The “right wing agenda”
Clare Curran exposes at Red Alert the right wing agenda. It seems to be:
- Tony Abbott spoke at the 70th anniversary of the Institute of Public Affairs
- Tony Abbott is advised by Crosby Textor
- The NZ National Party is also advised by Crosby Textor
- Hence the NZ National Party plans to implement the policy agenda of the institute of Public Affairs
Clare goes on to list some of the policies that may find their way into National’s policy agenda here, which she disagrees with. They include:
- Allow the Northern Territory to become a state
- Introduce a special economic zone for northern Australia
- Rule out federal funding for 2018 Commonwealth Games
- Privatise the Australian Institute of Sport
- Cease funding the Australia Network
- Abolish the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA)
- Privatise the CSIRO and the Snowy-Hydro Scheme
- Abolish the Commonwealth Grants Commission
- Privatise Australia Post, Medibank and SBS
- Halve the size of the Coalition front bench from 32 to 16
- Break up the ABC and put out to tender each individual function
- Abolish the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission
I’m pretty sure we won’t see any of the above implemented in New Zealand. Well, we could try to implement them but Australia may not take too kindly to us passing laws on their behalf.
There is one policy Clare agrees with:
Force government agencies to put all of their spending online in a searchable database
That’s good to see, as I’ve been pushing this for some time. I would have thought Clare also supports:
Rule out government-supported or mandated internet censorship
As it happens I think many (not all) of the IPA’s policies are very laudable and sensible. Ones I especially like are:
- Means-test Medicare
- Abolish the Baby Bonus
- Abolish the First Home Owners’ Grant
- Repeal the alcopops tax
- 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
- 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
- Force government agencies to put all of their spending online in a searchable database
- Repeal the mining tax
- Introduce fee competition to Australian universities
- Means test tertiary student loans
- Reintroduce voluntary student unionism at universities
- Introduce a voucher scheme for secondary schools
- Rule out government-supported or mandated internet censorship
- End public funding to political parties
- Introduce voluntary voting
- 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
- Remove all tariff and non-tariff barriers to international trade
- Deregulate the parallel importation of books