ANALYSIS: There's been a '30-year war' against unions in Australia, and think-tanks have played a role
I want to talk about the H.R. Nicholls Society, since Sally McManus singled them out.
A key moment came in 1993 when the Keating Labor government adopted formal "enterprise bargaining" which made it much harder for wage gains in one corner of the economy to flow to workers in other parts of the economy. "Despite their limited size and public profile, the four groups ... have been remarkably successful in achieving their goals."
They try to get their ideas circulating widely in the community in the belief that it's an effective way of changing society. In that essay, written in 1949, Hayek argued that socialists had been able to change the world because they understood that "intellectuals" were in a unique position to spread ideas widely through the masses.