The looming spectre of the right-wing think-tanks guiding Australia's future

NGOs are the structures through which the general public, otherwise largely ineffective in public policy or in contributing to change, can have some influence in the world. It is true that NGOs now influence government and business corporations but this can be seen as part of some kind of balancing process rather than as something sinister.

Overseas aid NGOs that receive AusAID funding are already assessed for transparency as part of AusAID's accreditation process.

If NGOs are disadvantaged as a result of the IPA's findings, then the risk is that the public will be discouraged from contributing to policy formulation and the area will be left to vested interests such as the trade unions in the case of the left and to elites like the IPA and the CIS on the right. That would be a tragedy in a nation attempting to retain its democratic institutions.

Unity needed, not divisiveness

The problem with right-wing think-tanks (singled out because of their influence on the present federal government) is that they contribute to social and political divisiveness rather than unity. This was hinted at in Marsh's paper when he identified the trend visible even a decade ago: "Their current attention to welfare issues suggests this area of public policy is destined for increasing political attention".

And so it has come to pass, exemplified in the proposal of the CIS to limit the time that people may receive unemployment support payments. This is divisive, it blames all unemployed people for their predicament, ignoring structural causes like the casualisation and increased insecurity of the workforce. The CIS's proposal is is mean-spirited in the extreme, likely to cause hardship and homelessness, socially divisive and no way to unify the population towards a common, agreed set of national goals. As Marsh observes, "Others see this movement (neo-liberal think-tanks) as a further symptom of contemporary social and political fragmentation".

Australians face enough challenges from outside our borders, and don't need to be distracted when national issues are interpreted and tackled in a socially divisive manner. But social divisiveness is what will happen if an ideologically-driven government listens too much to ideologically-motivated think-tanks representing sectional or simply their own interests.

In time past, the left boasted a lively intellectual life thought his was often the province of the Marxist factions. Now the neo-liberal right has claimed the intellectual ascendency in Australian political life. Perhaps this can be explained in terms of the left's need to realign following the end of the Cold War, yet you would think that there has now been enough time for that.

It is difficult to see from where more-independent think-tanks that owe allegiance to neither right or left-wing elites will come from. Their absence in Australian public life is conspicuous.