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The Institute of Public Affairs (IPA) has been accused of tprying to indoctrinate school children by distributing a classroom lesson plan that teaches students how to mount arguments against the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

The conservative think tank has paid for multiple Facebook and Instagram ads promoting high school education materials it says gives teachers "the tools you need to walk your class through both sides of the referendum".

The ads link to a free, 34-page teacher guide and workbook the IPA has written for year 9 to 12 students in English, Australian History, Civics and Indigenous studies.

While the lesson plan promises to teach students about all sides of the debate, the main written exercise asks them to present the "No" case.

It asks students to refute a series of statements supporting the Voice using an almost 1,000-word summary of various "No" arguments.

Students are then asked to rank the arguments in order of persuasiveness and then "respectfully discuss with your peers".

They are not asked to repeat the exercise from the "Yes" perspective.

Students are also asked to complete a true/false quiz that includes the statements, "Anyone who votes No in the Voice Referendum must be racist" and "There are no acceptable arguments for voting No in the Voice Referendum".

The Australian Education Union (AEU), which reviewed the materials, described the lesson plan as a "shallow attempt to inflict their conservative views on students in schools".

"We will fiercely oppose any such moves by private and political organisations that seek to indoctrinate students," AEU federal president Correna Haythorpe said.

"This move by the IPA can only be viewed as a cynical attempt to influence and interfere in Australia's democratic processes via the education system."

The AEU has pledged its support for the Voice but has not told its members how to vote in the referendum.

The IPA's deputy executive director Daniel Wild rejected the criticism, saying: "you would expect the AEU to say that".

"It is on the record as explicitly supporting the Voice to Parliament, which completely undermines the AEU's capacity to provide students and teachers with a balanced view on this critical matter," he said in a statement.

"The AEU is not the sole arbiter of truth, and it is deeply concerning that they are seeking to prevent open and balanced analysis occurring in classrooms ahead of this vital referendum."

The Melbourne-based IPA told ABC Investigations that it "does not support or oppose the Voice to Parliament", despite listing itself in the lesson plan as a resource for students looking for more information about the "No" position.

"Teachers in the classroom are in the best position to determine what materials to use in class, not union lobby groups which are explicitly campaigning for a Yes vote," Mr Wild said.

The teaching resource was developed as part of the IPA's "Class Action" campaign, which has produced a range of lesson plans and other teaching materials it says complement compulsory high school humanities subjects.

On its website, Class Action argues Australia's National Curriculum "carries undertones of Critical Race Theory … a reframing of Western Civilisation through the lens of guilt, and a reduced academic rigour .. where social sensitivity is given primacy over critical thinking".

"The IPA's Class Action research program was established to consider the values of Western Civilisation, and to contribute to a flourishing future of Australian society that knows its roots and can humbly acknowledge its imperfections without erasing its proud achievements," Mr Wild said.

The IPA approached multiple state-based history teacher associations in the past six months and asked for them to share the Class Action lesson plans with members.

Some state associations told ABC Investigations they agreed to alert members to the resource kits, but did not actively encourage or promote their use. They said they were unaware of any teachers using the lesson plans.

"Since Class Action material packages research specifically for use in classrooms it is natural we have let teachers know through multiple channels, including their professional associations," Mr Wild said.

In response to ABC Investigations' questions about whether any teachers had used its Voice to Parliament lesson plan, the IPA said: "according to our analytics, approximately 3,000 Australians have accessed the resources supplied by Class Action in the past month."

Education and history experts who independently examined the document raised concerns about its accuracy, effectiveness as a teaching tool, framing of Indigenous issues, and its lack of balance.

Monash University History Professor Bain Attwood, who supports the Voice, described the document as an "act of bad faith" from the IPA.

He said the resource was "egregious" for presenting itself as impartial.

"What it's clearly trying to do is essentially persuade those who read [it] that the arguments against the proposal are more persuasive and more convincing," he said.

"There's not sufficient material in the resource to help students make sense of and critically evaluate the arguments."

Claire Golledge, a lecturer in secondary education at the University of Sydney who supports the Voice to Parliament, said the exercise format asking students to address individual arguments was a common teaching tool but echoed Professor Attwood's concerns about the lack of balance.

She added there was misinformation in the Vote-No points which were presented without context.

"When you dive into some of the content of those arguments… a lot of those arguments have been credibly challenged by pretty learned experts," Dr Golledge said.

Mr Wild dismissed suggestions the material contains misleading information.

"As the lesson plan makes clear, these are possible No arguments which could be made, and that students are encouraged to critically evaluate," he said.

"One may agree or disagree as they see fit, in conjunction with other materials, as the Class Action lesson plan makes clear."

The IPA says the lesson plan also points to further resources regarding the Yes case, specifically The Uluru Dialogue and Uphold and Recognise.

Professor Attwood, who has published extensively on the history of civil rights in Australia, also took issue with how Indigenous history was framed in the resource.

"It doesn't explain effectively why this referendum is so important from the point of view, at least, of Aboriginal people," he said.

"It doesn't really describe how oppressive and discriminatory this history [through] large swathes of the last 200 years has been."

He said the classroom materials made reference to discriminatory legislation but overall was not an "adequate account of the history of Aboriginal people in this country".

Professor Attwood said if he discovered this lesson plan was being used in his child's classroom he would "immediately contact the principal and make representations that this resource be removed from the school".

Mr Wild denied the materials were designed to persuade.

"Mr Attwood appears to be under the misapprehension that these materials are designed to persuade, when they simply inform teachers of the various arguments regarding the Voice to Parliament," he said.

"The lesson plans are designed to be consistent with the requirements of the National Curriculum, and teachers are free to use these materials should they find them of value."

The national children's commissioner says she has written to the Northern Territory's police minister, calling for an NT Police promotional video of officers chasing and arresting two teenagers to be taken down.

Key points:

• Bodycam vision showing the arrests attracted hundreds of comments
• The majority of users praised police with some calling for dogs to attack the youths
• Police and the NT government have defended the content as showing the reality for police

WARNING: This story contains details some readers may find distressing.

The video, which is overlaid with up-tempo rock music, shows officers and a police dog pursuing one of three teenage boys through bushland outside of Darwin after intercepting a vehicle.

The arrests, made on Wednesday afternoon, came after the three 16-year-old boys allegedly stole two vehicles.

The boys were intercepted using tyre deflation devices in Darwin's rural area and charged with multiple property offences.

After being posted to the Facebook page of the Northern Territory's Police Fire and Emergency Services on Thursday evening, the video had received over 1,100 reactions and 220 comments.

The vast majority of comments praised the actions of police.

But several comments — which were removed after the ABC approached NT Police — included remarks such as "hope the dog had a taste" and "let the dogs take a couple of chunks".

In Australia there has long been disquiet about the revolving door between high political office and big business.

A survey published two years ago by a major public health journal found two-thirds of people believe public officials — including politicians — should either be banned from lobbying altogether, or subject to a cooling-off period of as long as five years.

Last January, a report by the Human Rights Law Centre found former officials were more often granted meetings with government as well as a "sympathetic audience". The shift of bureaucrats and politicians into corporate roles was creating an "elite class of the politically powerful and the incredibly rich", while alienating the Parliament from "the values and interests of voters".

The research focused on tobacco, gambling and mining. But there's another area of public policy where the path from politics to the corporate world has been so well-trodden, for so long, it's worn to a shine: Australia's sprawling defence portfolio, where billions of dollars in contracts are showered on arms-peddlers every year.

War is big business. Look no further than Ukraine, an atrocity prompting cartwheels in the boardrooms of companies like Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, BAE Systems, Northrop Grumman and General Dynamics. Hundreds of thousands dead perhaps, but the world's top arms dealers outperformed the NASDAQ by an average of almost 24 per cent in the year following the Kremlin's invasion.

Of course, there are real-world justifications for piping public money into multinationals that manufacture weapons. They just don't make the business any less fraught. Now, the $400 billion AUKUS program has military contractors searching for angles, and to their aid has come a generation of revolving-door salesmen and lobbyists.

There is Joel Fitzgibbon, a former defence minister turned lobbyist for a firm whose clients include French weapons-maker Dassault, Spanish shipbuilder Navantia and arms company Raytheon. And Brendan Nelson, also a former defence minister, who is now a senior executive at aerospace company Boeing.

Joe Hockey, treasurer in the Abbott government, and Christopher Pyne, yet another former defence minister, also make fascinating case studies.

There's no suggestion any of these former cabinet ministers have broken the law or engaged in misconduct. But there is something discomforting about the concept of cabinet ministers in particular who switch from protecting the Commonwealth to protecting a balance sheet.

In 2018, Pyne's advisor, Adam Howard, established GC Advisory Pty Ltd one month after quitting the minister's office. In 2019, just weeks after Pyne farewelled the defence portfolio, Howard restructured the company and handed him half of it. I asked the pair whether Pyne paid anything for these shares, but both declined to answer, saying the transfer was "commercial in confidence".

Pyne had actually begun talks about a defence-related corporate role while still in cabinet, and soon after leaving government had to be reminded of his obligations under the government's code of conduct for lobbyists.

Pyne told me that at all times he has "complied with the requirements of the Ministerial Code of Conduct". It's likely he came to the attention of the Attorney-General's Department only by dint of his high profile because otherwise management of the government's code of conduct for lobbyists has been, to put it delicately, a farce.

The code stipulates cooling-off periods for senior officials, ministers and advisors — they must not lobby for a period of 12 to 18 months on behalf of companies with which they had dealings while in office.

But an audit in 2020 found the regulation of the code was often done by just two civil servants in the Attorney-General's Department who had the benefit of no system whatsoever for checking whether former officials were properly outing themselves as lobbyists. Indeed, a year earlier, the department failed to identify exactly how many lobbyists it had itself registered, overstating that number to the Parliament by 40 per cent.

The department had not been checking the end dates of government employees, had never conducted a "compliance risk assessment" and had "no method" to determine if lobbyists were abiding by the rules, or even declaring "whose interests they are representing". The department says it has now fixed these issues, and several months ago the audit office signed off on the reforms it has implemented.

What has not changed, however, is that enforcement of the rules does not go much beyond the seeking of solemn assurances that such rules won't be broken. The regulation of lobbyists, you will be unsurprised to read, was always designed to be "light touch".

Hockey's slipstream from ambassador to corporate adviser — as head of a US-Australian firm called Bondi Partners — was just as eye-watering.

Bondi Partners LLC was registered in DC on November 22, 2019. The paperwork records a "commencement date" of November 7, 2019.

The former US Ambassador's final day in the public service was not until January 31, the following year. Joe Hockey's DFAT-employed American advisor, Alex Tureman, filed the papers in DC while both men were still being paid by Australian taxpayers.

Later, when Bondi Partners' Australian entity was finally registered with Hockey its sole shareholder, he was still two days shy of handing back the keys to the embassy; indeed, his 100 shares were listed against 3120 Cleveland Avenue, Washington, the official residence of the Australian Ambassador.

Tureman told me that "as a sole proprietor" he registered Bondi Partners LLC, along with two other companies in 2019, "with no immediate intent to utilise them", and that the company which was eventually used, Bondi Partners International LLC, was not incorporated until March 26, 2020.

He said he abided at all times by the DFAT code of conduct and that he "did not conduct any business until I had concluded my employment with the Embassy".

A spokeswoman for Hockey said he was "not involved in any US business registrations prior to March 2020", and that he complies with "all relevant codes of conduct and legislation in Australia, the US and the UK".

DFAT has strict policies requiring the declaration of both "real" and "apparent" potential conflicts of interest; officials are required to seek permission for secondary employment and to acknowledge any potential conflicts of interest in an online form. As a head of mission, Mr Hockey had an additional obligation to provide an "annual written declaration".

Neither man answered questions about whether they filed declarations or sought permissions concerning their planned venture, and DFAT did not answer queries about the issue either.

It seems clear, though, that by at least the beginning of November 2019, the men had developed a plan to launch Bondi Partners, a US-Australia firm which now boasts of "navigating the critical intersection of policy, politics and the private sector", and that timing raises an obvious quandary.

During meetings that Hockey and Tureman held at the end of 2019 and the beginning of 2020, how should taxpayers discern — beyond both mens' assurances — whose interests were being served? Those of the Commonwealth, which was paying their salaries, or those of their yet-to-be-announced private venture?

Hockey's spokeswoman assured me that "for the entirety of his diplomatic posting, [he] was 100 per cent dedicated to advancing Australia's national interest".

Since leaving the embassy, however, the former ambassador has not been shy about spruiking his "government … and political experience" to those willing to buy it.

And he has aimed his firm, in particular, at the sluice of defence spending coming down the pipeline, principally by recruiting military and security officials from both Australia and the US, including Donald Trump's pick for secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer. He even tapped the Australian defence attache with whom he worked at the DC embassy.

He and his wife, investment banker Melissa Babbage, have persuaded the Packer-backed Ellerston Capital to let them take a cut of any "national security" investments they can send its way. They've called this arrangement the 1941 Fund, and Ellerston's Ashok Jacob has said it's about getting aboard the "government-induced gale force tailwind" of national security spending.

One intriguing aspect of Joe Hockey's corporate transformation is his reluctance to work as a lobbyist. Unlike Pyne, his name is absent from the federal government's lobbyist register and he pitches himself, rather, as a provider of executive counsel.

(Bondi Partners does appear on the lobbyist register, but only as the owner of a lobby shop named Pacific Partners Strategic Advocacy — which the register says has not ever had a client.)

By contrast, the same register suggests Pyne, a famously gregarious personality, is minting it.

Among the many clients of his other firm Pyne & Partners are Saber Astronautics, Droneshield Limited and Electro Optic Systems, which flogs remote-controlled guns to the Persian Gulf. Even the UAE Embassy is a customer, which takes quite some getting your head around; a foreign diplomatic service pouring petrodollars into the wallet of a former Australian defence minister.

Some will say that our former hard-working ministers deserve the chance to enjoy an income after politics. It's just that, well, they already do. Both Hockey and Pyne enjoy taxpayer-funded pensions in excess of $200,000 — for life.