The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) is a conservative non-profit free market public policy think tank based in Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. It advocates free market economic policies such as free markets, privatisation, deregulation of state-owned enterprises, trade liberalisation, deregulation of workplaces, abolition of the minimum wage, criticism of socialism, and repeal of Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975. It also rejects large parts of climate science. The IPA was founded during World War II by businessmen in response to the growing power of the Labor Party and international socialism, and has typically aligned with, and supported, the Liberal Party in politics. It has in the past funded and created advertising campaigns for anti-Labor candidates, and has had an impact on Liberal Party policies, according to former prime minister John Howard. History Historian Michael Bertram, writing in 1989, identified three distinct periods for the Institute of Public Affairs: the war years and "immediate post-war years" where Australia's economic future was in question, ending with the election of Robert Menzies in 1949; the "Keynesian consensus" of the 1950s and 1960s and the "sea-shift to the right" of the 1970s and 1980s. War and immediate post-war years (1943–1949) The Institute of Public Affairs was founded in 1943 as the Institute of Public Affairs Victoria, with Charles Kemp as its inaugural director and George Coles as its inaugural chair. The founders were prominent businessmen, and current executive director John Roskam says of the occasion: "Big business created the IPA". The idea to form the Institute of Public Affairs was first floated in the Victorian Chamber of Manufactures. The IPA's formation was prompted by the collapse of Australia's main right-wing party, the United Australia Party. The IPA's initial purpose was to influence Australia's post-war reconstruction, with business interests concerned that popular sentiment supported a Labor-led, collectivist post-war construction, a "prevailing clamour for a new kind of society". Throughout 1943, branches were set up in New South Wales (May), South Australia (June) and Queensland (August), although the state branches remained administratively and ideologically distinct (the SA and Queensland branches closed in the 1950s). There seems to have been a pre-existing body called the Institute of Public Affairs in Western Australia, which operated between 1941 and 1942. The IPA NSW engaged in "party political activism", while at the IPA Victoria's first annual meeting in 1944 chair GJ Coles said that they "did not wish to