An early morning start

Dear ,

I’ve never felt about an election quite like I do this one. While I’ve found a lot of issues where I disagree with the Coalition, the thought of a Labor government under Bill Shorten and Sally McManus, in virtual coalition with the Greens, wakes me up at night.

Let me share my nightmare (and ask you to contribute to our election efforts).

I see free speech and good cultural norms at risk, and the rule of law being put to one side by people who don’t think the law does, or should, apply to them: vegans and the CFMEU to name the two most recent.

I see economic policies being promoted that redistribute from the productive to the unproductive without asking anything in return, apart from a first preference.

And electricity, mining and manufacturing industries trashed because of environmental fantasies, promulgated through the media, and more insidiously, the school system. (And the school system gets a double fail on the basis of the most recent NAPLAN reports.)

Climate change is real, CO2 is a greenhouse gas, but whether this matters; to what degree; and what, if any, policies to implement; are open questions. We should not be panicked into policies because some unspecified “scientists” say we should.

Australia has grown rich through an open, flexible economy, and I see this being shut down to advantage a small industrial relations aristocracy, who will also be aided and abetted to wield undue economic influence through the abuse of the financial power granted them by the compulsory superannuation system.

And I see a government that will never be able to tax or borrow enough to pay for  its grandiose imaginings, stuck in a paradigm where “fair” means we all finish last, rather than get to take back in proportion to what we put in, and excel in proportion to our merit.

What should an institute like ours do in this context?

It’s our job to wake people up and stop them sleepwalking into this nightmare.

We won’t pick parties, but we will pick policies. It’s our job to hold politicians to account for the consequences of their promises. And we’ve been doing that since we started.

This election we’ll be concentrating on issues to do with electricity, industry, housing, and tax (particularly franking credits, and capital gains tax). These are all areas where we have standing and demonstrated expertise.

I know some of you will be giving to political parties and candidates this election, and I’d encourage you to do that. Every party has good people in it.

But think about us too.

As a think tank we are seen as more credible than most politicians, and our job is to influence opinion leaders, and those who mediate between politicians and electors.

A lot of our work involves putting ideas into the heads of journalists and policy makers which then get reflected in the questions they ask and the articles they write; arming others on social media with ideas they can recycle and propagate; and getting politicians to put more effective propositions to voters.

According to the bookies ($1.16 ALP $4.85 Coalition) this election is a shoo-in for Labor. I think it will be much closer. Electors doze between elections, but they wake-up when the writs are issued, and sometimes they wonder what they had been thinking.

Stay awake, and look out for our publications during the election, particularly our Fact Bites (eg #3), which are “brief briefs” on policy issues designed to nip the heels of the sheep.

Regards,