The Fightback Australia Needs

There was an important column in the Australian Financial Review (AFR) last week. It was written by the former Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) supremo John Roskam.

The IPA is a freedom-loving think tank that makes the policy case to have less government in our lives. Unlike most other 'independent organisations', it takes no money from the government.

That's an important point because even the major business organisations get millions in handouts from the government, which helps explain why they rarely raise too much of a fuss despite the egregious excesses of the Left.

I call it hush money. They'll keep getting it while the criticism of the government policy remains somewhat muted.

Rather than being entirely self-funded, the relative baubles for which the big business lobby sells out indicate what's going wrong in the country.

The IPA is entirely funded through membership and donations. That allows them to speak fearlessly in exposing the waste and mismanagement attached to public policy.

Roskam has been a driving force behind that fearlessness for years now. His recent column was a case in point.

He wrote:

For a political party that usually does its best to avoid the so-called “culture wars”, the Liberal Party has done well from them.

When Peter Dutton followed his instincts and opposed the Voice to Parliament, he was fighting against the Canberra press gallery, elite opinion, big business, and even members of his own shadow cabinet. Dutton was vindicated as he secured a massive moral and political victory against the Labor government and personally against Anthony Albanese...

The Coalition now has to be careful that its Voice success was not as good as it gets for the Coalition. (emphasis mine)

It's that last sentence that is truly important.