It's Great Talking To IPA Members - IPA Keeping In Touch

Dear IPA Members

My name is Kirsty O’Sullivan and I’m pleased to be sending you this email as part of our new “Keeping in Touch” series. I joined the staff of the IPA just six weeks ago as Development Manager working to support the IPA’s continuing growth as part of the Membership and Development team. My particular focus will be on growing support for the IPA’s education programs for young people, and particularly the IPA’s Generation Liberty program led by Renee Gorman. As a mother of three, including a nine year-old son who I’m delighted to say joined Generation Liberty of his own free will, I have a deep personal commitment to the IPA’s ideal of ‘securing freedom for the next generation’.

I only got to spend about a week at my desk in the IPA offices before I and everyone else at the IPA packed up their computer and started working from home. When we’re eventually released from home detention I’m looking forward to meeting you and learning from you about how we can grow the voice of freedom in Australia. I’ve been a member of the IPA for several years, and there’s many of you I already know from my time working as the General Manager and National Vice President of the Liberal Democratic Party, and from my involvement over the years with the annual Friedman Conference organised by the Australian Libertarian Society and the Australian Taxpayers Alliance, Libertyworks, and with CPAC Australia. I first came to the freedom movement through the small business I owned and operated. Confronted by red tape and continuously changing government regulations I realised I was spending more and more time filling in forms and less and less time running my business. I’ve absolutely lived the IPA’s Cut Red Tape for Australia’s Jobs research program and having employed several people over the years I can attest to just how important is the IPA’s Dignity of Work program.

I might have lived with my family in Melbourne for the last seven years – but I’m a proud Queenslander. Growing up in Yeppoon we were an eight hour drive from Brisbane and 1,500 kilometres from Canberra. I’ve always believed the further you live from a capital city the more likely you are to believe that your rights and your responsibilities are yours – they’re not the government’s.

Even though for the time being I can’t be meeting with you, I can still talk with you on the telephone. Over the last the month and a half I would have spoken to upwards of one hundred IPA members from all across the country. It’s striking that time and time again the same sorts of concerns are expressed to me by members.

For so many IPA members the biggest concern over the long-term is the one trillion dollars of debt the federal government will accrue, and flowing from this there is then the question of how this can ever be paid off. As Daniel Wild, and the IPA research team keep on pointing out – this record level of debt is after the country has had thirty years of uninterrupted economic growth. As an IPA member from Queensland said to me the other day (we Queenslanders are canny…) “If you’re growing you should be paying off debt – not racking it up like there’s no tomorrow.”

This morning I saw something else from the IPA research team that reveals just how difficult it is going to be to restart the economy after this lockdown.

To keep reading Kirsty’s letter, become an IPA Member today.