tenets of the economic right is that markets (praise be) work best when suppliers and demanders have good information about the options that they must choose from and when the decisions that they make to not affect the decisions and choices made by other suppliers and demanders. None of this is true as applied to schooling.
For a start, people who have the necessary funds to be able to afford private schooling, generally do so upon the basis of the name of the school rather than the curriculum being offered. In the event that parents actually do decide to send their children to St Hubris High School as opposed to St Aurum High, they also might do because St Hubris offers a different set of subjects. Likewise, Jebediah Tractor Agricultural School is more likely to offer agriculture than Jimmy Hammer Technical High.
The common curriculum exists and is provided because society demands a general level of competence from students who at the age of 15 could go into a myriad of occupations. Children leaving school need to be generalists rather than specialists.
In that respect, subjects like Maths, Physics, English, Chemistry etc. should be measured with standardised tests because it is generally recognised that general skills which we expect should be provided, should be able to be measured reasonably well. It is harder, if not impossible to measure the creative and performing arts, such as art, shop classes, music and what not.
What the IPA is proposing here by wanting to introduce competing private secondary school curriculums, is to stupefy and cloud the information given to parents making economic decisions. That’s bad from both a societal and market perspective.
14 Abolish the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA)
The job of ACMA apart from being charge of spectrum management (that is what frequencies various media companies can transmit on) is in charge of industry standards and codes of practice. In particular, News Corp hates these because it frequently falls foul of them. News Corp hates the idea that it simply can not put on whatever the heck it feels like. The IPA’s demand here is clearly to do whatever News Corp wants because just as the Liberal Party is illiberal and plays whatever song that its benefactors tell it to, the IPA shills for its benefactors and considering that the IPA was founded by Sir Keith Murdoch and Sir Bob Menzies, the pus-filled apple has fallen a very very short distance from the tree.
15 Eliminate laws that require radio and television broadcasters to be ‘balanced’. (achieved)
These never existed. There was nothing to eliminate. This is ironic given at the time that Fox News in the United State had as its motto “Fair And Balanced”; which it wasn’t. I think that the IPA thinks that Australia is America. We are not.
16 Abolish television spectrum licensing and devolve spectrum management to the common law
This is an utterly stupid and insensible demand. A spectrum licence lets an operator operate a range of radiocommunications devices (in this case a television transmitter) in a specific geographic area and specific frequency band. A spectrum licence lets the operator operate in the area and only in the area and frequency range that the licence allows. Devolving spectrum management to the common law immediately means that the benefits of a statutory regulator which assigns definite boundaries to the bandwidth which a broadcaster can operate in (like the Department of Lands keeps Torrens Title records of who owns what land), would be destroyed. This is a plan for confusion to rule the airwaves.
The IPA’s objection to television spectrum licensing has to do with the fact that in 2013, Sky News Australia was looking to break into the commercial Australian television market but the then Communications Minister Anthony Albanese, under pressure from Seven, Nine and Ten, was unhappy about opening up the television waves to another free-to-air station.
In the subsequent seven years, Lachlan Murdoch found his way onto the board of Ten Network Holdings and stripped it of all its sports assets before getting bored and leaving, and former Treasurer in the Howard Government Peter Costello, has termited his way onto the board of Nine Entertainment Co. which has transformed itself into a right-wing parody of its former self.
WIN Television has also in the meantime, prostrated itself before the feet of Sky News and kowtows to Sky News Australia and Sky News Regional TV is broadcast on many TV free-to-air channels across regional Australia. Whatever independence that WIN Television had, it has chosen to burn on the altar of short-term profit.
I do not think that this would be on a modern list of IPA demands as they have achieved their underlying objectives without having to do this.
17 End local content requirements for Australian television stations
I am certain that this demand is in this list because the IPA has been told to put it in by News Corp. News Corp would love to run a feed of Fox News on free-to-air television but probably can not due to local content rules. This is purely about profits of News Corp and nothing else.
18 Eliminate family tax benefits
The old regulations like the dependent spouse rebate have been repealed. The current taxation regime which includes Family Tax Benefit A and Family Tax Benefit B ends when children have reached the age of 8 years. It is already difficult for new parents to adjust to their new life and women especially have an interruption in their income, which has long-term consequences when it comes to superannuation accumulation. Family Tax Benefits try in part to offset this, but they are a mostly ineffective tool at trying to solve a problem.
The IPA however, has no concern about the problem; nor trying to solve it. It simply sees lost revenues and wants people to pay.
19 Abandon the paid parental leave scheme
The Parental Leave Pay scheme is a payment for up to 18 weeks so that new parents can have time and space to care for their new child. The IPA hates any kind of transfer payments because it sees all welfare as a dead loss on the economy. It would if it could, leave all unemployed people to starve and out the streets. It would also like to see new parents suffer. There is no other reason for this.
20 Means-test Medicare
Sir Robert Menzies and one of the founders of the IPA, successfully mobilised his newly founded Liberal Party (which he also helped to found) to defeat the National Health Service Bill 1948. Australia could have had a National Health Service by the end of 1949.
As it was, Menzies’ Liberal Party was elected to power at the 1949 General Election and he remained in the top job for 16 years; and never once introduced universal health care as a policy. Australia didn’t get a proper universal health care system until 1983.
The IPA has always been opposed to universal health care because as an economic terrorist organisation, they are fundamentally opposed to the rich paying anything whatsoever for the reasonable upkeep of the nation or any services which it is reasonable for the people of the Commonwealth to have.
This demand would be the first at dismantling the Medicare system as evidenced by the fact that the page which this list of demands came from openly regrets and shakes its fist at the existence of the Medicare system in the first place.
By means testing Medicare, you make people ineligible to claim benefits from the system. If people can not claim benefits from the system, they will demand to opt out of it and thus, once the system is degraded to the point where it can not function efficiently, then they would demand that Medicare be scrapped.
In this respect, the IPA is no better than ISIS as it actively wishes harm upon the people of the Commonwealth.
21 End all corporate welfare and subsidies by closing the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education
Is the IPA calling for Australia to become the ‘stupid country’? It isn’t materially true that “all corporate welfare” are the responsibility of the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education either.
This was probably aimed at what the IPA saw as unfair assistance to industries that weren’t funding it. To be fair, there’s not a whole heap of innovation or research in mining, banking, finance, or media; which are more than likely the IPA’s chief donors.
22 Introduce voluntary voting
We do not have very many civic duties. We have the duty to follow the laws of the States and Territories and the Commonwealth as laid out in the various Constitutions, we have the duty to submit tax returns, and we have the duty to vote in Elections.
Why therefore, would the IPA want to disrupt and dismantle a duty; which was learned through the demonstration of practical civic love by the nation's sons and daughters? Because fundamentally, the IPA hates the very idea of Commonwealth and it hates the idea that any has any duty to anyone else. Even that doesn't explain the IPA's motive here. The IPA hates the idea of the franchise being exercised by people who love the idea of Commonwealth and who have notions that they have civic philos and civic responsibility and more importantly, they hate the idea that ordinary citizens would use their franchise to actively vote for these things.
The IPA has learned from both the United Kingdom and the United States, that if you reduce the franchise to a mere voluntary activity, then not only does your political football team have to do less work by not bothering to even give a rip about the people in the middle of the political war but that apathy can be weaponised to drop people out of the system entirely.
If people think that the government isn't going to do anything for them and they see government as useless and not worth the effort to even show up at the polls, then you can still propagandise and weaponise your own supporters (by using some utterly rubbish message like faux nationalism or paying just enough lip service to religious matter so that you can turn churches into vending machines for votes, while at the same time urinating all over what they stand for), and you only need to convince about 30% of the population to vote for your cause instead of the 50% of the general public.
The main object of power is to retain power. Since the extension of the franchise and democracy is something which modern democracies no longer fight about, then that's the battlefield upon which achieving and legitimising power is fought upon. Voluntary voting isn't about notions of liberty and choice but rather, it is about hoping that people surrender that choice through idleness.
23 End mandatory disclosures on political donations
In 2021 we have seen a practical example of this play out. When the former Attorney-General Christian Porter namechecked himself in historical rape allegations, he then tried to sue for damages from the ABC despite the fact that they hadn't actually named him and that he had gotten out ahead of the curve first. Upon a betterment analysis, it was found that the alleged $1m in legal fees for his attack, had been paid by private parties into a blind trust; which gave him sufficient enough of an arm's length separation to claim utter ignorance.
Has this been through the regular channels, then more than likely this would have been reported under Section 44 obligations for MPs to declare their interests. However, this blind trust arrangement, made sure that nobody will ever find out who was backing him.
The IPA could very well be running all kinds of political shenaninigary behind the scene and we the people of the Commonwealth would be none the wiser. By asking to end mandatory disclosures, what they are asking for is for the people who engage and fund in the destruction of goods and services held in common, be free from being questioned.
24 End media blackout in final days of election campaigns
Again, the original proprietors of the Liberal Party were Sir Keith Murdoch and Sir Bob Menzies. The IPA would like for News Corp to be able to shill for their political wing without inference. To be fair, The Australian was kind of based on Das Reich and I am convinced that the Daily Telegraph, Herald-Sun, Courier-Mail and the Adelaide Advertiser have been moving closer in spirit to Der Stürmer which was deeply antisemitic and frequently semi-pornographic. The difference is that the News Corp tabloids have found new targets in African refugees and Islamic people.
25 End public funding to political parties
What does this mean? I have no idea what the internal arrangements are between News Corp, the IPA and the Liberal Party are but considering that both the IPA and the Liberal Party were set up in part by Sir Keith Murdoch and Sir Bob Menzies, I imagine that they are in a Friday club of sorts, similiar to the keiretsu system in Japan.
Almost certain if this demand was achieved, then the IPA would refuse to open up its own books or organise itself with a round-robin-thirty-xanatos-pileup-babushka-dolls. It would be as transparent as a bucket of concrete.
26 Remove anti-dumping laws
I can only think that the IPA hates Australian business. Removing anti-dumping laws would give companies licence to flood markets and ruin businesses. This is very very strange from a supposedly pro-business organisation.
27 Eliminate media ownership restrictions
One of the founders of the IPA was Sir Keith Murdoch. His son, Rupert, actively rejected and renounced his Australian citizenship and became a United States citizen, under the presidency of Ronald Reagan. I do not know to what degree Rupert Murdoch has an influence over the IPA but considering that he has spoken as a keynote speaker many times at their meetings, then I would think that it is non zero.
Eliminating media ownership restrictions, in terms of both the number, the cross ownership of tv, radio, print, the internet, and the citizenship requirements, would very much benefit Rupert personally. Again, I do not know to what extent that the tail wags the dog, or even who is the dog in this case.
28 Abolish the Foreign Investment Review Board
This is really where I wonder who the IPA works for. This is not about trying to encourage foreign investment to help Australian business grow and flourish but rather, removing the oversight that might allow governments to do anything to stop foreign power from doing adverse things to Australia. This is about shooting the sheriff so that the criminals can do more crime and bigger crime.
29 Eliminate the National Preventative Health Agency
I used to say that the chances of some major catastrophe happening in my lifetime was 1. Looking back over the long game of history, which saw 100 million people destroyed in the 65 years before I was born because a bunch of cousins couldn’t get along, would look like an anomaly if it wasn’t for the fact that we as humans just really really like butchering each other.
In the half-time break between the butchery, nature itself decided that it would like to have a go at butchering us and gave us the 1918-20 Flu Pandemic. That should have given the Commonwealth notice to establish some kind of national preventative health agency, but the Hughes Government pretended that the Flu didn’t exist and Billy Hughes was re-elected in 1921 on a campaign, having never even mentioned the Flu once except for his acceptance speech.
Also, given the last 2 years and COVID-19, undertaking this as a governmental policy would have been like surrendering to Hitler, nay paying Hitler to invade in 1939.
30 Cease subsidising the car industry (achieved)
On the 10th of December 2013, the then Treasurer Joe Hockey thundered from the floor of the House of Representatives that he intended to take away the subsidies being paid to the motor industry and when on to specifically dare Holden to leave the country. By the end of the week, all three motor manufacturers took up Mr Hockey’s dare and announced that they were all going to shut their doors.
This had interesting effects. Firstly, Ford Motor Co. announced that they were ending production of the Falcon and would duly do so by the end of 2016. Toyota would do likewise and end production of the Camry in quick fashion. Holden would also end production of the VF Commodore, abandon plans for the VJ Commodore and by the end of 2017 we had no real domestic motor manufacturing industry to speak of.
We also began to lose all of the supporting industries that used to supply parts and consumables because they no longer had a primary market to sell to. The general public also turned their back on the replacement for the VF Commodore and the German built ZB Commodore while quite excellent, was unloved because it wasn’t ours.
In the meantime, the Falcon ute on the last day, could have been had for $29,790. Even if you allow for inflation, the nearest equivalent that Ford would sell you is more expensive, has a vastly smaller tray bed, produces less power, is less competent, and is worse quality. Holden as a brand no longer exists. Toyota was able to reposition themselves in the marketplace and most abandon selling cheap cars altogether.
For every dollar given to the motor industry, it is estimated that due to the multiplier and knock-on effects down a host of supply chains, that the economy grew by more than $4. Now I know that this is nebulous and that I can not prove the complete taxation effects but if you spend $250bn in government transfer payments to get back $300bn in various taxes, simple logic tells me that you are ahead.
That wasn’t enough for the IPA. Because the motor industry had many unionised workplaces, this had to be smashed. Burning the jobs and the livelihoods of your political enemies (since on opening day you did declare political warfare) is an acceptable cost of war. That’s probably the ultimate reason why the IPA wanted this and achieved this.
Job done.
31 Formalise a one-in, one-out approach to regulatory reduction
What does this even mean? This appears to be borderline word salad; written by someone who just wanted to be included in a document.
32 Rule out federal funding for 2018 Commonwealth Games (failed)
Ha!
Brisbane held the 2018 Commonwealth Games and it was excellent. Brisbane also intends to hold the 2032 Olympic Games and I bet that it too will be excellent.
33 Deregulate the parallel importation of books
To be fair, there never really was a lot of regulation of the parallel importation of books. Australia is so far away from the rest of the world that bookshops get books from wherever they can and at the cheapest prices.
The reason why books are relatively expensive in Australia is not because of regulation but rather that there are very few publishing houses in Australia. It is not uncommon to see “Printed in Great Britain” or “Printed in the United States of America” in a lot of books that I buy.
This demand is like someone shouting at clouds.
34 End preferences for Industry Super Funds in workplace relations laws (achieved)
This is where the IPA openly lied in its list of demands. From the 1st of July 2005 it became illegal for an employer to try to influence their employees’ choice of super fund. From that date, employees could choose the fund into which their future superannuation guarantee contributions are made.
What the IPA is actually trying to do with this demand, is convince the then future Abbott Government, to make it hard for employees to make the choice to put their superannuation into an industry super fund. This demand is purely to do with attacking the unions and continues on that great game of political warfare.
35 Legislate a cap on government spending and tax as a percentage of GDP
Let’s just assume for a second that this happened. A hostile power (like a China) which is intent on doing damage with rocket-bombs and/or launching an invasion force, would impose upon itself no such limit on government spending and tax as a percentage of GDP. I must ask, does the IPA work for a foreign hostile power?
If a government shouldn’t have a cap on government spending and tax as a percentage of GDP as a preventative measure in times or war, then why should there be a cap on government spending and tax as a percentage of GDP it that same government wants to win the peace?
For everything that the Morrison Government may have done wrong or right during the 2020/21 SARS COV-2 pandemic, by not having a cap on government spending and tax as a percentage of GDP, it was able to deploy measures like JobKeeper as a safeguard against wrecking the economy upon the shoals of calamity. Quite demonstrably this demand is a stupid demand as is driven by the notion that the IPA's members feel that they have no responsibility to the rest of the citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia; despite the fact that their wealth is derived from the stability of the Commonwealth.
36 Legislate a balanced budget amendment which strictly limits the size of budget deficits and the period the federal government can be in deficit
This demand is just Demand 35 reworded; probably to pad out this listicle. Someone probably decided that they needed 75 items and between them, the three foolish monkeys whooped and hollered and threw poop until they got to 75.
37 Force government agencies to put all of their spending online in a searchable database
Given the car park rorts affair in which $121m was spent by the Australian federal government made to build car parks near train stations in almost exclusively Liberal Party held electorates, or the sports rorts affair in which $102m was spent under similar circumstances, I too would like to see this. Curiously, even though the Morrison Government promised a Federal ICAC as part of the 2019 Election campaign, it dropped it on the basis that the government was concerned with other things. I suspect that it was more worried about what an ICAC might find out.
38 Repeal plain packaging for cigarettes and rule it out for all other products, including alcohol and fast food
Why? To be fair, the packaging of cigarettes and the establishment of brands is important to the sale of a product. The problem is that the carrying costs of people smoking and then needing medical treatment later in life, is borne by the general public. The IPA in principle hates the idea of public universal health care as it states in the preamble to this list of demands (“Despite the many obvious problems of socialised health care”) so I can only assume that in its perfect world, it likes the idea of people having the unfettered choice to choose to smoke and the bear the consequences of that choice themselves and suffer because of it.
This sounds like a sadist demand, from an organisation which hates the public and would actively choose to see people harmed; presumably for entertainment purposes.
39 Reintroduce voluntary student unionism at universities (achieved)
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2005-12-10/joyce-blasts-colleagues-over-vsu-vote/758564
“The Senate passed the contentious VSU legislation late yesterday and the new rules come into force from the middle of next year.”
- ABC News, 10th Dec 2005
It’s not often that I find myself agreeing with Barnaby Joyce but in this case, while he was still Senator for Queensland and wanted to represent his constituency, he had this to say:
“This was driven by a cabal of people who you could see were also in the chamber from the Lower House sitting at the back, who are driving this issue out of a political some sort of political nirvana that they want to achieve, rather than out of the impacts that this will have on the ground,” Senator Joyce said.
“It’s about the detritus of a former political campaign that’s been carted like some apocryphal dead pet, into the Parliament and then paraded round.”
And here 7 years’ later (2005 to 2012) the IPA had copied and pasted this into a list of demands as if they didn’t even bother to read their own previous list of demands.
It’s bad enough to make stupid demands but when you make a demand which already exists, you have to wonder about the intelligence or effort of the writer.
40 Introduce a voucher scheme for secondary schools
One on hand the IPA wants to remove corporate welfare and subsidies (see 21); yet here they want to introduce a scheme of corporate welfare and subsidies but specifically for secondary schools. What’s going on here?
This has been specifically worded to appeal to the selfishness of parents. This could be introduced under the mantra of ‘choice’ but in reality, the poorer kids’ parents have no such choice. On top of this, Government Departments of Education are more likely to be unionised than private ones, as private schools are on the whole, attended by students whose parents already hate the public system.
Private Secondary Schools (which are usually legacy pieces of churches and which in the whole have little to do with the churches which started them) are very much vehicles for private economic apartheid but subsidised by the public coin. I am all for public education, but it has to be that, public education. What the IPA is demanding here, is that the private schools which are often the signalling networks by which the business world can tell who they would like to employ (because it is illegal to discriminate on the grounds of race) and who they can immediately eliminate. The IPA is demanding a government subsidy of the Old Boy Network on the public coin.
Hypocrisy much?
41 Repeal the alcopops tax
Here’s a thing:
“We found that there was a 46 per cent decline in Australian youth drinking between 2004 and 2016. With consumption dropping in a lot of high-income countries that didn’t change their taxation, this decline probably wasn’t entirely because of the alcopops tax. However, amongst all youth the consumption of alcopops (66 per cent) declined more than spirits (48 per cent), beer (46 per cent) and wine (33 per cent).”
- Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, ANU, 21st May 2020
In other words, taxation which artificially shifted the supply curve for a good (pre-mixed alcoholic drinks) upwards and the market responded by finding a new equilibrium position. Probably much harder to examine will be the direct numbers of admissions to Accident and Emergency wards as a direct result of this.
One of the outcomes of the second fundamental theorem of welfare economics (which doesn’t have to do with “welfare” in the way that the public understands it) is that taxation and transfer within a market can achieve practically any desired end outcome that one desires provided all of the inputs for supply and demand curve have been properly manipulated.
One can only assume that the IPA likes seeing more drunk kiddies in A&E or that their donors run companies which sell alcopops.
42 Introduce a special economic zone in the north of Australia including:
a) Lower personal income tax for residents
b) Significantly expanded 457 Visa programs for workers
c) Encourage the construction of dams
Demand 42a is Constitutionally Illegal under Section 51(ii) which gives the parliament the power to:
“have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to:” “taxation; but so as not to discriminate between States or parts of States;”
Demand 42b is a direct attempt to undercut wages and was probably directed by one of the suspected IPA’s benefactors, Gina Rinehart.
Demand 42c is kind of a nonsensical wish that has just been thrown into the air, like a tuft of grass to see which way the wind blows.
43 Repeal the mining tax (achieved)
If the Resource Super Profits Tax had not been gutted and then repealed, then it would have raised $34.6 billion.
I get it. According to according to disclosures made to the Supreme Court of New South Wales Supreme court under subpoena, Gina Rinehart’s company, Hancock Prospecting, donated $2.3m to the IPA in 2016 and $2.2m in 2017. That says that the IPA, rather than being a “think tank” operates more like a vending machine. Put in a dollar and get political policy.
There’s nothing necessarily wrong with this in principle because political lobbying and organising is literally the point of political parties and lobby groups but deliberately savaging the federal budget for private gain, is just dumb and selfish. This is open plutocracy. It’s like there’s a big club and the general public are not allowed entry. It is probably just mere coincidence that a club is also the instrument that you use if you want to belt someone over the back of the head and cause them harm.
44 Devolve environmental approvals for major projects to the states (achieved)
Where I live in the state of New South Wales, the New South Wales Environment Protection Authority already sits within the Department of Planning, Industry and Environment as a statutory board.
Again, the IPA can’t be bothered to do any research into reality. Once looks like an accident. Multiple times looks like the writers are a pack of idiots and dangerous ones at that.
45 Introduce a single rate of income tax with a generous tax-free threshold
One of the odd things about money is that although you’d think that the more of it you have, the more that you are likely to spend, that can only go so far. Someone who is on so low an income that they lead a hand to mouth existence, is very likely to spend every dollar that they get. Someone who is on multiples of the average wage, reaches some point where they although they could but fancier dinners and better stuff, they simply do not. They save their left-over money. The actual utility of money, that is the use that can be derived from that next dollar, decreases by some amount the more dollars that you have.
Thus, the best designed taxation system will be one which doesn’t tax the poor very much if anything (because the poor have no money to begin with) but does tax the rich at increasing rates. That last dollar is less likely to be missed or even noticed that it is missed, by Lord Puffington than Scabby Harry The Tramp. A single rate of income tax immediately imposes a higher rate of burden to those who have lower incomes than those who have higher incomes because the utility of money decreases as income goes up. Eventually the utility of money is tiny because people who have lots of it, can already satisfy their needs and desires for things. There are only so many groceries that one can buy in a week.
If I can explain that concept in two paragraphs, then we have to question why the IPA would want to demand a seemingly less than brilliant system. Immediately we have to ask who it is that they work for and what we find is that they are effectively a union for the rich, demanding the punishment of the poor.
46 Cut company tax to an internationally competitive rate of 25 per cent
A company is an artificial person, who isn’t real. As a person, a company can not get married, it can not go to a restaurant, it can not take a walk in the sunshine, it can not love and be loved. Companies as persons, can enter into contracts, they can appoint agents to act on their behalf, they can make economic decisions. The essential purpose and the reason for the existence of a company is to own things. They are if you will, a collective ownership instrument, which is designed to provide benefits to the owners of the instrument. As they are not real persons, then they can and in many cases already are used for the purposes of tax minimisation.
Company Tax is levied on the profits that a company generates, which is the difference between its revenues and expenses. As we already have an artificial instrument, which can and does manipulate what it declares, then arguing about the rates of Company Tax, is more of a bargaining chip which has been thrown into the ring.
See demand 45 for the motive as to why they’d want to do this.
47 Cease funding the Australia Network
I suspect that this is the IPA trying to kill the ABC by death of a thousand cuts.
In the 2019/20 Federal Budget, the ABC’s budget for all international operations was a paltry A$11 million. Basically, this amounts to the ABC having maybe one or two correspondents in the Asia-Pacific Region and practically zero presence. ABC Australia exists as a pay-TV channel instead of the large TV service that it could have been. The radio presence of Australia in the Pacific has also been reduced to just FM re-transmitters on local services; instead of the short-wave radio presence which used to exist.
If ABC Australia is about projecting good news about Australia into Asia, then $11m year is pathetic. There is a very good argument to be made that the network is so useless that it should be cut. Unfortunately, that means conceding the space to the China Central Television (CCTV) service. CCTV has an overseas budget of about A$3 billion. That’s fine but I would never have guessed that the IPA was in fact tacit supporters of the Communist Party of China and would prefer that Chinese television is broadcast into the Asia-Pacific rather than Australian interests.
48 Privatise Australia Post
Again, this is the IPA with its stupid ideological bent, trying to kill the government services by death of a thousand cuts. This is about deciding who gets the benefit of profits by selling off the stuff that the people on Australia collectively own in commonwealth. In the olden days, taking people’s stuff so that you can sell it, used to be called either ‘stealing’ or ‘theft’.
The post office is a thing that we the people ought to have. Privatising it ensures that just like banks which are private, branches will close. Why do you hate us so?
Defund, degrade, downsize, destroy, privatise, steal. Amen.
49 Privatise Medibank (achieved)
Medibank Private was the bone thrown out to the electorate by the Fraser Government when they saw that the public quite liked the idea of universal health care. It was still well short of what Medicare would be and was basically the Medicare system white-anted and gutted before it could be implemented. Sir Bob Menzies killed off what could have been Medicare while in opposition in 1946. Australia had won the war and the Liberal Party damn well made sure that it was going to lose the peace and surrender the blessings of peace to the powerful.
Medibank Private was and is a profitable company. That’s a strange concept. Why would a government with a profitable asset want to give up that profitable asset when it could have returned profits to consolidated revenue? Because the IPA would prefer that private profits be returned to private hands.
In the olden days, we might have called the stealing of public stuff for private use, stealing. Maybe stealing isn’t morally wrong if you are already morally bankrupt.
50 Break up the ABC and put out to tender each individual function
51 Privatise SBS
I would suggest that this has been a standing item on the IPA’s list of demands since Day One. The IPA only came into existence after Sir Keith Murdoch, the grubby proprietor of Herald And Weekly Times Ltd. (the forefather of News Corp) resigned from (or rather was in all but name, fired from) the post of Director General of Information for the Menzies UAP Government; for as recorded in Hansard, trying to “out-Goebbels Goebbels”. When you are in charge of information which is being transmitted to the general public and the de facto head of the ABC and you are accused to being worse than a Nazi, then something is going on.
Murdoch had tried to kill off an independent ABC before it began. He actively campaigned against the ABC from being allowed to have a news desk because he saw it as coming into direct competition with his newspapers, which is why the regulations were put into place so that the first ABC News Bulletin of the day wouldn’t come on the radio until 7:45am and after people had had a chance to read the early morning edition of the newspapers.
Recently the IPA has tried to get its members onto the board of the ABC, progressively defund the ABC, and rot the national broadcaster from the inside.
I think that this counts as economic terrorism because as proven with CSL and Telstra, once national assets are privatised, we are not getting them back. Hence the reason why the NBN has been completed, not for $8bn and by the end of 2002 (as the Telstra Annual General Statement said in 1996 before it was privatised – when it wanted to build the National Fibre Optic Network), but not quite 20 years’ late and more than 10 times over that initial projected budget. We have also lost more than half a trillion dollars in missing dividends which were never returned to the Commonwealth but snuck away into private hands. Also, CSL would have been really handy to make the vaccines to fight the Covid-19 pandemic, instead of the Federal Government having to scrounge around like pathetic little pauper.
Privatising the ABC and SBS, will ensure that the general public of the Commonwealth of Australia never gets to see the corruption being played out in parliament because there is no way in hell that News Corp, Nine Entertainment Co., Seven West, or whatever Channel 10 has become, would be ever likely to report truthfully (if at all) ever again.
That’s what the IPA has always wanted, a safe space for its backers to repeatedly hurt the general public and return most people to a kind of indentured pleb scum class; so that the few get away with everything. Money speaks for money; the devil for his own.
52 Reduce the size of the public service from current levels of more than 260,000 to at least the 2001 low of 212,784
This is purely about reducing the costs of government and to make the instrument of government less able to do the work which we expect of it.
Defund, degrade, downsize, destroy, privatise, steal. Amen.
53 Repeal the Fair Work Act
54 Allow individuals and employers to negotiate directly terms of employment that suit them
The reason why the Liberal Party of Australia exists, according to the initial documents, is the fighting of ‘political warfare’ (its words) against the Labor Party and organised labour.
The IPA time and time again, wants to reduce all workers to starvation wages, to make them suffer by destroying any and all services, and to return the benefits to the rich and powerful.
These two demands are asking to punch workers in the face, to reduce people to little more than paid slaves, to reassign power to those who pay wages, and then to punch workers in the face even harder.
I can not show enough utter contempt for these two demands without rapacious amounts of swearing. I want the IPA dead as an organisation and demands like this are why.
The fruit of labour should go to those who actually do the labour. These demands throw that into the toilet.
55 Encourage independent contracting by overturning new regulations designed to punish contractors
Even at the time, this was a demand which made no sense. There were no “new regulations designed to punish contractors” and therefore no need to overturn something which never ever existed.
This is posturing on the part of the IPA, which looks like the song of a madman and a poor player who struts and frets his hour upon the stage and is then heard no more. This the sound of an idiot; full of sound and fury; signifying nothing.
56 Abolish the Baby Bonus
To be honest I have no idea why the Newborn Upfront Payment exists. $575 is really not that much and doesn't even cover a month's rent in any capital city in Australia. There were 294,369 children born in Australia in 2020; which means that this whole program costs just $170m.
This is almost like arguing about an edge case, just for the purposes of padding out a list. I would probably also abolish the 'baby bonus' but I have no idea why this is a headline demand.
57 Abolish the First Home Owners’ Grant
This is one thing I agree with. The First Home Owners’ Grant which is a through payment from the Federal Government and administered by the states, is a $7,000 prop-up of prices in an already exclusionary housing market. There are heaps of areas in which taxation law in Australia is more favourable to investors than is the case in other countries and it shows in the fact that we have the third worst market in the world when it comes to housing affordability.
58 Allow the Northern Territory to become a state (achieved)
This was achieved in 1901. Section 121 of the Constitution already prescribes how states are admitted into the Commonwealth.
"The Parliament may admit to the Commonwealth or establish new States, and may upon such admission or establishment make or impose such terms and conditions, including the extent of representation in either House of the Parliament, as it thinks fit."
- Section 121
Demanding a thing which already happened more than a hundred years' before, is stupid beyond comprehension. What is the IPA trying to do here? Are they just bereft of people who actually bother to do any research whatsoever?
59 Halve the size of the Coalition front bench from 32 to 16
This is where the IPA has pretended to slip up. This is not a matter of legislation but of party policy. Really this is the IPA making demands of the party that they think they have a right to bully. The sad thing is that the Liberal Party, refuses to stand to this bullying because it is morally bankrupt and has no spine.
For a brief time in the Whitlam Government, the entire government front bench was just 2 people. This demand bears no relation to the kosmos whatsoever.
60 Remove all remaining tariff and non-tariff barriers to international trade
Where exactly? Does the IPA think that the Australian Federal Government has jurisdiction over other sovereign nations? Perhaps they simply mean that they want tariffs removed for goods being imported but why? Does the IPA want to favour overseas goods, rather than Australian ones? Why do they hate Australian business and want to punish them so?
61 Slash top public servant salaries to much lower international standards, like in the United States
It was the IPA who originally demanded that the salaries of the management in the public service be raised, in order to attract the best captains of industry. Evidently, this demand is just a tacit admission that their original set of demands was wrong and that the kinds of people who you get running private businesses, are the same knaves who degrade the public service.
In general, most people who work in the public service, who actually do the real work in the public service, have higher ideals than the jobbers who work in business. The public service because it generally attracts lower salaries than private industry, is generally populated by people who want to make the country better.
62 End all public subsidies to sport and the arts
63 Privatise the Australian Institute of Sport
As the Commonwealth of Australia is a corporation sole, to which we all have a say in how it works, why are we not allowed to have things which are of cultural import?
The IPA seems to know the cost of everything and the value of nothing and because of this, they value nothing. They certainly do no value the cultural life of the nation. In fact, if they got their way, we would be reduced to just a commercial enterprise and to be honest, I don’t really see what the value is in such a nation.
64 End all hidden protectionist measures, such as preferences for local manufacturers in government tendering
As I write this in 2021 (now 2022), the entire of the L1 Tram Network in Sydney is currently out of service because we are chained to importing either replacement trams or replacement parts from a foreign company. Has those trams been built by an Australian firm, then we could have gone to that firm and simply have had the parts replaced.
Also, as I write this in 2021 (now 2022), Sydney Trains is currently considering buying foreign made trains as part of its usual replacement and upgrade schedule. The NSW State Government has waived usual demands for safety regulations and would also be blown about by the vicissitudes of fate if something similar should happen to the trains as has happened to the trams.
The obvious question of why you would want to remove preferences for local manufacturers in government tenders, needs to be asked. Surely having local manufacturers build local infrastructure is not only a stimulus package because money is being sent into the economy rather than overseas as a leakage but it also as multiplier effects as manufacturers need to rely on other suppliers.
The only reason that I can come up with is that the IPA in its war against unionised labour, hates the Australian citizenry so much that it would rather send money overseas than to Australian workers.
65 Abolish the Office for Film and Literature Classification
66 Rule out any government-supported or mandated internet censorship
Why would you want to do this? Does the IPA want to show pornography and violence to children? It would not surprise me if there were twisted depraved people at the organisation who would wish to. Why else would they make these demands?
67 Means test tertiary student loans
On one hand the IPA at Demand 40 wants to “introduce a voucher scheme for secondary schools”; yet here, they want to means test student loans, so that presumably they can stop some people from going to university.
This says to me that the IPA really really hates poor people going to university, it hates people moving upwards through the social order, and it absolutely hates the idea that there should be any public education whatsoever.
Taken together, I must assume that these two demands are in the realm of social engineering; where they intend to let the rich do what they will and let the poor suffer what they must.
68 Allow people to opt out of superannuation in exchange for promising to forgo any government income support in retirement
This is ****ing evil.
Already during the pandemic, we had people who were having to dip into superannuation because they’d lost their jobs. This suggestion basically says that the Commonwealth cares not for the well-being of its elderly citizens and refuses to do so. This would create a visible class of homeless elderly people, which since the IPA feels as though it has no responsibility to the nation, it would choose to throw out into the street.
69 Immediately halt construction of the National Broadband Network and privatise any sections that have already been built
Government owned and operated Telstra in their 1995 Annual Report, announced they would build the National Fibre Optic Network at a cost of $8bn by the end of 2002. Instead, the NBN was finally built at a cost of $51bn just a mere 16 years later.
The reason why they never built the NFON was that the then Howard Government privatised Telstra and it simply either couldn’t or wouldn’t raise the capital to do the job.
In the meantime, all of the dividends which would have gone to the government and offset the amount of taxation that we all would have paid, was funnelled into the hands of private investors. This was due to the IPA making similar demands back then and by my reckoning, this has cost the taxpayer some $572bn in lost dividends.
So not only is privatising the NBN a bad business decision, it is also designed to cripple future governments. It is crap like this that makes me think that the IPA is one step away from functionally being a terrorist organisation.
70 End all government funded Nanny State advertising
Exactly who dictates what is this loaded term of “Nanny State advertising”? What kind of dog-whistling was going on here?
71 Reject proposals for compulsory food and alcohol labelling
People have a right to know what is in the products they buy. In some cases, the food and drink that they buy might have the potential to cause serious health conditions. Not only does the IPA want this kind of thing done away with, but I also suspect that there might be people who are such moral turpitude that they find the whole idea of people dying hilarious.
Besides which, isn't this just Demand 38 reworded?
72 Privatise the CSIRO
Along with basically wanting to defund public education, they IPA also wants to defund the practical application of public education. The reason why the CSIRO exists, is to find and develop those technologies which are useful to industry going forward.
73 Defund Harmony Day
I can understand why the IPA would want to defund Harmony Day given that item 4 was to repeal Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act. Harmony Day was first introduced by the then Howard Government to unifying notion of an Australian-ness within multicultural policy and was sparked by analyses carried out by Eureka Research in 1998 on behalf of the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs. '
Since that report, Australia went into two wars, had race riots in Cronulla and the IPA themselves went into bat for News Corp with regards racial issues. More recently, Dr Bella d'Arbera has written extensively about what the IPA thinks should be promoted and to be honest, it is only a short hop away from, white supremacy. Clearly the IPA has a problem with power shifting away from its funders, and it acts accordingly.
74 Close the Office for Youth
This is very strange when you consider that Dr Bella d'Arbera in addition to wanting to deny that the history of this nation exists, also wants to dictate what the curricula of schools are.
The Office of Youth in addition to looking at issues of education and public health, also tries to help with the issues which extend as a result of things like systemic poverty. Yet again, the IPA wants to kneecap anyone who might get any assistance whatsoever from the government.
75 Privatise the Snowy-Hydro Scheme
Again, this has no other aim than returning profits to private people because the IPA’s benefactors resent the existence of government and want to take back everything that they think is theirs.
. . .
Epilogue:
To some degree the statement that if implemented these 75 ideas would radically transform Australia. The overwhelming majority of these ideas would make Australia a worse place and the implementation of these ideas since the publication of this nasty piece of work, has made Australia worse.
I have I idea which would radically transform Australia for the better.
76 Recognise the IPA as an economic terrorist organisaton and actively destroy everything it stands for.
In the 78 years of the IPA’s existence, I can not honestly think of a single plan ever put forward by it which improves or benefits the Commonwealth of Australia or the majority of its citizens. I live in a country and a Commonwealth and I personally like the idea that we all work together to create a better country for ourselves and the people who will inherit this place after us. The IPA does not. It only works for the benefit of the few, at the expense of the people who work and build this country.
It is a menace and I think is more damaging to the country than any foreign power. The IPA is an active enemy of the people working from within. I hate it.
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