Want to know what the Australian Federal Coalition's real policies are? Here's a list Opposition Leader Tony Abbott appears to endorse.

Excerpt from Tony Abbott’s 5 April 2013 Address to Institute of Public Affairs 70th Anniversary Dinner:

So, ladies and gentlemen, that is a big “yes” to many of the 75 specific policies you urged upon me in that particular issue of the magazine….

The Institute of Public Affairs 75 radical ideas to transform Australia published in August 2012:

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.

2 Abolish the Department of Climate Change

3 Abolish the Clean Energy Fund

4 Repeal Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act

5 Abandon Australia's bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council

6 Repeal the renewable energy target

7 Return income taxing powers to the states

8 Abolish the Commonwealth Grants Commission

9 Abolish the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission

10 Withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol

11 Introduce fee competition to Australian universities

12 Repeal the National Curriculum

13 Introduce competing private secondary school curriculums

14 Abolish the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA)

15 Eliminate laws that require radio and television broadcasters to be 'balanced'

16 Abolish television spectrum licensing and devolve spectrum management to the common law

17 End local content requirements for Australian television stations

18 Eliminate family tax benefits

19 Abandon the paid parental leave scheme

20 Means-test Medicare

21 End all corporate welfare and subsidies by closing the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education

22 Introduce voluntary voting

23 End mandatory disclosures on political donations

24 End media blackout in final days of election campaigns

25 End public funding to political parties

26 Remove anti-dumping laws

27 Eliminate media ownership restrictions

28 Abolish the Foreign Investment Review Board

29 Eliminate the National Preventative Health Agency

30 Cease subsidising the car industry

31 Formalise a one-in, one-out approach to regulatory reduction

32 Rule out federal funding for 2018 Commonwealth Games

33 Deregulate the parallel importation of books

34 End preferences for Industry Super Funds in workplace relations laws

35 Legislate a cap on government spending and tax as a percentage of GDP

36 Legislate a balanced budget amendment which strictly limits the size of budget deficits and the period the federal government can be in deficit

37 Force government agencies to put all of their spending online in a searchable database

38 Repeal plain packaging for cigarettes and rule it out for all other products, including alcohol and fast food

39 Reintroduce voluntary student unionism at universities

40 Introduce a voucher scheme for secondary schools

41 Repeal the alcopops tax

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

43 Repeal the mining tax

44 Devolve environmental approvals for major projects to the states

45 Introduce a single rate of income tax with a generous tax-free threshold

46 Cut company tax to an internationally competitive rate of 25 per cent

47 Cease funding the Australia Network

48 Privatise Australia Post

49 Privatise Medibank

50 Break up the ABC and put out to tender each individual function 
51 Privatise SBS 
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

53 Repeal the Fair Work Act

54 Allow individuals and employers to negotiate directly terms of employment that suit them

55 Encourage independent contracting by overturning new regulations designed to punish contractors

56 Abolish the Baby Bonus

57 Abolish the First Home Owners' Grant

58 Allow the Northern Territory to become a state

59 Halve the size of the Coalition front bench from 32 to 16

60 Remove all remaining tariff and non-tariff barriers to international trade

61 Slash top public servant salaries to much lower international standards, like in the United States

62 End all public subsidies to sport and the arts

63 Privatise the Australian Institute of Sport

64 End all hidden protectionist measures, such as preferences for local manufacturers in government tendering

65 Abolish the Office for Film and Literature Classification

66 Rule out any government-supported or mandated internet censorship

67 Means test tertiary student loans 

68 Allow people to opt out of superannuation in exchange for promising to forgo any government income support in retirement

69 Immediately halt construction of the National Broadband Network and privatise any sections that have already been built

70 End all government funded Nanny State advertising

71 Reject proposals for compulsory food and alcohol labelling

72 Privatise the CSIRO

73 Defund Harmony Day

74 Close the Office for Youth

75 Privatise the Snowy-Hydro Scheme

Menzies House and Young Libs discuss repealing child labour laws for working class young attending public schools

 

one should also understand that education is not for everyone

 

The need to create a Third World underclass in Australia according to one of the Abbott-Bernardi heirs being hot housed by Menzies House, 15 November 2010:

 

It is an unfortunate reality that our bureaucratic education system is trapping the poorest Australians into a cycle of dependency. Children born into poverty are maliciously trapped into a spider web of economic hardship and social unrest which they cannot escape because of a bureaucratic school system which fails to give them the only chance they possibly have of creating a better life for themselves.
As they have no prospects for work in an increasingly white-collar workforce, these young Australians are forced onto the welfare rolls from which they never leave, establishing a cycle of dependency that is both economically and morally irresponsible…..

In a country with a high level of economic mobility, even the poorest among us can strive for brilliant things, but unfortunately that can’t happen if one is trapped in failing schools that only entrench poverty. Whilst the need for a world-class education is paramount, one should also understand that education is not for everyone. For children who are trapped in schools that entrench poverty and add no educational value, they would clearly be better served by working from a young age and earning money that might help them reach a better tomorrow.

If a poor child were able to work from the age of 8 to 16 years old, they would accumulate enough money to take a family out of poverty. But not only does working solve the financial problems of poor children, it engenders a work ethic that has the potential to transform them into productive members of the workforce who contribute to society as opposed to the social outcasts they would have been had they remained at school.

A selection of Wikileaks' Stratfor emails for your edification and amusement

The Business of STRATFOR

After fifteen years in business it surprises me sometimes how many people wonder about who we are, who funds us, and what we do.  The media refers to us as a think tank, a political risk consultancy, a security company and worse--academics. The Russian media calls us part of the CIA. Arab countries say we are Israelis. It’s wild.  The only things we haven’t been called is a hardware store or Druids.  Given this confusion, I thought it might be useful to occasionally write to our members about the business of STRATFOR, on topics ranging from our business model to how we gather intelligence. 

Let me start with basics.  STRATFOR is a publishing company and it publishes one product—our online intelligence service.  STRATFOR focuses on one subject, international relations.  It uses intelligence rather than journalistic methods to collect information (a topic for a later discussion) and geopolitics as an analytic method for understanding the world.

Stratfor currently has about 292,000 paying subscribers, divided between individual subscribers and institutional ones.  This inflates our subscriber base.  There are many organizations that buy site licenses for all or many of their employees.  We know that most of them never read us.  From a strictly factual point of view, 292,000 paid readers is the number.  Practically it is less but we don’t know how much less.  On the other hand, our free material, two weekly pieces that are sent to our free list and then circulates virally as they say, has been estimated to reach about 2.2 million readers each week.  Where our paid subscription is certainly increased by an unknown degree, this is probably and accurate number. 

The reason that I can be so casual about these numbers is that we do not allow advertising in Stratfor.  If we did, we would be obsessed by the accuracy.  But we don’t for two reasons, one of which is not that we are concerned about advertisers skewing our objectivity.  We are too ornery for that.  The reason is business.  We are in the business of gathering intelligence and delivering it to readers.  Being in another business, selling our readership to advertisers is too complicated for my simple brain.  Plus we would wind up not only depending on my dubious business acumen, but on the acumen of our advertisers.  Second, advertising on the internet doesn’t come close to paying for the cost of content production.  Content aggregators like Google take free content from others and advertise against that.  That’s great business.  But when you are actually producing content, advertising simply won’t cover the costs.

We are therefore one of the few original content producers to be making money by simply selling subscriptions on the web without advertising.  I’m pretty proud of that, in a world where experts say it can’t be done, and I wish I could take credit for that, but it actually is something our Chairman, Don Kuykendall, came up with in 2000.  His view was simple: if you can’t sell at a profit, you don’t have a business.  So we asked people to pay and to my stunned surprise, they did.  So we had a business.

Until that point we were a consultancy.  Only we weren’t a consultancy because a consultant is an expert drawing on long experience to give answers.  Its nice work if you can get it. But we never were a consultancy really. We were a service provider—we would find out things in foreign countries for our corporate clients, usually expensive work in unpleasant countries.  The problem here was profit margin. It costs a lot to gather information in foreign countries, so the nice fat contracts looked very skinny by the time we were done.  We do some intelligence for companies who have been clients of ours for a long time, but at this point about 90 percent of our revenue comes from publishing—you subscription. That supports over 100 employees in the U.S. and sources around the world.

So think of us as a publishing company that produces news using intelligence rather than journalistic methods.  That means that we have people in the field collecting information that they pass on the analysts who understand the information who pass it to writers who write up the information, with any number of steps.  This division of labor allows us the efficiency to produce the product you pay for.  And it has to be a quality product to earn your continued subscription get you to continue to pay. Still gets the point across but sounds less cavalier about it…

The nice part of all of this is that we really aren’t beholden to anyone except our readers, who are satisfied by what we produce, since we have one of the highest renewal rates in the business.  Our goal is simple—to make the complexity of the world understandable to an intelligent but non-professional readership, without ideology or national bias.  Dispassionate is what we strive for, in content and in tone.  In a world filled with loud noise, speaking in a subdued voice draws attention. With over one-quarter of our readers coming from outside the U.S. and Canada, and that percentage growing, these are essential things what are?.

We are more aware than our readers of our shortcomings—everything we do comes under scrutiny from whoever wants to take a shot—including everything I write.  Knowing our shortcomings (I will not tell you about them until we fixed them in the event you missed it) is the key to our success. Fixing it is our challenge.   We are now in a six month surge focused on increasing quality and staff.  The two seem contradictory but that’s our challenge.

Hopefully this gives you some sense of the business of Stratfor that will help you understand us.  I’ll be doing these very few weeks (I don’t want to be tied down on a schedule since I travel a lot—heading to Indonesia at the end of this month).  But its probably time to make sure we aren’t thought of as a think tank—a term I really hate.  When you think of it, think tank is a really bizarre term.

Not for Pub --
We have a sealed indictment on Assange.

Pls protect

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

It is possible to revoke citizenship on the grounds of being a dickhead except in Australia, where all of Queensland and a good part of South Australia, along with all of Sydney Uni would lose their passports.

On 12/05/10 22:42 , Chris Farnham wrote:

Is it possible to revoke some one's citizenship on the grounds of them being a total dickhead?
I don't care about the other leaks but the ones he has made that potentially damage Australian interests upset me.
If I thought I could switch this dickhead off without getting done I don't think I'd have too much of a problem.
BTW, close family friend in Sweden who knows the girl that is pressing charges tells me that there is absolutely nothing behind it other than prosecutors that are looking to make a name for themselves. My friend speaks rather disparagingly about the girl who is claiming molestation.
I also think the whole rape thing is incorrect for if I remember correctly rape was never the charge.

One other point is this. Ferreting out his confederates is also key.
Find out what other disgruntled rogues inside the tent or outside. Pile on. Move him from country to country to face various charges for the
next 25 years. But, seize everything he and his family own, to include every person linked to Wiki.
Marko Papic wrote:
Nate makes a good point. The arrest is not necessarily the end of Julian Assange. He could become a martyr in jail, particularly a Swedish jail, which I imagine has better amenities than my house.

Assange is going to make a nice bride in prison. Screw the terrorist.
He'll be eating cat food forever, unless George Soros hires him.

The following email exchange involves retired Nationals Senator for Queensland Bill O’Chee.

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

----------------------------------------------------------------------

From: "William \"Bill\" O'Chee"
Date: Tue, 7 Dec 2010 21:57:49 +1000
To:
Subject: Re: Julian Assange arrest
Sadly he didn't have a car accident on the way there.
William Oa**Chee
aa**aa"*aa>>*
Partner
Himalaya Consulting
Australia: +61 422 688886
China mob: +86 1365 1001069
On 07/12/2010, at 9:52 PM, burton@stratfor.com wrote:

Thx

Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T

Marohasy's out of a job and hawking her pottery collection

According to Jennifer Marohasy's blog on 6 July 2009:

My second three-year contract with the Melbourne-based Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) ended with the financial year and is not being renewed.........

I had great hopes for the planned collaboration between the IPA and University of Queensland on evidence-based environmentalism but the University proved too timid and conservative - at least for me........

I have also left the Australian Environment Foundation (AEF) Executive....

I am going to have to find a new job, or perhaps start a small business (If anyone is interested in antique Asian pottery I have a collection for sale.)........

I will be kind and refrain from further comment.

Finding a place for right-wing think tanks

Are you sick and tired of reading or hearing what seems like an endless stream of drivel from right-wing think tanks, especially the one that parades under the banner of the Institute of Public Affairs?

Well, you're not Pat Malone!

A correspondent in the letters section of The Age who, it would seem, has also had a gutful of the IPA has come up with a solution that would relieve readers of the tediously repetitive and sickening task of reading the IPA's regurgitated rubbish in The Age.

Hopefully, other Australian newspapers will recognise the merit in the reader's suggestion and implement it pronto.

Leaping ahead

HERE'S a plan to keep readers of The Age up to date on all the big issues. On social issues, a weekly column by Tim Costello would be great. On the environment, a weekly column by Tim Flannery might give us some hope for our future.

On the economic meltdown, an article by the Institute of Public Affairs every second February 29 should be more than sufficient.

Peter Bainbridge, Maiden Gully