Introduction

It is abundantly clear to most people that democracy as we recognise it is increasingly unable to deliver the outcomes expected by its participants. It appears to be wholly captured by self-serving interests, with an entrenched inability to even articulate meaningful reform. This policy proposal serves as a perspective of a single citizen that hopefully may ignite the imagination of what could be possible with sufficient political will, and a template for what the foundation of a more equitable and just society may look like.

Assumptions and Disclaimers

All policy proposals are to be undertaken through the currently existing and evolving political system, through referendum or legislative proposals.

Unmentioned entities can be assumed to function identically to already existing entities, for example, the judicial system, libraries, private economic activity, etc.

This proposal is not intended to be exhaustive and prescriptive, but as a template for further development.

Sorry, but political parties and representative government are irrelevant

The primary principle behind proposed governance reform is dramatically boosting direct resident engagement in policymaking through digital technology. With self-organising local governments that can easily scale communications completely across territory, the need for higher levels of bureaucratic organisation is deemed to be unnecessary.

To support policy implementation, a self-organising and independent arm of government allows any skilled resident to access resources to contribute to policy research and implementation, as respect for technical expertise is essential for an informed democratic process to function.

• Federal and State government are abolished, local governments amalgamated according to traditional owners.
• Local governments consist of any members of society and administrative staff
• An independent self-organising administrative arm of government exists to support policy advice and execution, as well as administrative functions of overall governance
• Any resident can propose changes to policy or legislation at local or administrative levels of government and submit them towards public discussion
• Once a petitioned discussion has reached a certain stage of maturity and popularity, it is put to a vote to implement
• Technology systems to implement secure and protected democratic participation are developed by the local governments

Finance Reform – Taming Finance Capital

As capital is a corrosive expansionary force with goals in direct conflict with the overall well-being of society, this proposal aims to place significant restrictions on forms of capital organisation.

At the same time, the state aims to take a leading role in the development of economic life for citizens, enabling them to freely organise their economic activity without external coercion, as well as ensuring that the means of economic production are democratically controlled.

This proposal views excessive wealth as a real mechanism to pursue anti-democratic ends and seeks to limit the influence any wealthy individual or collective can have over the democratic structure of society.

• Private commercial depository banking is abolished
  • Central bank issues a digitised inflationary fiat currency and smart contract interfaces
  • All residents are issued depository accounts with the central bank
  • A UBI set at the minimum full-time wage priced by a floating cost of living index is granted to all residents
• Public comprehensive insurer established
• Tradable share markets are abolished
  • Capital raising occurs by private and public loan
  • Local governments can also loan based on detailed business planning
  • Corporate ownership and governance democratically managed by workers
• Wealth redistribution
  • Institute an initial individual wealth limit of $100 million AUD
  • Net income above $10M AUD taxed at 100%
• Taxation Reform
  • 100% inheritance tax with exceptions for select assets
  • All consumption is taxed at automatically set rates according to targets and income
  • No income tax
  • All corporate entities pay a variable tax rate on revenue
• Full employment policy
  • Local government operates works programs performing functionary work, as well as operating small scale cafes, stores and facilitates community organisation
  • Regular development and review of overall economic plan to monitor progress and resourcing

Resources

• Water management is nationalised
  • Freshwater sources managed directly for long-term sustainability
  • Project to develop desalination programs across coastal areas
  • Projects to ensure water infrastructure operates effectively to provide essential services
• All resource extraction and harvesting industries are fully nationalised
• Energy
  • Build 100% renewable energy infrastructure with a target to exporting electricity
  • Project to build sustainable energy storage locally
• Project to develop rare earths processing capability for future technology development

Social Life and Welfare

This proposal seeks to establish all forms of social welfare provision as standard rights to all residents, and rooting the means of mass social and cultural expression in the democratic process such that all residents are provided with the means to develop social, cultural and political forms without impediment.

• Private health is fully abolished
  • Fully comprehensive socialised health care provided to all residents
  • Local governments subsidise minimum standard healthy diets to promote healthy eating
  • Drug and medicine production is nationalised
• Private education is fully abolished
  • Fully funded education up to tertiary level
  • Policy parameters based on expert advice to promote well-being and educational achievement
  • Broad syllabus covering sustainable agriculture and harmony with nature, science, technology, engineering and mathematics capabilities, and creative, cultural, and physical studies
  • Extracurricular activities are facilitated with public funding according to community desire
• Early Childhood
  • Fully available socialised childcare centres run by local government
  • Heavily subsidise cost of child raising
• Private aged care is abolished
  • All facilities run by local government
• Fully open immigration system
  • Skilled workers prioritised but all residence applicants queued
  • Total immigration flows set by current and projected infrastructure capacity and a collection of policy targets
• Progressive social policy
  • Full reproductive equality and access, and body autonomy
  • Full LGBT+ rights
  • Legalisation and commercialisation of cannabis
  • Religious freedom limited only by conflict with general public standards
    • Resources to practice are made available by local government
• Public media
  • Develop an open and federated distribution platform for citizens to post, view and discuss content with fair and transparent network promotion rules
  • Moderation rules according to general public standards of free and open media with protected speech
  • Provides a multiplicative stipend for production proportional to crowdsourced support

Cultural Policy

• Local governments provide resources for area residents to organise any public cultural activities
• Local governments provide resources for small and large scale publicly run cafeterias and community spaces
• Local governments facilitate any form of cultural expression desired by a particular plurality of an area

Justice

• All private prisons are abolished
• All minimum-security prisons abolished and replaced with rehabilitative development programs
• Police organisations are transformed from a focus on punitive enforcement to a service-based role that upholds community safety and well-being

Urbanisation

This proposal seeks to replace marketisation as the primary means of housing accessibility. It prioritises urban development as the most effective means of service distribution, while allowing traditional suburban development to occur according to private resident and local government standards.

• Urban development is nationalised
  • Construction policy aims to provide subsidised housing to all that require it in urban areas
  • New state-owned urban developments set to support desprawling of existing large cities
  • Property leased by the state to individuals in a transferrable rent-to-equity agreement
• Public Transport
  • Public transport is greatly boosted to increase service frequency in suburban areas
  • Mass availability of share-use bicycles and electric mobility devices in population centres
  • Perth-to-Cairns high-speed passenger and freight rail fully connecting major population centres
  • Project to build infrastructure to support autonomous electric vehicles and aero-craft and automated fleet networks
  • Project to establish automotive manufacturing industries with a view to mass producing locally sourced vehicles for the local market

Environment

• Land use is primarily organised by local governments and private individuals can apply for residential or productive use
• Ecosystem
  • Project to undertake dramatic reforestation, ecosystem preservation and habitat repair, and anti-desertification projects
  • Support programs to further develop understandings of the natural environment
• Agriculture
  • Local governments promote local-scale community agricultural practices according to environment
  • All large-scale industrial agricultural and livestock businesses nationalised and managed centrally to reorganise produce choice according to water availability, ecosystem suitability, production requirement, export opportunity and food security requirements

Industrial Development

The expert economic consensus is that the currently existing economy resembles a colonial-era resource extraction economy, and recommends high degrees of productivity development as the sole driver to further improve standards of living. To this end, this proposal seeks to build the foundations of a highly automated on-demand production system that allows consumer and commercial goods to be produced and delivered with as few barriers as possible.

• Project to develop community-run platform for varying degrees of automated consumer goods production based on available resources and requirement
• Project to research and develop low-carbon alternatives to industrial processes
• Project to build and support plant-based production industries
• Project to develop an automated logistics platform for goods and resources distribution
• Information Technology
  • Full regulated private internet access countrywide
  • Large-scale wired and wireless telecommunications networks nationalised
  • Project to develop extensive 5G-based robotics and automation infrastructure across industry
  • Government cybersecurity to ensure high standard of security assurance
  • Local governments provide resources for citizen technologists to contribute to digital capability
• Data Protection
  • Fully enshrined right to privacy of individual and ownership of personal information
    • Personal data is a specific legal asset and is leased for usage
    • Explicit consent must be granted for usages of personal information
    • Sale of personal information datasets is forbidden
    • All data systems required to meet minimum cybersecurity standards
    • State data systems required to have access audit records published
    • All international service providers are required to follow requirements or have operations blocked in territory

Foreign Policy

• Increased engagement with ASEAN with focus on development, environmental and collective security contributions
• Push for demilitarisation of APAC region by all actors
• End the Australia-United States defence relationship, including the expulsion of all US military resources

Reflections and Conclusion

The proposals listed are a significant but not complete policy platform for a view of how democratic governance could be increased to cover many more facets of current life. Many aspects, including environmental and cultural considerations, require much more attention, and all aspects require extensive modelling and planning. But I hope that this has presented a mostly-consistent framework for thinking through feasible policy alternatives that are wholly achievable in our current political-economic system.

I would recommend referring to this policy proposal first as a guide to answer potential questions, as I am confident it is comprehensive enough to speak for itself.

All comments are welcome, and revisions and recreations of your personal policy platforms is highly encouraged.