Abstract
This book’s empirical components commence in this chapter. The chapter examines the structure of the Australian think tank industry and identifies the characteristics and resources of its constituents. The data demonstrate the tremendous diversity within the industry across size, structural affiliations, ideological orientations, and policy capacities. The analysis extends to the financial circumstances of several prominent institutes and illustrates the importance of fiscal resources to the generation and proselytisation of policy ideas.
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Notes
- 1.
Wayne Swan was Deputy Prime Minister from June 2010 until June 2013 and the Australian Treasurer from December 2007 until June 2013. Swan was the National President of the Australian Labor Party at the time of interview (Parliament of Australia, 2021).
- 2.
The Australian Tax Office (ATO) categorises entities with an annual income of less than two million dollars as ‘small’. Those with annual incomes exceeding two-hundred-and-fifty million dollars are ‘large’, and those in between are ‘medium’ (see Gilfillan, 2015).
- 3.
The ACNC requires all registered charities to produce an Annual Information Statement containing financial data (ACNC, 2021).
- 4.
Thirty-eight of the forty-five ‘small’ and ‘medium’ sized entities are also structurally independent (seven possess structural affiliations).
- 5.
The sixty consist of fifty-five autonomous institutes, four quasi-independent institutes, and one corporate entity.
- 6.
Seven of these twelve affiliated institutes are university-affiliated, two are government-affiliated, and three are party-affiliated.
- 7.
Nevertheless, the government primarily sets the research agendas of Australian Public Service entities (government-affiliated entities). Self-initiated research is typically a much smaller component of these entities’ overall research programs.
- 8.
Simon Jackman departed the USSC in March 2022.
- 9.
These features may not apply to all entities within the university-affiliated category.
- 10.
The USSC employs some traditional academics on secondment from the University of Sydney. Nevertheless, on the USSC’s public policy side, research fellows have no permanent teaching commitments (interview with Jackman, 2019).
- 11.
Brett Gale left the Chifley Research Centre in December 2020.
- 12.
This study uncovered relatively few think tanks that actually perform contract work, aside, of course, from government-affiliated entities.
- 13.
The seven state-focussed entities are the Committee for Sydney, Committee for Melbourne, Committee for Perth, Committee for Adelaide, the TJ Ryan Foundation (Queensland), the Australian Institute for Progress (Queensland), and the Mannkal Economic Education Foundation (Western Australia).
- 14.
As exemplars, BZE’s ‘The 10-Gigawatt Vision’ report is sixty pages, the ‘Collie at the Crossroads’ report totals sixty-four pages, and ‘Rethinking Cement’ runs to ninety-six pages.
- 15.
This study uses a combination of methods to determine ideological orientations. First, all government-affiliated entities are considered centrist, consistent with the legislative requirements of the Public Service Act (Commonwealth of Australia, 1999). Second, university-affiliated entities are categorised as centrist (aside from the Whitlam Institute and the PM Glynn Institute). For all other entities, home-page references to particular ideological traits are cross-referenced with other entity outputs to confirm their consistency. If there are no identifiable website references to a specific ideology, other key phrases that align with left- and right-leaning ideologies are assessed (referencing Fenna, 2014). An entity is classified as centrist if this process detects no discernible ideological orientation.
- 16.
John Roskam stepped down from his role as IPA Executive Director in June 2022. He remains a Senior Fellow at the institute.
- 17.
Swan implies that the other free-market/conservative institutes are on the far-right.
- 18.
The term ‘financial circumstances’ is preferred to ‘financial resources’ because it more broadly references an institute’s asset base and its funding conditions (or avenues to the accumulation of assets).
- 19.
Data presented here are sourced from this study’s think tank surveys. Two respondents elected not to answer this question (n = 69).
- 20.
Several of the entities in the ‘prefer not to say’ category are also likely to fit into this ‘bulge-bracket’ category, based on the earlier ACNC classifications.
- 21.
Prominence is assessed across several metrics, including media citations, Hansard citations, participation in parliamentary inquiries, multi-media activities, access to federal government Ministers, and identification by parliamentarians and journalists in this study’s original survey.
- 22.
These three institutes were the most frequently identified autonomous entities (outside the ‘prominent’ entities) in existing think tank population lists.
- 23.
All data sourced from institute annual reports. See AIIA (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), ASPI (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), TAI (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), CEDA (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), CIS (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), CPD (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), Grattan (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), IPA (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), Lowy (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020), and Per Capita (2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020).
- 24.
CEDA accrued $583,178 in investment income in 2018/2019, but it fell to $84,325 in 2020 (CEDA, 2019, p. 17).
- 25.
In these sample five years, Grattan’s capital base exceeded the capital bases of the nine remaining sample entities by approximately $24 million in 2015, $14 million in 2016, $11 million in 2017, $8 million in 2018, and $1 million in 2019. The combined capital bases of these nine sample entities exceeded Grattan’s by approximately $4 million in 2020. See the annual reports for AIIA, ASPI, TAI, CEDA, CIS, CPD, Grattan, IPA, Lowy, and Per Capita from 2015 to 2020. Grattan incurred substantial net losses in 2016 ($4.2 million) and 2020 ($4.4 million) as a result of changes in the value of its investment portfolio.
- 26.
Chapter 5 shows that funding support for independent think tanks substantially commenced during the Prime Ministership of John Howard.
- 27.
The Commonwealth government has disclosed Grant Awards via the Grant Connect website since December 31, 2017 (see GrantConnect, 2019). This search was conducted on December 1, 2019, for the period commencing on December 31, 2017, up until the search date.
- 28.
Nevertheless, the CIS has welcomed sponsorship dollars from the Reserve Bank of Australia since 2006, diluting its attempt to demonstrate its devotion to fundamental neo-liberal principles (Wright, 2020).
- 29.
In 2019, AIIA’s grant income was $227,334 out of a total revenue base of $941,575, and in 2020, the AIIA attracted $382,987 in grant funding out of a total revenue base of $744,197 (AIIA, 2019, 2020). It is not clear whether the entirety of this grant income originates from the Commonwealth government. Wakefield (2021, p. 3) states that the AIIA received a more modest $122,900 from the Commonwealth in 2019.
- 30.
ASPI has had heavy exposure to government grant income since its inception (in 2001) but recorded its lowest proportion (34%) of government income versus its overall income in 2019/2020 (ASPI, 2020, p. 21).
- 31.
As previously noted, the Grattan Institute received additional funds from the Victorian government, BHP Billiton, and National Australia Bank.
- 32.
These funding data were sourced from think tanks’ 2018 annual financial accounts (and other publicly available sources). Institutes that receive at least 75% of funding from one source are categorised as single source. Those that receive between 50 and 75% of their funding from one source, and the balance from another, are categorised with the majority-funding source listed first followed by the minority source. In aggregate, twenty-seven of Australia’s ninety-three policy institutes receive government income, although the number might be larger due to the challenges in tracing funding sources.
- 33.
Transparify’s analyses very much depend on how they define their think tank universe.
- 34.
Gina Rinehart has a net worth of approximately $31 billion according to the Australian Financial Review Rich List 2021 (Bailey & Sprague, 2021).
- 35.
The McKell Institute equally demonstrates the case here. McKell derives 33% of its funding from unions, 39% from corporates, and 26% from contract work (see McKell, 2019).
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Hagland, T. (2023). The State of the Industry. In: Think Tanks in Australia. Interest Groups, Advocacy and Democracy Series. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-27044-4_4
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