Away from the spotlight of congressional hearings Zuckerberg and Facebook Inc. show their true colours – implementing weaker privacy protection for 1.5 billion users

The Guardian, 19 April 2018:

Facebook has moved more than 1.5 billion users out of reach of European privacy law, despite a promise from Mark Zuckerberg to apply the “spirit” of the legislation globally.

In a tweak to its terms and conditions, Facebook is shifting the responsibility for all users outside the US, Canada and the EU from its international HQ in Ireland to its main offices in California. It means that those users will now be on a site governed by US law rather than Irish law.

The move is due to come into effect shortly before General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) comes into force in Europe on 25 May. Facebook is liable under GDPR for fines of up to 4% of its global turnover – around $1.6bn – if it breaks the new data protection rules.

The shift highlights the cautious phrasing Facebook has applied to its promises around GDPR. Earlier this month, when asked whether his company would promise GDPR protections to its users worldwide, Zuckerberg demurred. “We’re still nailing down details on this, but it should directionally be, in spirit, the whole thing,” he said.

A week later, during his hearings in front of the US Congress, Zuckerberg was again asked if he would promise that GDPR’s protections would apply to all Facebook users. His answer was affirmative – but only referred to GDPR “controls”, rather than “protections”. Worldwide, Facebook has rolled out a suite of tools to let users exercise their rights under GDPR, such as downloading and deleting data, and the company’s new consent-gathering controls are similarly universal.

Facebook told Reuters “we apply the same privacy protections everywhere, regardless of whether your agreement is with Facebook Inc or Facebook Ireland”. It said the change was only carried out “because EU law requires specific language” in mandated privacy notices, which US law does not.

In a statement to the Guardian, it added: “We have been clear that we are offering everyone who uses Facebook the same privacy protections, controls and settings, no matter where they live. These updates do not change that.”

Privacy researcher Lukasz Olejnik disagreed, noting that the change carried large ramifications for the affected users. “Moving around one and a half billion users into other jurisdictions is not a simple copy-and-paste exercise,” he said.

“This is a major and unprecedented change in the data privacy landscape. The change will amount to the reduction of privacy guarantees and the rights of users, with a number of ramifications, notably for consent requirements. Users will clearly lose some existing rights, as US standards are lower than those in Europe.

“Data protection authorities from the countries of the affected users, such as New Zealand and Australia, may want to reassess this situation and analyse the situation. 

Even if their data privacy regulators are less rapid than those in Europe, this event is giving them a chance to act. Although it is unclear how active they will choose to be, the global privacy regulation landscape is changing, with countries in the world refining their approach. Europe is clearly on the forefront of this competition, but we should expect other countries to eventually catch up.” [my yellow highlighting]

NOTE:

The Australian Dept. of Human Services still continues to invite those who use its welfare services to visit its five Facebook pages on which it will:

* post about payments and services 
* answer questions 
* give useful tips 
* share news, and 
* give updates on relevant issue

All associated data (including questions and answers) will of course be captured by Facebook, then collated, transferred, stored overseas, monetised and possibly 'weaponised' during the next election campaign cycle which occurs in the area visitors to these pages live.

Micaelia Cash's bragging doesn't change the Abbott-Turnbull 'jobs and growth' numbers

On Thursday 19 April 2018 the Australian Minister for Jobs and Innovation and Liberal Senator for Western Australia Micaelia Cash stated: Since the Government came to office in September 2013, we have created a total of 996,800 jobs — an increase of 8.7 per cent.

What stands out for this voter is the small degree of change that has actually occurred when it come to those much vaunted 'jobs and growth' policies.

Bottom line is that in the years between the 2013 federal election when the Coalition Government came to power and the present day, the national unemployment rate has only fallen by half a percentage point and there are only four less job seekers competing for each job that becomes available.

In January 2014 the Australian population totalled est. 22.63 million, Tony Abbott had been prime minister for less than four months and seasonally adjusted there were an est.11,459,500 employed people across the country. This figure included wage employees, private contractors and business operators.

Up to an est. 1.5 million workers were being paid the National Minimum Wage.

Only 69 per cent of the 11.54 million had full-time jobs. Full-time employment decreased 7,100 to 7,953,000 and part-time employment increased 3,400 to 3,506,500.

Around 951,000 of these 11.45 million people in employment would be classified as underemployed, ie. they were employed in less than full-time or regular jobs or in jobs inadequate with respect to their training or economic needs. 

The workforce participation rate stood at 64.5% and the unemployment rate was 6.0%.

There were est. 728,600 people between 15 and 65 years of age who were unemployed and looking for work.

A total of 139,100 and 142,700 job vacancies were recorded for the months November 2013 and February 2014 respectively.

In January-February 2014 it was reported that there were 20 job seekers for every position currently available.

In March 2018 the Australian population totalled est. 24.90 million, Malcolm Turnbull had been prime minister for more than two years and there were seasonally adjusted an est.12,484,100 employed people across the country. This figure includes wage employees, private contractors and business operators.

Up to est. 1.8 million of these workers were being paid the National Minimum Wage.

Only 68 per cent of the 12.48 million had full-time jobs. Full-time employment decreased 19,900 to 8,514,100 and part-time employment increased 24,800 to 3,970,000.

Around 1.03 million of these 12.48 million people in employment would be classified as underemployed, ie. they were employed in less than full-time or regular jobs or in jobs inadequate with respect to their training or economic needs. It is likely that around 3 per cent  of this group were employed in low-paying and insecure jobs via federal government Jobactive placements.

The workforce participation rate stood at 65.5% and the unemployment rate was 5.5%.

There were est. 730,200 people between 15 and 65 years of age who were unemployed and looking for work.

There had been 220,800 job vacancies recorded by the end of February 2018.

In March 2018 it was reported that there were 16 job seekers for every position currently available.

See: Australian Bureau of Statistics Employment and Unemployment, Labour Force Australia, Mar 2018, Labour Force, Australia, Jan 2014, Roy Morgan Unemployment & Under-employment Estimates (2005-2018), Australian Unemployed Workers Union, ABC News March 2015 and ABC News March 2018.

How long can the world sustain the current level of commercial and recreational fishing?

A vast majority of Australian households have seafood meals throughout the year.

Last year fresh seafood accounted for 49 per cent of all fish consumed, 26 per cent was canned and 25 per cent frozen.

According to the Dept. of Agriculture Australia has the world’s third largest Exclusive Economic Zone. However, the low productivity of our marine waters limits wild capture fisheries production. 

This meant that by 2015 an estimated 70 per cent of the seafood we consumed was imported from other fisheries around the world.

In 2016 the United Nations expected fish stocks in oceans and inland waters to significantly contribute to feeding a global population predicted to reach 9.7 billion by 2050 – even though at least 31.4 percent of fish stocks were estimated as fished at a biologically unsustainable level and therefore overfished and, there has been a general decline in global fish take since 1996. [Food and Agricultural Organisation of the United Nations, 2016 The State of the World’s Fisheries and Aquaculture]

Since then there have been reports that competition with fishing fleets for the remaining Chinook salmon has led to a resident population of Orca experiencing sustained near starvation and studies are now showing that in human-dominated marine ecosystems loss of populations and species is occurring.

Despite the global situation Australians are still being encouraged to eat more seafood, but how long can this continue?

In 2018 another study was published which looked at ocean processes over the next 282 years and this study predicts that the global fish catch will continue its current decline.

Phys Org, 19 April 2018:

Climate change is rapidly warming the Earth and altering ecosystems on land and at sea that produce our food. In the oceans, most added heat from climate warming is still near the surface and will take centuries to work down into deeper waters. But as this happens, it will change ocean circulation patterns and make ocean food chains less productive.

In a recent study, I worked with colleagues from five universities and laboratories to examine how climate warming out to the year 2300 could affect marine ecosystems and global fisheries. We wanted to know how sustained warming would change the supply of key nutrients that support tiny plankton, which in turn are food for fish.

We found that warming on this scale would alter key factors that drive marine ecosystems, including winds, water temperatures, sea ice cover and ocean circulation. The resulting disruptions would transfer nutrients from surface waters down into the deep ocean, leaving less at the surface to support plankton growth.

As marine ecosystems become increasingly nutrient-starved over time, we estimate global fish catch could be reduced 20 percent by 2300, and by nearly 60 percent across the North Atlantic. This would be an enormous reduction in a key food source for millions of people.

Quote of the Week

“There are no saviours of democracy on the horizon. Rather, around the world we see a new authoritarianism that is always anti-democratic in practice, populist in appeal, nationalist in sentiment, fascist in sympathy, criminal in disposition, tending to spew a poisonous rhetoric aimed against refugees, Muslims, and increasingly Jews, and hostile to truth and those who speak it, most particularly journalists to the point, sometimes, of murder.” [Author Richard Flanagan writing in TheGuardian, 18 April 2018]

Miranda's IPA inspired rant

This was the News Corp mouthpiece for that far-right pressure group the Institute of Public Affairs (IPA), Miranda Devine, in full rant (though sticking closely to IPA's wish list) and under multiple mastheads on 18 April 2018:

Malcolm Turnbull has a rare opportunity to put a stop to the Left’s long march when the Race Discrimination Commissioner’s term expires in August

Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane’s term expires in August and the Turnbull government cannot afford to miss this opportunity to stake out its ground in the culture wars.

Conservatives are sick of ­Coalition governments that ­appease the Left, curl into a ball and try not to cause outrage while Labor-Green governments remake the culture in their own image.

The country always takes two steps to the Left with a Labor government and not much better than one step to the Right or even staying in place with the Coalition, which puts us on a very bad trajectory indeed…..

So government gets bigger and more intrusive, the ABC continues unimpeded, destructive quangos such as the Australian Human Rights Commission proliferate and the cancer of identity politics takes hold. Little by little, our remarkable nation is transformed, and division takes root. The self-reliance and entrepreneurial spirit of Australians is sapped and the bonds of mateship are eroded.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.

The only way to arrest this dispiriting drift to the left is for Coalition governments to stop pretending there are no culture wars and get into the trenches and fight.

With a one-seat majority, a prime minister with fashionably progressive views and an election in the next year, we can’t expect bold actions by the Turnbull government that were beyond the Howard and Abbott governments. Such as closing down the Human Rights Commission.

But Malcolm Turnbull cannot ­afford to keep making mistakes like he did at the ABC when he appointed as chairman a man who is such a leftie he said he couldn’t see any bias.

The symbolic value cannot be over-estimated of replacing Soutphommasane with a commissioner who doesn’t want to use race to divide us.

That’s all this pesky 36-year-old French-born son of Laotian refugees has done since he was appointed to a five-year term by Kevin Rudd in 2013, a month before the Abbott government was elected. Despite the fact Australia gave Soutphommasane’s family a home, a free education at Hursltone Agricultural High and the University of Sydney, and a Commonwealth scholarship to Oxford University, he preaches that this is a racist country.

Despite the fact this is the most successful immigrant country in the world, which has mostly harmoniously absorbed as many as 200,000 new people each year from around the world, Soutphommasane tells us that the culture is toxic.

The former freelance journalist has bought the identity politics agenda, hook, line and sinker. He saw the great honours bestowed on him, such as membership of the board of the National Australia Day Council and the $340,000 gig at the Australian Human Rights Commission, as proof, not that this was a country that offered equality of opportunity to all comers, regardless of the colour of their skin. No, he saw it as more evidence of anti-white racism that needed to be set straight with social engineering.

He will never be forgiven for soliciting racial complaints against a cartoon by the late and much missed Bill Leak, whose persecution under Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act only really ended with his ­untimely death last year of a heart ­attack at 61.

Soutphommasane’s latest obsession is to impose ethnic diversity quotas on corporate Australia. He declared last year that there were too many white people running Australian companies.

In his five years he has just ­libelled Australia, created race-based social divisions and helped fuel a backlash against immigration.

So it’s not good enough for the government to appoint, as is mooted, an innocuous replacement who just avoids the headlines. Restitution is needed. If we must have a racial commissioner, then let it be a clear-eyed patriot who loves this country. Warren Mundine is the best person for the job. Well-respected, brimming with common sense and optimism, he has a proven track ­record as a businessman, and as an Aboriginal and political leader. He would unite us around what’s best about Australia.

This was a restrained Race Discrimination Commissioner Tim Soutphommasane in rebuttal the following day:

Photo of the Month

Campbelltown Macarthur Advertiser, 2018

Turnbull Government will ignore this call to extend Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry at its own electoral peril

Remember When Australian Prime Minister and former merchant banker Malcolm Bligh Turnbull ruled out a bankig royal commission?

Telling the nation; "I can tell you wehave as a government decided not to have a royal commission, we made thedecision a long time ago, not because we don't believe there is nothing goingon in terms of problems with the banks, it is because we want to take actionright now and we are".

Recall the time and other limits placed on the Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry when it was finally established on 14 December 2017? Giving it the power to ignore anything that it wanted to that would otherwise be within its scope. 

Well things did not go entirely to plan for Malcolm and his banker mates.

Because since13 March 2018 the curtain has been drawn back revealing the systemic unethical, deceitful, rapacious, sometimes fraudulent and, in certain instances criminal behaviour, of the financial sector.

National Australia Bank, Westpac, St George, Citibank, ANZ, AMP Insurance and the Commonwealth Bank of Australia, along with their financial services spin-offs, had all come under some degree of scrutiny by mid-April with more hearings still sheduled.

So it comes as no surprise that Fairfax Media is now saying what many are thinking.............

The Age, 18 November 2018:

Evidence to the fledgling financial services royal commission confirms the inquiry, long-resisted by the Coalition government and the banks, was justified and suggests it will lead to rigorous reforms. It also suggests the government’s decision to limit the probe to one year should be reviewed.

A damning admission by a top executive of what was once one of the nation’s most trusted institutions, AMP, about his company repeatedly lying to the corporate regulator about condoned client fraud intensifies concerns about one of the most crucial industries.

The Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry is only in its third week, but there has been a plethora of testimony to unethical and/or illegal practices including: charging clients for wilfully undelivered services; fraud; manipulating ‘‘independent’’ audit information; selling clients irrelevant insurance and financial products (many of them in-house); failing to declare commissions; refusing to honour insurance contracts; rigging interest rate markets; and failing to make proper checks before granting loans.

The banks long argued the malfeasance was the result of ‘‘a few bad apples’’, a position that became untenable as bountiful evidence, much of it revealed by The Age, implicated the companies’ very culture.....

A measure of justice for an Australian tweeter

The win won’t eradicate the sustained personal stress or financial difficulties that such an unfair dismissal imposed – still it was pleasing see this tweeter's actions recognised as the right to freedom of political expression.

Hopefully Comcare will not be so bloody minded as to appeal the judgement,

The Sydney MorningHerald, 18 April 2018:

A  former Immigration official sacked over tweets critical of Australia's asylum seeker policy has won a fight for compensation, after an appeals tribunal found her dismissal was unlawful and described government efforts to restrict anonymous comments from its employees as Orwellian.

The decision on Monday will redirect scrutiny to the Immigration Department's dismissal of Michaela Banerji for tweeting criticisms of detention policies, and challenges Australian Public Service rules stopping public servants from expressing their political views on social media.

Ms Banerji took the government to the Administrative Appeals Tribunal after federal workplace insurer Comcare refused to compensate her for the psychological condition that developed after she was sacked in 2013 over tweets from a pseudonymous Twitter account.

The tribunal overturned Comcare's decision and found she suffered depression and anxiety that could be classed an injury under federal compensation laws.

Ms Banerji was working in the Immigration Department when co-workers learnt she was behind the tweets railing against the government's treatment of asylum seekers.

She lost a high-profile attempt to stop her dismissal in the Federal Circuit Court in 2013, a decision seen as likely to curtail other bureaucrats' use of social media when judge Warwick Neville found Australians had no "unfettered implied right (or freedom) of political expression".

In a case that Ms Banerji's lawyer Allan Anforth from Canberra Chambers said could have implications for other public and private sector employees, the AAT said Comcare's refusal was based on a dismissal that was unlawful because it intruded on her right to free political expression.

Her tweets, made from the Twitter handle @LaLegale, were anonymous and did not disclose confidential departmental information, but an internal investigation in 2012 found she had breached the code of conduct for government employees.

In a submission to the tribunal, Mr Anforth said the tweets were posted from her own phone and, in most cases, outside work hours.

The appeals tribunal found the Immigration Department itself had identified Ms Banerji after she posted anonymously, and said guidelines stopping public servants from publicly criticising the government should not be applied to anonymous comments.

"A comment made anonymously cannot rationally be used to draw conclusions about the professionalism or impartiality of the public service," it said.

"Such conclusions might conceivably be open if the comments were explicitly attributed to, say, an unnamed public servant, but that hypothetical situation does not apply to Ms Banerji."

The tribunal found Ms Banerji appeared to have taken care not to have used information which could only have been in her possession as an Immigration employee.

It lashed the government decision to sack her, saying it "impermissibly trespassed upon her implied freedom of political communication", and "with a law only weakly and imperfectly serving a legitimate public interest".

"The burden of the code on Ms Banerji’s freedom was indeed heavy – the exercise of the freedom cost her her employment.

"In our opinion, there is no significant justification available to the employer here for the law which exacted that cost."

Comcare is considering the tribunal's decision. The findings could be appealed in the full Federal Court…..

None of the financial institutions are coming away from this Royal Commission covered in glory

The Royal Commission into Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation and Financial Services Industry was established on 14 December 2017, is due to hand down an interim report no later than 30 September 2018 followed by a final report by 1 February 2019.

As of 13 April 2018 the royal commission has received 3,433 public submissions - 69% of these were Banking, 8% Superannuation 8% and 7% Financial Advice.

Round 2 public hearings finish on 27 April 2018.

View the live webcast or previous hearings.

Yesterday was the Commonwealth Bank of Australia's turn to reluctantly admit systemic fraud ....

The Guardian, 18 April 2018:

Counsel assisting the royal commission, Mark Costello, asked Linda Elkins, from CBA’s wealth management arm Colonial First State, to confirm CBA’s poor record of charging fees for no service.

“It would be the gold medallist if [the corporate regulator] was handing out medals for fees for no service, wouldn’t it?” Costello asked.

Elkins replied: “Yes.”

The commission was told that from July 2007 to June 2015 clients of CBA’s Commonwealth Financial Planning, BW Financial Planning and Count Financial businesses were routinely charged ongoing fees for financial advice where no advice services were provided.

CBA has had to refund $118.5m to customers – more than half the $219m in compensation paid by the big four banks and AMP over the past decade – to more than 310,000 financial advice customers.

ABC News, 18 April 2018:

Michael Hodge QC observes that Commonwealth Financial Planning has had a 100 per cent increase in clients over the past decade but a 25 per cent drop in the number of advisers.

He asks CBA's Marianne Perkovic whether the bank had any concerns that clients were not receiving adequate attention because of the decline in advisers, while client numbers doubled.

This is in the context of ASIC's concern that some firms were taking on too many clients for the number of planners. 

Ms Perkovic struggles to provide a clear answer.......

After disputing the meaning to be attributed to internal memos between the bank's senior managers in early 2012, Ms Perkovic eventually had to admit that a Deloitte report handed to CBA in July 2012 revealed systemic problems in ensuring that customers weren't being charged for financial advice they did not receive.

Deloitte had found that at least $700,000 in ongoing service fees were being charged to more than 1,050 clients that were allocated to more than 50 inactive financial planners who had left the business before 2012.

It appears that Ms Perkovic was finally ground down by relentless questioning from Michael Hodge QC, warnings from Commissioner Kenneth Hayne and the irrefutable evidence of the Deloitte report.

Institute of Public Affairs Limited (IPA) has a single broad focus - to infiltrate government in order to reduce workers to a powerless underclass

Given representatives of the Institute of Public Affairs Limited (IPA) turn up as guest commentators so frequently these days on television, radio and in newsprint - usually without mention of who they actually represent - perhaps it's time to update deatils of the corporate structure, finances and aims of this group.

The Institute of Public Affairs says of itself that it is: Australia's oldest and loudest free market think tank. Since 1943 the IPA has been at the forefront of public debate,promoting our values of freedom, free markets and individual liberty.

This highly partisan, conservative political pressure group thinly disguised as an independent research group-cum-think tank was registered in Melbourne Victoria in 1987 and its legal owner appears to be The Trustee For Institute Of Public Affairs Research Trust. This trust was created on 10 July 2007.

In the 1990s it appears to have merged with the the Australian Institute of Public Policy.

IPA became a Deductible Gift Recipient (DGR) from 30 Mar 2006, though it is hard to make out on exactly what factual grounds it became an Approved Research Institute (ARI) with charitable status.

It guards its individual and corporate membership list closely, but does admit to 4,559 members as of 1 July 2016.

IPA's founding members as then captains of industry, wealthy graziers and conservative politicians (Charles Denton Kemp, Sir Robert Gordon Menzies, B A Santamaria, Sir Keith Arthur Murdoch, Sir George James Coles, Harold Gordon Darling, G.H. Grimwade, H.R. Harper, W.A. Ince, Fredrick Earnest Lampe MBE, Sir Walter Massy-Greene, Sir Leslie James McConnan, C.N. McKay, William Edward McPherson, Sir Ian Potter and The Hon. A.G. Warner) are reasonably well-known, as are a handful of current members.

Over the years a number of members of the IPA (past & present) have also been members of the Liberal Party (or worked for Liberal politicians), including David Kemp, Rod Kemp, John Hyde, John Roskam, Tim Wilson, James Patterson, Mitch Fifield, Nicholle Flint, Allan Pidgeon, Mike Nahan, Michael Kroger, Tom Switzer, Andrew Shearer, Richard Allsop, Simon Breheny, Ross Maclean, Peta Credlin and Tony Smith.

A significant number of IPA supporters are easily identified because this pressure group published the names of around 1,261 of its supporters in 2011.

Its board and company directors are now known due to the fact that it has finally published annual reports from 2000-01 to 2016-17.

IPA states that: 86 per cent of the IPA's revenue is donated by individuals, 12 per cent is received from foundations, 1 per cent from businesses, and 1 per cent from other sources such as interest. The IPA neither seeks nor receives any funding from government. In addition to the membership fees contributed by IPA members, the IPA received 2,913 separate donations during 2016-17.

It also supplies this graph of modest through to rather generous individual and corporate donations in its 2016-17 Annual Report:

The Institute of Public Affairs updated its policy aims in 2012 as it geared up to fight against Australian Labor Party and Greens policies during the 2013 federal election campaign:

1 Repeal the carbon tax, and don’t replace it. It will be one thing to remove the burden of the carbon tax from the Australian economy. But if it is just replaced by another costly scheme, most of the benefits will be undone.

2 Abolish the Department of Climate Change

3 Abolish the Clean Energy Fund

4 Repeal Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act

5 Abandon Australia’s bid for a seat on the United Nations Security Council

6 Repeal the renewable energy target

7 Return income taxing powers to the states

8 Abolish the Commonwealth Grants Commission

9 Abolish the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission

10 Withdraw from the Kyoto Protocol

11 Introduce fee competition to Australian universities

12 Repeal the National Curriculum

13 Introduce competing private secondary school curriculums

14 Abolish the Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA)

15 Eliminate laws that require radio and television broadcasters to be ‘balanced’

16 Abolish television spectrum licensing and devolve spectrum management to the common law

17 End local content requirements for Australian television stations

18 Eliminate family tax benefits

19 Abandon the paid parental leave scheme

20 Means-test Medicare

21 End all corporate welfare and subsidies by closing the Department of Industry, Innovation, Science, Research and Tertiary Education

22 Introduce voluntary voting

23 End mandatory disclosures on political donations

24 End media blackout in final days of election campaigns

25 End public funding to political parties

26 Remove anti-dumping laws

27 Eliminate media ownership restrictions

28 Abolish the Foreign Investment Review Board

29 Eliminate the National Preventative Health Agency

30 Cease subsidising the car industry

31 Formalise a one-in, one-out approach to regulatory reduction

32 Rule out federal funding for 2018 Commonwealth Games

33 Deregulate the parallel importation of books

34 End preferences for Industry Super Funds in workplace relations laws

35 Legislate a cap on government spending and tax as a percentage of GDP

36 Legislate a balanced budget amendment which strictly limits the size of budget deficits and the period the federal government can be in deficit

37 Force government agencies to put all of their spending online in a searchable database

38 Repeal plain packaging for cigarettes and rule it out for all other products, including alcohol and fast food

39 Reintroduce voluntary student unionism at universities

40 Introduce a voucher scheme for secondary schools

41 Repeal the alcopops tax

42 Introduce a special economic zone in the north of Australia including:
a) Lower personal income tax for residents
b) Significantly expanded 457 Visa programs for workers
c) Encourage the construction of dams

43 Repeal the mining tax

44 Devolve environmental approvals for major projects to the states

45 Introduce a single rate of income tax with a generous tax-free threshold

46 Cut company tax to an internationally competitive rate of 25 per cent

47 Cease funding the Australia Network

48 Privatise Australia Post

49 Privatise Medibank

50 Break up the ABC and put out to tender each individual function

51 Privatise SBS

52 Reduce the size of the public service from current levels of more than 260,000 to at least the 2001 low of 212,784

53 Repeal the Fair Work Act

54 Allow individuals and employers to negotiate directly terms of employment that suit them

55 Encourage independent contracting by overturning new regulations designed to punish contractors

56 Abolish the Baby Bonus

57 Abolish the First Home Owners’ Grant

58 Allow the Northern Territory to become a state

59 Halve the size of the Coalition front bench from 32 to 16

60 Remove all remaining tariff and non-tariff barriers to international trade

61 Slash top public servant salaries to much lower international standards, like in the United States

62 End all public subsidies to sport and the arts

63 Privatise the Australian Institute of Sport

64 End all hidden protectionist measures, such as preferences for local manufacturers in government tendering

65 Abolish the Office for Film and Literature Classification

66 Rule out any government-supported or mandated internet censorship

67 Means test tertiary student loans

68 Allow people to opt out of superannuation in exchange for promising to forgo any government income support in retirement

69 Immediately halt construction of the National Broadband Network and privatise any sections that have already been built

70 End all government funded Nanny State advertising

71 Reject proposals for compulsory food and alcohol labelling

72 Privatise the CSIRO

73 Defund Harmony Day

74 Close the Office for Youth

75 Privatise the Snowy-Hydro Scheme

By 2014 a few more policies made it on to the IPA list according to The AIM Network:

* “Immediately halt construction of the National Broadband Network and privatise any sections that have already been built”

* “Rule out the introduction of mandatory pre-commitment for electronic gaming machines”

* “Extend the GST to cover all goods and services” and

* “Negotiate and sign free trade agreements with Australia’s largest trading partners, including China, India, Japan and South Korea”.

Liberal Party prime ministers have been working their way through IPA's policy agenda since such lists were first created.

Federal Government regulation now means there is some degree of transparency with regard to IPA finances, which like the finances of other 'charities" are subject to disclosure.

Annual Information Statement declared by The Trustee For Institute Of Public Affairs Research Trust (Charity ABN 33886902896), October 2017, excerpt:

ausgov.infocharities_results