Michael G. Porter

Not to be confused with Michael Eugene Porter.

Michael G. Porter is an Australian academic economist who taught at the Australian National University (Canberra) and Monash University (Melbourne) while also running a consultancy business for major corporations. In 1979, he set up a think-tank at Monash University, the Centre of Policy Studies which advocated extreme free-market/no regulation views.

[NOTE: CoPS has since radically changed in character and now resides at Victoria University]

This was essentially a libertarian free-market imitation of the Centre for Policy Studies (UK) which had been created by (Sir) Keith Joseph for Tory Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher in 1974. This think-tank became an important component in circulating the conservative/corporate social contract theory during the Reagan-Thatcher period when many industries were being deregulated and privatised.

Libertarian think-tanks in Australia

In 1990, the Australian Michael G Porter set up his second economic think-tank outside the University. This was the Tasman Institute which was difficult to distinguish from his private consulting firm Tasman Asia Pacific. These organisations were interlinked in some way with the Melbourne-based Institute of Public Affairs (IPA run by Liberal Federal MP John Hyde) and its offshoot, the Sydney Institute controlled by Gerard Henderson. Also part of this grouping was the HR Nicholls Society and the Centre for International Studies (CIS run by Greg Lindsay in both Sydney and New Zealand).

The CIS had been Australia's first Libertarian think-tank (Apr.1976) and one of the first to join Antony Fisher's global Atlas Network. These think-tanks were all funded by big companies and industry-based lobbying organisations around the world, in particular the tobacco industry. Generally they received an annual grant from these industries (often through the national industry organisations) and also undertook paid lobbying commissions when their political influence was needed. They promoted themselves as "political policy groups' with grassroots membership funding, but they were virtually a global network of autonomous corporate/political lobbyists.

In Australia, the IPA was funded by the tobacco industry through British-American Tobacco (BAT), while both the Sydney Institute and the Centre for International Studies were funded via Philip Morris. Porter's ACIL Tasman Institute/consultancy, with its main links to the IPA in Melbourne, appears to have been funded only by lobbying commissions (no annual grants in the tobacco archives) to conduct pseudo-surveys, and conduct loaded analysis, to produce spurious and dubious reports. The H.R. Nicholls Society (dominated from 1986 by Federal Liberal Treasurer, Peter Costello) was directly linked in some way. (See biog)[1]

Tasman Institute

Porter founded the Tasman Institute think tank in 1990. He later merged it with ACIL [unknown origin] to form ACIL Tasman, which would later merge again with the Allen Consulting Group to form ACIL Allen Consulting (c 2014).

ACIL Tasman

In November 1997, Mike Nahan, the then head of the Institute of Public Affairs (now in 2019, Leader of the Liberal Opposition in Western Australia) wrote to Bob Deards of the Australian Tobacco Information Centre spelling out the IPA's proposals for current lobbying services to the tobacco industry.

* We are in the process of publishing a monograph by Peter Finch (Prof. Peter Derrick Finch, Monash UniStatistic) with a working title of The Smoking Epidemic: Death and Sickness Among Australian Smokers. The monograph uses the anti-smoking lobby's own research to attack the conclusions they draw from the research.

• We will be publishing an Australian version of a book by ("Junk-man") Steven Milloy entitled "Science Without Sense: The Risky Business of Public Health Research". We will organise a national lecture tour to accompany the release of the book (March 1998)
• Alan Moran (CEO of ACIL Tasman Institute) is writing a feature article for the Dec 1997 edition of IPA Review [using] the revamped 'blue book' prepared by ACIL on the costs & benefits of smoking.
• Next year we plan to prepare a Special Lift-out in the IPA Review on the Nanny State [8,000 copies]
• Staff of the IPA Review write a large number of op-ed pieces (over 200/yr) and are active in the media."
• 1992 Tasman Institute report on Australian Trade Practices Act
• Reclaim the Future: New Zealand and the Global Economy (Jane Kelsey)

ACIL and the tobacco industry

Porter, Tasman Institute, ACIL and their close associates the IPA/CIS were responsible for many dozens of reports and studies which were introduced to try to exonerate cigarette smoking - both as a 'social cost' which smokers imposed on the community (including health costs to cleaning costs), and from the economic viewpoint of a valid industry employing many thousands of people from farm labour, up to cigarette manufacture and retail. The tobacco archives has 2,469 documents resulting from a search for "Tasman Institute" OR ACIL.

Miscellaneous material

Timeline

• CEC Aust.
• 1989 Briefing ACIL to monitor taxation
• 1989 the Centre for Independent Studies established the Economics Education Resource Centre (EERC), the aim of which was to target a radical neo-liberal agenda to high school economics teachers
• 1990 Winter issue of Policy, published by the Centre for Independent Studies.

"The Lalonde Doctrine in Action: The Campaign Against Passive Smoking" by Peter D Finch, Foundation Professor of Statistics, Monash University, in which he writes complaining that the Canadian LaLonde Doctrine has politicised health promotion. He quotes Goran Pershagen, C Snow, Peter Lee, and Ted Sterling [all well-known tobacco scientists]

• 1994 Feb: Commissioned ACIL cost-benefits of smoking report.

The Tobacco Institute of Australia (TIA) had paid ACIL Economics (Aust) to produce a cost-benefits of smoking study - an attempt to provide politicians with a so-called 'independent analysis' of the economics of the cigarette business and its health implications. This was to counter to the (Collins/Lapsley) C&L Study made for the Australian Department of Health which estimated that smoking cost the community $6.8 billion each year.

ACIL determined that tobacco contributed $3.5 billion to Gross Domestic Product, and with excise taxes etc, the net benefits each year to the Australian economy was $12.5 billion—much more than the meat industry contributed, and equal to that of the iron and steel industries.

On the question of "causes of death" (including "death benefits") they say:

The difficulties in confidently attributing the cause of death in this analysis are widely recognised and understood, particularly in the context of tobacco.

It is surprising, for example, that the caution sounded earlier by prominent researchers in the tobacco area, such as Tollison and Wagner in the United States, in their analysis of the economics of smoking, was not heeded.

That work addressed specific challenges for research in attempting to attribute deaths to a single factor. They pointed to errors in medical reporting of the causes of death, joint causes (for example, exercise, alcohol, occupation), and the fact that nonsmokers can be afflicted by the same illness as smokers.

Books and articles by academic lobbyists Tollison and Wagner are referenced repeatedly in the submission, and BAT PR executive Sharon Boyse recommends to David Bacon that they bring Tollison out to Australia. Tollison and Wagner were the principals in the tobacco industry's "Cash for Comments Economists Network".

The Tobacco Institute of Australia circulated the report to Philip Morris top executives in the USA.

Parrish comments:

• 1995 May 4: Philip Morris USA, PR executive Tom Borelli has circulated a Proposed Plan for Policy Outreach Groups. He is proposing an internal group dedicated to proactive network building. "Marry functions of Corporate Affairs with Issues Group into an Internal Think Tank Group with individuals each in charge of certain issues and certain policy groups."
• 1996 March 6: George Brownbill, and David Trebeck (economists), are listed at ACIL House, 103-105 Northbourne Avenue, Canberra, ACT 2600 Australia. They are working for British American Tobacco and the Tobacco Institute of India.