John M Hyde

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John Marin Hyde is a libertarian (neo-liberal) think-tank founder/director, a sheep farmer, and a West Australian Federal Liberal Party politician who became the leader of the so-called 'Dry' faction of the party. He should not be confused with:

• John Hyde the WA state Labor Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) for the district of Perth,
• a Liberal politician named John Hyde Page who always uses his middle name. This maybe a plot to confuse us. {joke}

John Marin Hyde did not normally use his middle name or initial. He was born in February 1936, became a local sheep farmer and councilman, and was elected as the member of the Division of Moore, WA in May 1974 at age 42. He remained in the Canberra parliament until defeated in the March 1983 election by an ALP candidate.

While in Canberra, with three other economic conservative/libertarian members (Bert Kelly, , Jim Carlton), Hyde maintained a backbench sub-division within the Liberal government that promoted mass privatizations and deregulation -- inclined to an extreme form of economic determinism. He was an acolyte of Hayek, Friedman, and Ayn Rand (in the style that Americans call 'neo-conservatism'), and in many ways his approach was similar to the US Tea Party faction within the US Republicans -- a constant irritant. He saw his life in terms of waging constant war against what he believed to be the never-ending flood of socialistic ideology on one hand, and corporate monopoly and government owned infrastructure on the other.

These factional warriors were ultra-free-enterprise oriented to the point where they pursued some extreme policies quite independent of their own party; and after a time they became a thorn in the side of the Liberal Fraser Government while still playing a part in the forced the dismissal of the Whitlam Labor Government in December 1975. [A curiosity: a close friend of Hyde was Peter Walsh, the Labor Finance Minister.]

In 1983, with funding from the Clough family (Harold Clough)-- a very wealthy mining engineering company [now owners of West Australian newspaper] John Hyde, Chris Ulyatt and J Ray Johnstone established and ran the Australian Institute for Public Policy (AIPP) out of the University of Western Australia in Perth. Hyde appears to have made it his mission to unite the Libertarian think-tanks in Australia, and around 1988-89 he struck a territorial and partnership agreement with Greg Lindsay of the Centre for Independent Studies in Sydney. The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) and CIS then ran joint publishing and lobbying operations (under Chris Berg) and the role of the IPA NSW branch under Gerard Henderson was discontinued. Henderson stayed in Sydney established the Sydney Institute instead.

David and Rod Kemp (sons of the founder) who were running the IPA during the 1980s both won seats in the Federal Parliament in 1990. At this time Hyde moved to Melbourne permanently and merged his AIPP with the Kemp-family controlled Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) which had similar aims and inclinations, and also similar funding sources. Eventually the Perth AIPP was renamed IPA (WA). Hyde's associates, Chris Uhlatt and J Ray Johnstone of the AIPP became fly-in-lobbyists when needed in the IPA's Melbourne office.

Hyde directed the IPA throughout 1901-95, and recruited numerous conservative commentators and ex politicians and bureaucrats like John Stone and Des Moore.

Documents & Timeline

The eldest son of IPA founder "CD" Kemp was Charles Roderick, always known as ‘Rod’ Kemp. He was Private Secretary to Margaret Guifoyle (1977-82) and Strategist for Andrew Peacock in 1989-90 then claimed a seat as Victorian Senator from 1990 to 2008. Rod Kemp was an evangelical Libertarian who changed the IPA from being simply a class-based conservative group to an active promoter of the free-market neoliberal viewpoint.

His younger brother David Kemp was a Senior Lecturer in Political Science at Melbourne University (1975-79) then Professor of Politics at Monash Uni (1979-90), He was a strategist assisting Malcolm Fraser (1973-76), then ran Fraser's private office from 1981-83. Fraser was ousted March 11 1983. David Kemp helped run the IPA for a while and then became Federal Liberal Member for Goldstein from March 1990 to Aug 2004

1988 Appears to be the year the Libertarian think-tanks in Australia joined forces under John Hyde. The West Australian mining money of the Clough family and Hugh Morgan's Western Mining flowed into the IPA.

1990 John Hyde took over the IPA after Rod Kemp was elected to the Senate.

1995 Hyde leaves the IPA in Melbourne and returns to Perth.

2012 Nov 25 A John Hyde speech attacks spin doctors, politicians acting not in the national interest, the silencing of free speech in Parliament, and the Federal Liberal Party for being 'pathetically weak' and in some areas, positioning itself to the socialist side of Labor. [2]

2013 Feb John Hyde was given a tribute speech by the Mannkal Economic Education Foundation in Hayek House in Perth