For 80 years the IPA pushed free-market ideology through the Liberal Party and shaped Australian policy in ways that served the wealthy few. Now it has found a more useful vehicle.
By Sue Barrett
On 4 June 2026, the Australian Financial Review published an opinion piece by Cian Hussey, a research fellow at the Institute of Public Affairs. It appeared on the IPA’s own website under its institutional branding. The headline: “Critics of One Nation ‘fringe’ are wrong. It’s the only mainstream party.” His argument rested on the AFR/Redbridge Group/Accent Research poll showing One Nation at 31 per cent nationally – ahead of Labor at 28 per cent and the Coalition at 20 per cent. The IPA published it without disclaimer or qualification.
That is not a personal blog post. It is the IPA’s institutional voice. And it matters, because of what the IPA actually is.
The institution that helped build the Liberal Party
The Institute of Public Affairs was founded in 1943 by Melbourne businessmen – among them George Coles and associates of Sir Keith Murdoch – in response to what they saw as the growing power of the Labor Party. Its inaugural director, Charles Denton Kemp, wrote a 1944 paper called “Looking Forward” that Robert Menzies described as “the finest statement of basic political and economic problems made in Australia for many years.” Journalist Paul Kelly, in The End of Certainty, concluded that CD Kemp was “probably the principal architect of the original Menzies platform.” Many of those policies fed directly into the Liberal Party, founded the following year.
This is documented history, not disputed.
The connection between the IPA and the Liberal project was never just intellectual. CD Kemp’s two sons, David and Rod Kemp, both became Liberal ministers. The IPA-to-parliament pipeline produced Tim Wilson, currently Shadow Treasurer, who worked at the IPA from 2007 to 2013. John Pesutto, Victorian Liberal leader, is an alumnus. So is James Paterson. For more than eighty years, the IPA functioned as intellectual infrastructure for the Liberal project – a source of ideas, personnel, and institutional legitimacy.
That is the institution whose research fellow just told the AFR that the Liberal Party holds “fringe” opinions.
Who funds both sides of this story
There is a name that connects the IPA and One Nation. NSW Supreme Court documents, disclosed during long-running family litigation, reveal that Rinehart’s company Hancock Prospecting donated $2.3 million to the IPA in 2016 and $2.2 million in 2017. The IPA’s annual reports for those years did not name Rinehart as a donor. At the time they were not legally required to.
Rinehart’s financial relationship with One Nation is separately documented. Hancock Prospecting confirmed it donated the Cirrus G7 aircraft – a light plane valued at over $1 million – to One Nation, with Hanson promoting it in a social media video as a tool to reach regional communities. An additional $2 million in cash came from Rinehart’s associates, including stockbroker Angus Aitken and former Northern Territory Chief Minister Adam Giles.
Rinehart is the common thread. The same person who was the major disclosed donor to the institution that built the Liberal Party is the primary backer of the party now being declared mainstream in that institution’s name.
You do not need to allege conspiracy to note that this is a structural fact. The money flows in a documented direction. The political effect is visible.
The British parallel
Australia is not the first country to watch this happen.
In Britain, the Institute of Economic Affairs – the IEA, the closest British equivalent to the IPA – spent decades as the intellectual backbone of the Conservative Party, helping to shape Thatcherism and the free-market framework that defined British conservatism from the 1980s onward. As Nigel Farage’s Reform UK surged, the IEA’s commentary shifted. The IPA published its own analysis of Reform UK’s trajectory in late 2025, describing Reform as seeking to “end the Conservative Party and reorient British politics” – and treating that ambition not with alarm but as a coherent expression of popular will.
Think tanks do not remain loyal to parties that are losing. They remain loyal to power.
What the record shows
One Nation’s voting record in the Senate is public. They voted against the federal anti-corruption body. Against transparency of political donations. In favour of repealing the section of the Racial Discrimination Act protecting people from public racial vilification. Against substantive climate action. In 2022, Hanson gave her word to Rex Patrick to support closing the billionaire disclosure loophole – then backflipped. The amendment died 17 to 17.
When Hanson was pressed on policy costings during the SA election campaign, she called the question stupid. One Nation does not publish costed platforms. That is not an accusation – it is a description of their practice across thirty years of parliamentary participation.
The IPA’s argument is that One Nation now represents mainstream Australian values, and that the political and media classes are the fringe. That argument rests entirely on One Nation’s current polling position.
However, a polling result is not a policy delivery. It is an expression of where trust has collapsed and what vehicle people have reached for in its absence. The communities driving One Nation’s numbers have real grievances. The question the IPA’s endorsement does not answer is whether One Nation’s record – thirty years of it – suggests it will address those grievances in parliament, or perform them.
The question for Liberal MPs and senators
Tim Wilson said on ABC’s Insiders on 10 May that he would not rule out a coalition with One Nation. By Monday morning he had revised that to “never, ever, ever.” The speed of that reversal tells you something about the internal Liberal calculation – that formal alliance with One Nation is currently seen as a vote-loser in the seats the party needs to survive.
However, the IPA’s endorsement is not about Tim Wilson’s arithmetic. It is about institutional legitimacy. When the think tank that spent eighty years supplying the Liberal Party with its intellectual foundation declares that party “fringe,” it withdraws something that cannot simply be reclaimed. The IPA has not published a rebuttal of that piece. It has not qualified it. It put it on its website under its own name.
That is not a rogue employee. It is a signal.
Every Liberal MP and senator who built their political identity in relation to the IPA – and there are many – is now entitled to ask what the institution they drew from has decided to become.
And every voter is entitled to apply the same five questions they always should: What does this level of government actually control? What is the party’s actual record? Who is funding them? Who are they accountable to? What specifically are they promising – and is it costed?
The answers to those questions have not changed. Only the institutional framing around them has.
Your Vote. Your Future.
You know what to do.
Onward we press
This article was originally published on Sue Barrett
Sue Barrett is the founder of Democracy Watch AU and Before You Vote – a free civic education resource for every Australian who wants to cut through the spin. Before You Vote publishes every Tuesday and Friday. If this was useful, send it to five people.
Also by Sue Barrett:
Tim Wilson’s Sharemarket Bet: Questions for His Economic Roles
Echoes of Nuremberg: The Chilling Parallels Between 1930s Germany & Today’s America
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Unfortunately for an enemy of maggoty, ruinous, uncivilised superstition, we can only have saintly detached politicians if we want any honesty, detachment, service, progress, satisfaction. Hansonism, Trumpery, the old horrors from Huns to Hitler, we ordinary folk supporting society have been betrayed, assaulted, wronged, bled. Greedianity spines up the IPA. So, do avoid the poxery of Australian conservatism.
The Guardian reports today that Angus Taylor has alluded to working with one nation “to get rid of this rotten government”.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/live/2026/jun/09/anthony-albanese-labor-one-nation-pauline-hanson-coalition-angus-taylor-ndis-jacinta-allan-victoria-ntwnfb
The pipeline that conveyed Timmy ‘Titflops’ Wilson to parliament was the sewer pipeline. Fact.
“Charles Denton Kemp, wrote a 1944 paper called “Looking Forward” that Robert Menzies described as “the finest statement of basic political and economic problems made in Australia for many years.”
Menzies did not know what he was talking about.
Years after that from Menzies, when he was PM, Jim Cairns had to explain Keynesian economics to Menzies.
The most famous work by Keyenes was published in 1936.
Now that the Liberal party is deceased,all we need is the funeral celebrant to conduct the interment.As luck would have it, in a serendipitous appointment,we have our man in the person of the new President of the Liberal party,Dr.No hisself.
It has to be an act of God…and I ain’t a believer.
Welcome aboard Vajina Rindfart.Fetching handle.
I am all for gender equality in government however there are 2 divisive females whom I prefer to be removed from Australian politics – Gina Rinehart and Pauline Hanson.
Tony Abbott in his capacity as President of the Liberal party has stated that they would, in 2028, preference One Nation.
So we have the prospect of a coalition made up of One Nation, the Liberal party and The Nationals ganging up against the ALP with the very real prospect of Pauline Hanson as our next Prime Minister.
I hear that Clive Palmer is looking at re-entering politics so maybe, in this bizarre world, he will become the best alternative to vote for.
Stop the World, I want to get off!
Harry Lime, one can imagine Dr. No at the helm of the party meetings, introducing the agenda… ‘Praise the Lord and pass the onions,’ prior to outlining some fabulist fantasy as to the return of the Liberal Party as a force to be reckoned with.
‘We’ll fight them in the trenches,’ he snarled, adjusting his Brodie helmet (it kept slipping down over his face), adding ‘and on the beaches,’ reminding the assembled ten or so that he is a budgie-smugglered lifesaver, and continuing for good measure, ‘no-one in the commie ALP is, none of them can even swim.’
He went on… ‘Some of you may recall that back in the early 2000s there was a bit of an issue with Pauline Hanson, electoral fraud, terrible stuff, she went to the can for a few weeks but it’s all good, now, she’s become a bestie, and between me and the Porrs we can win back our rightful place, Austrayan’s deserve nothing less. Rah rah rah, and get an onion inta ya.
In her 30 long, useless, ineffective years – THIRTY! – in Parliament, Poor Lean has only managed to get one PHON candidate elected to the House of Reps. PHON needs to secure at least 76 seats there to have any hope of forming a government. SEVENTY SIX SEATS!!!
IPA like IEA* at Tufton St. London is US fossil fuel and ‘segregation economics’ of Atlas Koch Network; *the IEA head Anthony Fisher founded Atlas, now based in Washington, where else?
Koch Network Heritage Foundation developed Project 2025 with the MAGA white Christian nationalist Tanton Network (see SusPopAus & NewsCorp <- Fox News), and partners Tone’s other workplace the Danube Institute with whiff of MAGA and the Kremlin.
According to US DeSmog via compulsory foundation and political donation reporting, the IPA received donations from the Olin and BradleyFoundations in ’80-90s signalling ideological interest in Oz. DeSmog also identified Rhinehart more recent years as a donor; no thanks to local media…?
Global picture is corrupt Christian nationlists &/or oligarchs in the UK, US, Russia and far right Europeans want to break up the EU European Union, why?
For its sensible regulation finance & fossil fuels, minimum standards or protections for consumers, workers, environment and society for empowered citizens, science and the enlightenment.
PS See Lucy Hamilton and Jeremy Walker on Atlas Koch.
Dr. Bob Brown admired Menzies and allegedly, nearly joined the Liberal Party.
It is also quite apparent that SKY after Dark have shifted their allegiance away from the coalition and now cannot wait to ‘interview’ One Nation spruikers but even SKY (Bolt) were sidelined when Barnaby was interviewed and was unable to enunciate the One Nation policy on housing – particularly foreign owned and the status of permanent residents.
Later this year Sky News Australia will become News24 and some are saying that this means that they will focus more on News rather than opinion and hyperbole – this remains to be seen but don’t hold your breath. It has also been suggested that News24 will register as a lobbyist (for right-wing sectional interests)…
Not a detailed policy or costing in sight. Just racism & hyperbole.
These nasty greedy dullards haven’t a social, environmental or economic conscience between them, and know sfa about what makes society and industry flourish.
They live in ‘past glory’ (of the once winning team) which was wrought from death & destruction. And fail to see that US neoliberalism sucked Oz dry from 70s through 2000s.
With Rinehart (& mates), IPA, Sky, Libs, Nats, One Notion trying to run on the Trumpian schema, which Oz folk in the main detest, they’re building a cesspit of failure, just as Trump is doing.
The now promulgated mantra of “..get rid of Labor, the worst Oz govt ever..” is classic ‘protest’ hyperbole. But come election time(s), the blah blah of protest will give way to actual results, and policy. Will the protesters flood back to Labor as they did against Dutton’s LNP?
The fly in the ointment of course is the dying duck AUKUS, which with any luck will be carefully stemmed before the next fed election.
A Mr. J Duniam (who?) has left the liberal party, it has been announced. No doubt there will be speculation, gossip, suspicion, comment, some release of fictional insincerity, even relief for some. A swimming rat?
@ Phil Pryor: Thank you for your kind words.
FYI: Senator Jonno Dunnycan (Tasmania)
Senator Duniam was first elected to the Senate in 2016 and re-elected in 2022.
He currently serves as Shadow Minister for Home Affairs and Immigration, and has previously held portfolios including Assistant Minister for Forestry and Fisheries and Regional Tourism and Industry Development.
The announcement comes days after fellow Tasmanian Liberal senator Wendy Askew’s decision to retire.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-06-14/liberal-senator-jonno-duniam-to-quit-politics/106795644
It appears that the LIARBRAL$ ranks are being cleansed of any thinking politicians who may consider merging with the PHONeys is stupid politics.
Yes Phil, The rats are getting restless, as well they should.The beetrooter saw the writing on the urinal wall,and nominally shifted, but remains at the same trough.
@Harry Lime, what would that writing on the urinal wall have been, I wonder? Having seen my fair share of dunny graffiti, could it have been along the lines of ‘For a good time, call this number?’… only to find that you’ve been connected to, gosh, the mind boggles… George Pell, Porleen, Scomo, Angus, Gina, Alan Jones, Tony Abbott?
Canguro, it wouldn’t surprise to find all of those charmers on Bananababy’s speed dial.At least by joining Hanson’s mob of deplorables, he remains within grifting distance of Gina the Hutt.