*Update to post. It’s fair enough that the comments are focussing on why I’m not support this or that. I highlighted and bolded one issue that I could definitely support. I didn’t highlight others that I thought needed discussion because I didn’t outright support them. But have subsequently done so. I do however think the discussion should be about the impact of the agenda and not about what I think.
On the 4 April, in the great stone-and-glass National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, luminaries descended to celebrate the 70th Anniversary of the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), Australia’s leading free-market think-tank.
Tickets to the gala dinner cost a minimum of AU$500 (£340) per head, and an auction to raise funds for the IPA featured prizes including a guided tour of the Reagan Ranch in California and a behind the scenes Fox News “experience” in New York City, including a meeting with host Bill O’Reilly . Among the speakers were Rupert Murdoch, journalist Andrew Bolt, billionaire mining magnate Gina Rinehart, and a man named Tony Abbott, Leader of the Opposition.
Tony Abbott, Gina Rinehart and Rupert Murdoch took turns sharing the stage. Andrew Bolt (a conservative columnist for the Melbourne Herald Sun) was MC. By accounts, Abbott praised his fellow key-note speakers, especially Murdoch, and promised the crowd a “big yes” to many of the think tank’s list of 75 policies to radically transform Australia.
It is worth remembering that Tony Abbott and his conservative Liberal Party, David Cameron and the UK Conservatives and John Key and the National Party are all advised by the PR gurus Crosby Textor.
It’s also important to note that this dinner and the following ideas were the brain children of a right wing think tank. But it’s no coincidence that these three men and their parties share much of the following agenda. I wonder how many of these ideas (which have relevance here) will find their way into National’s agenda if they win another government term? I have marked the ideas which I think have merit.
- Means-test Medicare
- Eliminate family tax benefits
- Abandon the paid parental leave scheme
- Abolish the Baby Bonus
- Abolish the First Home Owners’ Grant
- Repeal plain packaging for cigarettes and rule it out for all other products, including alcohol and fast food
- Repeal the alcopops tax
- Reject proposals for compulsory food and alcohol labelling
- Repeal the Fair Work Act
- Allow individuals and employers to negotiate directly terms of employment that suit them
- Introduce a single rate of income tax
- Return income taxing powers to the states
- Cut company tax to 25 per cent
- Cease subsidising the car industry
- Abolish the Foreign Investment Review Board
- Abolish the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
- Abolish the Office for Film and Literature Classification
- End local content requirements for Australian television stations
- Break up the ABC and put out to tender each individual function
- Devolve environmental approvals for major projects to the states
- End mandatory disclosures on political donations
- End all corporate welfare and subsidies by closing the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education
- Immediately halt construction of the National Broadband Network and privatise any sections that have already been built
- Privatise Australia Post, Medibank and SBS
- Halve the size of the Coalition front bench from 32 to 16
- Reduce the size of the public service from current levels of more than 260,000 to at least the 2001 low of 212,784
- Slash top public servant salaries
- Force government agencies to put all of their spending online in a searchable database
- Repeal the carbon tax, and don’t replace it (if it is replaced by another costly scheme, most of the benefits will be undone).
- Abolish the Department of Climate Change
- Abolish the Clean Energy Fund and repeal the renewable energy target
- Withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol
- Repeal the mining tax
- Privatise the CSIRO and the Snowy-Hydro Scheme
- Abolish the Commonwealth Grants Commission
- Introduce fee competition to Australian universities
- Means test tertiary student loans
- Repeal the National Curriculum
- Introduce competing private secondary school curricula
- Reintroduce voluntary student unionism at universities
- Introduce a voucher scheme for secondary schools
- Abolish the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA)
- Eliminate ‘balance’ laws for radio and television broadcasters
- Abolish television spectrum licensing and devolve spectrum management to the common law
- Eliminate media ownership restrictions
- Cease funding the Australia Network
- Rule out government-supported or mandated internet censorship
- End public funding to political parties
- Introduce voluntary voting
- End media blackout in final days of election campaigns
- Formalise a one-in, one-out approach to regulatory reduction
- Legislate a cap on government spending and tax as a % of GDP
- Legislate a balanced budget amendment which limits the size of budget deficits and the period the government can be in deficit
- Allow people to opt out of superannuation in exchange for promising to forgo any government income support in retirement
- Encourage independent contracting by overturning new regulations designed to punish contractors
- End all hidden protectionist measures, such as preferences for local manufacturers in government tendering
- Remove all tariff and non-tariff barriers to international trade
- Remove anti-dumping laws
- Deregulate the parallel importation of books
- End preferences for Industry Super Funds in workplace laws
- Privatise the Australian Institute of Sport
- Rule out federal funding for 2018 Commonwealth Games
- End all public subsidies to sport and the arts
- Eliminate the National Preventative Health Agency
- End all government funded ‘Nanny State’ advertising
- De-fund Harmony Day and close the Office for Youth
- Repeal Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act
- Allow the Northern Territory to become a state
- Introduce a special economic zone for northern Australia including:
a) Lower personal income tax for residents
b) Significantly expanded 457 Visa programs for workers
c) Encourage the construction of dams.
