The Guardian wants to do a hit piece on our campaign

Dear ,

The Guardian has been in touch, and that is a very good thing, because it means our campaign is being noticed, and the progressives think it is having such an effect they want to try and blunt it.

But before reading more, click on the image at the right where you can see an MP4 ad that we are about to run. It will probably raise blood pressure in the Guardian newsroom even more.

(BTW, don't worry that the movie will download from the On Line Opinion site as it was too large to store on the AIP website itself).

It's not surprising the progressives have seen our campaign so quickly. So far our ads have received 187,000 impressions on Meta and 146,900 on Google. Bearing in mind that our total audience is 64,155 individuals at this stage of the campaign and you can see that on average they have seen our ads about 5 times, and as you can never reach 100% of your market, some residents have seen the ad many more times.

If you'd like to help even more people notice the ads, please click here to donate. Or deposit money to our bank account: Australian Institute for Progress, ANZ, Woolloongabba. BSB 014 278 Acc# 1101 03131.

The gist of the Guardian inquiry was to ask whether this campaign was being funded by COAL Australia, and wasn't it hypocritical to campaign on cost of living when the industry is only interested in energy and climate change.

It gave me no pleasure to tell the Guardian that we weren't being funded by COAL Australia - imagine the impact we could make with a budget the size of what COAL provided us with in the state election - and we've received no money from them since the state election.

I then went on to point out that housing should be a central issue for their readers, that we have been interested in this policy area since the inception of the AIP, and that the Greens' policies would be absolutely devastating for home buyers as well as renters and landlords.

My email response suggested the journalist might like to talk to me about this paper by Ross Elliott on how we get around the problem of paying for infrastructure, with lack of infrastructure being a major reason for shortage of land supply.

Do you think they'll accept? No, neither do I. Easier to trade in juvenile, self-reinforcing, virtue signalling than report ideas that might make a real difference to your readers. Which is why campaigning against the Greens is a worthwhile thing to do.

Regards,

GRAHAM YOUNG
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR