1. John Hyde, “Articulated alternative needed to generate mandate for change,” The Australian Financial Review, September 13, 1985, p. 14.
2. Greg Lindsay, “Libs will sink or swim in policy think-tank,” The Australian, October 31, 1994, p. 11.
3. John Hyde, “Ideas need advocates to sow the seeds of change,” The Australian, September 15, 1995, p. 15.

1.
John Hyde, “Articulated alternative needed to generate mandate for change,” The Australian Financial Review, September 13, 1985, p. 14.

During my nine years in Federal Parliament I learned enough to know that I was adrift in a sea of conflicting information, ideals and pressures.

Like others I tried to maintain direction by reference to one of three philosophies found in the Australian political mainstream — liberalism, socialism and conservatism. Liberalism claimed my nominal allegiance but my understanding of it was inadequate.

When it came to policy, like everybody, I borrowed from all three philosophies. I wanted a publicly funded welfare safety net, at least until it was demonstrated that private rather than public charity would (again) care adequately for those who would otherwise be in need; I believed in the family and the Parliament, revered by conservatives; and felt deeply a Liberal’s abhorrence of the unnecessary and arbitrary power of governments and trade unions.

Those positions can be consistently held, but I lacked an adequate intellectual framework to be wholly consistent in their defence. When the Fraser Government so obviously needed a light to steer by, we dries hung out a sort of Liberals lantern, but our light must have been too dim or his officers were too giddy to see it.

Following the dries decimation at the 1983 poll, Max Walsh on the TV program Sunday said of us that we were the only Liberals who held a consistent ideological position. I think the remark was an intended compliment, but it was overstated.

The dries, or economic rationalists, never did spell out a comprehensive political philosophy. I at least was not equipped to do so.

Intellectual debate is uncommon within the Liberal Party and philosophy has been but a small part of my politics. The Parliamentary dries are not philosophers but men of political affairs using the disciplines of economics and arithmetic, to evaluate policies in terms of the accepted goals of prosperity, security and freedom.

Liberal Party dries give their wider, if inadequately tutored, allegiances to liberalism and conservatism. I imagine that the dries in the Labor Party give allegiance to socialism in the corporatist mode of modern Austria.

If they are better equipped philosophically than Liberals, they keep pretty quiet about it. The hallmarks of dryness include willingness to accept the political cost of facing economic and other social truths and the use of argument rather than power to achieve political ends.

Within this framework Howard and Keating are both dries. While, but few years ago, the dries were labelled ideologues, in some generally conservative Australian circles, it is now fashionable to criticise the Australian dries in particular, and economic rationalists in general, for want of ideology.

In fact Australian liberal/conservative politics lacks philosophical debate of any sort. It has been slow to become involved in the vigorous debate in North America and the United Kingdom during the past ten years. Today the ideas are to be found upon the “right”.

The Mont Pelerin Society is a sort of international academy of political philosophy. It was formed in 1947 by Nobel laureate, Friedrich von Hayek, and a small group of eminent liberal thinkers to preserve liberal ideas in the face of the ascendancy of collectivist ideals.

During the dark years for liberalism — the fifties, sixties and seventies — the Mont Pelerin Society kept liberal debate alive and provided an intellectual haven for such greats as Hayek himself, Von Mises, Friedman and Stiggler [sic]. I expect last month’s MPS meeting in Sydney, organised by Mr Greg Lindsay and the Centre for Independent Studies to be one of the turning points from which Australia will join modern liberal debate. I expect the debate to permeate Australian politics changing the political agenda.

Agendas are not determined by power but by ideas. Esoteric arguments about the relative virtues of liberal conservatism and conservative liberalism are not everybody’s cup of tea but it is from arguments like these that political positions are established.

It is by the insights they generate that political direction is maintained. The dearth of philosophy in Australian non-socialist politics, and the lag between Australian thinking and that of Europe and North America makes the Sydney MPS meetings important.

Before any substantial sustainable political change can occur it is absolutely necessary to generate a mandate for the change. The public, or essential elements of it, must be won by arguments.

It is true that political systems do not respect simple consensus among majorities but instead respect concentrated vested interests (as was amply demonstrated at the Tax Summit), but it is also true that the balance of influence can be changed by winning opinion for courses of action and ground rules which serve the aggregate, rather than more concentrated, community interests. In setting the political agenda an opposition is as powerful as a government — perhaps more so.

Remember how, though Menzies and Co held the reins of power in the sixties, Calwell and Whitlam set the agenda. An opposition which plans to get into office by default, by falling over the line, by saying nothing about the tough decisions it will have to take, by not offending the vested interests, by doing nothing now, will earn itself some excellent pension entitlements but nothing more.

In office it will not have the power to govern well. It might intend to say, as Hawke did, that all bets made during the campaign are off and to set about resurrecting the economy but at the first whiff of grape-shot it will duck for cover.

It will not even have a mandate from its own back bench for policies which strike at various vested interests. Episodes like the funeral benefits episode in 1976, when back bench senators denied Fraser an obviously desirable budget cut, are inevitable.

If the Opposition wants to govern, as opposed to merely occupying the Treasury benches, it has two years in which to woo and win a mandate from the party room and the electorate for the dry policies which it knows are necessary. In the meantime the government will, the ACTU permitting, adopt Liberal policy as Menzies, Holt, Gorton and McMahon once adopted Labor policy.

There are some Labor dries who would love to do it. That may be galling for those in the Liberal Party who want nothing more than office, but bigger men will welcome the change in national fortune.

During the war and the fifties and sixties collectivism prevailed because collectivism commanded the ideas — we were all, or nearly all, socialists then. By the seventies it was apparent that collectivism had failed to deliver the millennium and had delivered much that was unpleasant, but an alternative was not apparent to politicians or public.

The want of an articulated alternative was the most fundamental cause of the failure of the Fraser years. Which ideas eventually prevail will be determined by the Mont Pelerin Societies, the Centres for Independent Studies and other institutions; the sort of government we have immediately after the election is more important than which party wins.

***
2.
Greg Lindsay, “Libs will sink or swim in policy think-tank,”
The Australian, October 31, 1994, p. 11.

That the Liberal Party needs help to sort out many of its problems is a point few would argue against. The proposed establishment of the Menzies Research Centre is seen by some as a key component in establishing the party’s credentials as an alternative government.

Gerard Henderson’s comment that the expensive refurbishment of the Liberals’ Canberra headquarters resulted in a magnificent catering facility but no library is a good illustration of one of the party’s problems.

Well, is this about to change? The establishment if this, yet another piece of Menzies memorabilia, is on the face of it a welcome development. It seems to show the Liberals are serious about thinking through important issues. The idea of a Liberal Party think-tank has been around for some time. I know of at least one serious attempt to get something going following the Valder report commissioned in the wake of the 1983 election loss.

But why now, and what will it do? Is it to speak as the Liberals’ policy voice? Or as some semi-autonomous body?

Political parties around the world have always had some internal policy development capacity. They frequently use outside help. With the production of Fightback — a significant but poorly marketed policy document — the Liberals used the talents of various consulting groups, as well as their own resources. Its electoral failure was something that the Menzies Centre, at least as its prospectus promises, might not be able to do much about.

An objective of the 1994-95 prospectus is to stimulate debate on social and economic issues. Anything that does this is a further positive step, but an organisation aligned with the Liberal Party will always be seen as partisan. Whether or not this devalues its findings is for others to decide, though my guess is it will. The success of existing think-tanks is very much because of their determined independence.

So what can I, as someone who has been in the think-tank game for so long, offer as advice? First, that the centre’s success hinges on the strengths of its chief executive and the quality of the research and thinking he or she promotes. The relative success or otherwise of think-tanks, be they independent — such as the Centre for Independent Studies — or associated with a political party or group, depends to a large degree on who runs it.

An important function of think-tanks is, not surprisingly, thinking. Will party politics allow the Menzies Centre the luxury of time and resources to take a serious look at some of the big issues? I don’t think so. Such a course is time-consuming and expensive. Besides, much of the work is already being done by independent bodies and there is not much new the centre can add, except, as the prospectus points out, to meet “the need for fundamental research, debate and promotion of public policy issues based on Liberal principles”.

So maybe some key functions for the centre are beginning to emerge from all this: to be a collector, sifter and marketer of ideas to its constituency (Liberal politicians, staffers, members and activists, including university student bodies); to facilitate and co-ordinate information; and, more practically, to determine, organise and implement policy.

One matter I think should be considered seriously is to locate the centre in either Sydney or Melbourne and away from Canberra. It makes no sense for an organisation that proposes to speak to its constituency, or indeed the Australian public, to be located in a place where the preferred method is to speak at people.

One organisation that might offer a parallel is the Centre for Policy Studies, established by British Conservatives following the disappointments of the Heath government. Richard Cockett’s recent book, Thinking the Unthinkable, quotes a memo from Alfred Sherman, a driving force behind the CPS, who recalled that the centre was intended “to moot new ideas and policies without committing the party leadership …” A similar approach could well be a plus for the Liberals. It would allow for debate without it being seen as dividing the party.

The centre was set up at a time of disappointment and disillusionment, and when there was no clear intellectual direction for the Conservatives. From opposition, it helped to set them on a path that promoted economic liberalism within the party and the wider public. But in the end, according to Cockett, “it became much more a creature of government than a quasi-autonomous fount of radical thinking”. I fear an independently minded director of the Menzies Centre would not get a long employment contract.

Certainly, there is much disappointment and disillusionment within the Liberals and perhaps a body such as the centre could help cheer them up. We, and I suspect all the other independent think-tanks, including those based within universities, would welcome any contribution it might make to better public debate. In political terms, that would be good for the Liberals and for Labor. The country cannot lose if it happens.

***
3.
John Hyde, “Ideas need advocates to sow the seeds of change,”
The Australian, September 15, 1995, p. 15.

During the last two decades or a little longer, most of the world has experienced a move away from government control of economic matters, and a move towards democratic and other checks on unrestrained authority. They have been lean years for political elites and, although socialism is not dead, it is looking sick.

During the past decade or a little less, political argument in Western democracies has turned increasingly to cultural issues such as gender, language, education and ethnicity. These are the great issues of our time — the ones that will determine the nature of future society.

There is unresolved argument about the extent to which these momentous events have been driven by ideas and how much by the inevitable dynamics of what went before and by new technology such as cheap air travel and electronic funds transfer. That argument is a bit beside the point. Had the alternative to socialist theory not been popularised, or had socialism been a less spectacular failure in practice, then, though the changes might have come eventually, they would not be with us yet.

Ideas matter, but to matter in a democracy they need to be accepted fairly widely. Therefore, the task of popularising those ideas that do not have automatic appeal — such as free markets, monetary restraint, a goods and services tax, privatisation and deregulation — is as fundamental to public policy formation as is developing the relevant theory. But an idea that does not appeal to values already held is as persuasive as a wink in the dark. Ideas need champions who are heard and, above all, believed.

When trends were in the opposite direction, the Fabians understood these things well. The task of popularising the new agenda has been taken up by organisations, as once the socialist idea was popularised by other organisations. Among these, the liberal (in North American usage, conservative) public-interest think-tanks have been significant. These include bodies such as the Institute of Economic Affairs in London, the American Enterprise Institute, Heritage Foundation and Cato Institute in the United States, the Fraser Institute in Canada and many more. They are not household names, but the views that they have advanced are well known.

Their equivalents in Australia are the Centre for Independent Studies and the Institute of Public Affairs. These institutes may readily be distinguished from industry lobbies and consultancies by the care with which they guard their independence from vested interests, governments and political parties.

This week Dr Mike Nahan took over from me as director of the IPA. That frees me to assert here that, unless Australians who want more economic and social reform can think of better champions for it, they would be wise to give solid backing to the independent think-tanks. Good public policy advocates, only some of whom work in think-tanks, have developed their own professionalism, that is, techniques and disciplines for getting ideas across in ways that are legitimate.

Ideas on the presentation of ideas circulate with the help of the Atlas Foundation, which has headquarters in the US. People in public life should ask themselves why they are there. If the answer is not to change public policy for the better, then they should make way for those who will give a go to what the late Austin Holmes called “The Good Fight” — office merely occupied is a dreadful waste. And so is office squandered on ego-tripping or kudos when converts rather than bruised opponents are needed.

Since resources will be limited, advocacy should neither be wasted on trivia nor squandered on battles that cannot be won. Policy advocates without credibility are useless, and mistakes — although some are inevitable — are costly to the cause. It is, therefore, far more important to be correct than to be original, and arguments should be, wherever possible, based in established theory and supported by evidence of success elsewhere.

For these reasons, so called “think-tanks” such as the IPA and CIS have been more accurately called “advocacy tanks” and cheerfully admit to being dealers in second-hand ideas. Successful advocacy requires good humour that needs to go beyond just civility to encompass generosity of spirit. Precious people make poor advocates. To take offence at a minor slight is simply unprofessional.

Dealing with opponents motives is difficult. Of course, discrediting an opposing witness can be effective, but any suggestion that advantage has been taken unfairly damages both advocate and cause. It is also remarkably difficult not to talk down. The advocate ought to be speaking from a position of greater knowledge, and it requires care, patience and good humour to explain to the ignorant that they are in fact ignorant without causing embarrassment or giving offence.

People who have difficulty meeting people in from other walks of life more-or-less on their terms, fail as policy advocates. It is necessary to employ argument and data that are above reproach, but that is not enough. Members of the public who cannot define money supply can smell hypocrisy, class attitudes and self-interest in the most apparently innocuous press release. Although the common touch is not easily learned, I wonder whether a season in a shearing team, participating in its smoko discussions, might not make good advocates out of good minds.

To succeed, arguments must appeal to premises that listeners already hold. Not to seek out common ground on which to build is to be content to engage in a dialogue of the deaf. It is the most common error of public advocacy.

Eventually, reality tends to break through in most countries. However, if ideas are to save Australians from being mugged by it — that is, to bring forward the dates at which various realisations dawn — then professional propagation of the essential ideas is a small insurance premium.