THE AGE http://www.theage.com.au/daily/990719/news/specials/news4.html July 19, 1999 The opinion business ROBERT MANNE IT IS an illusion to believe the present John Laws case - where bankers were willing to pay a talkback radio host a secret $1.2million to spruik on their behalf - is the only kind of case where corporate money has been used in Australia to influence the shape of opinion on matters of public concern. In the early 1980s significant parts of business in this country made a far less sinister but far more important decision - to invest considerable sums in neo-liberal think tanks such as the Institute of Public Affairs in Melbourne and the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney. The purpose of this corporate funding was to use their intellectual prestige to assist in the economic transformation of Australia, in the destruction of the traditionally protectionist, interventionist and regulatory state. From the first this intense business interest in public-opinion formation in Australia, which I experienced personally during my unwelcome dissent from economic-rationalist orthodoxy as editor of Quadrant, made me uneasy from a democratic point of view. No doubt the miners and the bankers who sank resources into the neo-liberal think tanks were genuinely convinced that the changes they advocated - the end of tariffs, lower corporate taxes, weakened trade union power - would benefit the Australian economy. No doubt, however, they also believed that such changes would improve their bottom lines. In the 1980s, within the world of big business, the distinction between the national interest and corporate self-interest became hopelessly confused. Moreover, by observing some of my acquaintances, who made new careers within these think tanks, certain potential conflicts of interest - in the new marriage of thought and money - became clear at least to me. In the late 1980s, Gerard Henderson, now a weekly columnist on this page, left his job as adviser to the Leader of the Opposition, John Howard, and set out upon a new career as columnist at The Australian and as director of the Institute of Public Affairs in NSW, soon to be reborn as the influential Sydney Institute. The late 1980s were the last years of cowboy capitalism in Australia. The great opponent of the cowboys was Henry Bosch, chairman of the National Companies and Securities Commission. The legal struggles between Bosch and the cowboys became serious business indeed. In 1988 and 1989, in his role as columnist, Gerard Henderson embarked on a personal anti-Bosch crusade. Time and again he accused Bosch of being a ``media groupie'', of conducing ''trials by media'' and of having an insufficient grasp of the rule of law. Against the bureaucratic state power wielded by Bosch, individuals were ``virtually powerless''. Which individuals did Henderson have in mind? In a column of 24 October 1988, the individual whose cause he defended was one of the businessmen Bosch was at the time investigating, Larry Adler of FAI Insurance. Adler's solicitors had complained about an NCSC media release. With ``enormous arrogance'' Bosch had refused to respond. The dispute between Bosch and Adler over this media release seemed to Henderson a matter of ``utmost importance''. In a column a little over a year later, Henderson turned to the defence of another virtually powerless individual - Christopher Skase. In a radio interview Bosch had described the practice of company directors paying themselves vast sums without reference to their shareholders as ``probably unethical and probably illegal''. Henderson commented thus: ``As a youth, I studied law and learnt very early on how to distinguish between British justice and rough justice.'' Bosch had created an entirely ``new form of legal process''. ``Bosch justice'' had the capacity to inflict on Skase's company, Qintex, very considerable harm. In 1988 and 1989 Henderson wore two hats - as an independent intellectual writing an opinion column and as a director of a new think tank seeking considerable corporate support. I have no idea which corporations supported the Sydney Institute in its early days. Henderson's anti-Bosch campaign, however, highlighted for me the potential for conflicts of interest in a regime where donations to think tanks did not have to be disclosed. So, in a different way, did the case of another old acquaintance, Ron Brunton. In 1981, Brunton, an anthropologist, left Macquarie University to fashion for himself a new think-tank career. For most of the 1990s he has been director of indigenous affairs at the IPA. In this post he has both wielded considerable influence and displayed considerable courage as the bete noire of most academic anthropologists in the field of Aboriginal affairs. Since the late 1980s support for Aboriginal land claims, interest in Aboriginal spirituality and shame at the injustices meted out to Aborigines has been at its most intense. It has been Brunton's role to mount sceptical counter-arguments concerning every famous case - Coronation Hill, Mabo, Hindmarsh Bridge, Deaths in Custody, Stolen Generations - where this interest in Aboriginal spirituality or sympathy over injustice is expressed in the political or legal sphere. There are no grounds for doubting the professional integrity of Brunton's work. However, it cannot have escaped even his attention that his employers at the IPA and their backers did not engage him as a consultant because of an academic interest in anthropology, but because they believed that while an excessively pro-Aboriginal opinion existed, the mining interest in particular and the national economic interest in general would be harmed. Does anyone really believe that if Brunton began to write reports which coincided with left-liberal sentiment concerning Aborigines that his work would retain its value for the IPA? Certain conclusions follow from what I have said. The question of potential conflicts of interest between corporate sponsorship and opinion formation, highlighted by the John Laws case, cannot be limited to commercial radio. An obligation for public disclosure of corporate sponsorship ought to be extended to all media outlets and all public affairs institutes whose purpose is to shape the way we think. And those interested in the health of public debate should fight like tigers to support the ABC, the institution which brought the Laws case to public attention, whose independence remains unquestioned. Robert Manne is associate professor of politics at La Trobe University.E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------------------- RecOzNet2 has a page @ http://www.green.net.au/recoznet2 and is archived at http://www.mail-archive.com/ To unsubscribe from this list, mail [EMAIL PROTECTED], and in the body of the message, include the words: unsubscribe announce or click here mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]?Body=unsubscribe%20announce This posting is provided to the individual members of this group without permission from the copyright owner for purposes of criticism, comment, scholarship and research under the "fair use" provisions of the Federal copyright laws and it may not be distributed further without permission of the copyright owner, except for "fair use." 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