How do you know when the Right has arrived, hot on the heels of the British tourists? Because the whining that has continued after the jets have been switched off, hits a higher pitch.

That’s the only lesson one can learn from James Paterson, of the IPA, writing on The Drum last week, in urgent defence of the think tank’s right to be considered as an ideas base, rather than as a shil for corporate donors.

The IPA’s apparent willingness to write 15 articles on the evil of softdrink labelling while virtually ignoring more clear and present threats to liberty that don’t involve someone making a buck was criticised here last week and appears to have struck a nerve，prompting Paterson to point to the group’s proud history，etc, etc. “The IPA has been utterly consistent in its advocacy for free people and free markets since its foundation in 1943,” Paterson thunders. Well hardly. The IPA is like the farmer’s axe handle and head have both been replaced over the years but it works as well as it ever did.

Founded by C.D. Kemp in 1943 as a crucible for the Liberal Party, it was a very small outfit, initially favouring small l liberalism on a range of matters. It was moribund for decades, sending out its leaflet-sized newsletter as a way of keeping Liberal Party fund-raising going. Kemp’s son, Rod, its director in the 1980s, worked for Margaret Guilfoyle and Andrew Peacock and outside of a Justin Timberlake concert, it doesn’t get much wetter than that.

The IPA org turned Right when it was effectively taken over by the proto-neoliberal John Hyde Australian Institute of Public Policy. That’s when it also began to seek out larger corporate funding to expand and thus when its character changed. Though it tries to keep its donor list secret, it has never seriously challenged reports that they include the major tobacco and oil companies. It’s only in this current incarnation that the IPA has focused so obsessively on the freedom of corporations to do what they like.

Whether that is yielding said corporations much gain remains to be seen — the new “no nanny state” campaign against plain packaging for tobacco is obviously a protect of the IPA’s obsessions, not anything that connects with the bulk of the Australian public. From the Grain Elevators Board to arbitration to compulsory seat belts, Australians have always been pretty comfortable with a proactive state, and only a group of fantasists who wish the place were the US could think otherwise.

And of course, when called to justify their complex relation to donors, the IPA’s foot soldiers start mewling about being “silenced” or “censored”. Apparently, free societies are all well and good until someone starts criticising you.

Yet in a cracked way you can see their logic. For if the IPA now lives off its corporate donations, any criticism of it is bad for business. Any remnant of classical liberalism is deformed by a purely business model. Perhaps it will soon start suing critics under the Trade Practices Act?