Your Plan For Australia

[linga_is_no1]

My plan for Australia:

Health:

1: Health funding to be doubled and modeled upon on the Canadian system even more.

Education:

2: Public schools to become like Private schools, that is they will be able to afford better facilities and teachers.
3: Free university and TAFE

Military:

4: Army to be years ahead of Indonesia

Environment:

5: Compulsory LPG and Hydrogen powered cars by 2020
6: Only wind, turbine and if feasible Nuclear power.
7: Amount of bush to remain at current level

The Nation:

8: Republic ASAP
9: Federal Govt no longer allowed to appoint HC judges, they will now be appointed by the states, with one state appointing one justice and the territories one between them and the constitution to be changed so states can initiate nation wide referendums.
10: A review of all past centralist HC decisions.
11: Review of "implied" rights in the constitution
12: Immediate capture of Bill Heffernan and invasion of the Hutt River Province

Youth:

13: Drinking age to be lowered to 17 to remove the taboo

Foreign Relations:

14: Greatly improve ties with India
15: China
16: Russia
17: Become like Canada in the sense that they take no shit from no one and act in their own interests all the time, despite what the US says.
18: All troops to be brought back home (except in Pacific regions)


What's your plan for action?

 

[btdg]

I'm a socialist at heart, but honestly believe it is achievable in Australia (for a given definition of socialism).

1. I'd like to see an economic system that sees workers (including managers) remunerated on the basis of:
- a fixed component (minimum wage, but constant even for the unemployed) that reflects the minimum standard of living
- a component that accurately reflects the value of their work to society (not to capitalist interests). Doctors, teachers, scientists, etc should get paid more. Scum-sucking lawyers, bankers and so on should not get paid on their ability to make rich people richer...
- a component that reflects the value of their labour to the business in the present (such as a common scheme of transparent and achievable bonuses)
- a component that reflects the performane of their business in the present (such as employee share options)
- a component that reflects the performance of the country over time (superannuation locked into market portfolios)

Thus, workers would be guaranteed a liveable wage, motivated to work in the present by the prospect of performance bonuses, motivated to work in the long-run by the benefit that accrues from common performance.

2. Free education (if necessary on a HECS-based scheme) for all students. Massive increase in education expenditure, particularly in the science and technology areas. Increase to bring public schools to where private schools are now. Private schools to cater primarily to special interests - tradition, religion (as much as I detest the idea), or for gifted, special-needs or students with a particular interest (sport, music, drama etc).

3. Health. Free for all. Incentives for private health insurance, but a massive up-grade in funding and infrastructure.

4. Military. Massively reduced military expenditure. Conventional armed forces to be scrapped totally. Replaced with special forces designed purely for specific tasks. Specialists for (not exclusively); peace-keeping and monitoring of democracy and elections etc in the Pacific, border security (I hate that phrase, but I guess its necessary), disaster relief. Armed forces to be trained specifically and exclusively for those purposes. No tanks, submarines, bombers, aircraft or aircraft carriers required, except as needed for those specific purposes. A policy of non-intervention in foreign conflicts, except for those specfic purposes. For example, if we wanted to assist in Iraq (god forbid), our democratic security teams would provide monitoring of elections etc. That would be the extent of our interest.

5. Environment. All new homes to include solar panels, water tanks, and cutting-edge green technology. Subisidies on hybrid and other non-petrol vehicles in order to enhance investment in those areas

6. Politics. Republic on agenda, with a view towards direct election of head of state. Bill of rights protecting freedom of speech and other basic rights implemented. Move to abolish state and local government system, instead focusing on a single intermediate body (perhaps on current electoral breakdowns?)

7. Foreign relations. Remove presumption of hostility from international relations. Move towards cooperation and genuine multilateral agreements. Relations with China, India heavily promoted.

8. Immigration. Open but managed immigration. Refugee policy expanded, with massive increase in language and cultural resources aimed at aiding integration. Promotion of integration of migrants into rural areas. Skilled migration heavily promoted. Aim for 250,000 migrants per year, but only with resources to aid successful integration. Free language, literacy, employment, health, advocacy and other services for recent migrants. Detention camps closed, all refugees to be processed and/or deported within 48 hours, with a presumption of genuine status.

9. Youth. Focus on maturity of individual, not arbitrary standards.
- Legal drinking age removed, cannabis legalised. 'Drug' licence granted to youths who can pass a test (similar to written component of driving test) indicating maturity. Schools to integrate this into curriculum.
-Similar process for voting; young adults to be granted vote once they show an interest and knowledge of political affairs. Voting enrolment (after test) at around age 15, compulsory by 18.
- Religious instruction for children illegal until they have enrolled to vote (ie, around age 15). If they aren't old enough to vote, they aren't old enought to be indoctrinated with religious propaganda

10. Other:
- Massive promotion of sexual education, access to contraception, adoption services, counselling; anything to reduce abortion rate whilst still keeping it as an option. Abortion to be legalised.

 

[Hap Hapablap]

interesting suggestions above. though lingas suggestion of our military to be stronger than indonesia is a tad paranoid. i dont ever think indonesia would want anything to do with australia. they have a huge army but thats only due to conscription. their airforce as well as their navy would be quite weak compared to the aussies.

 

[Richo83]

Society

1. Allow gay marriage, allow stem cell research, continue abortion practices, and other progressive reforms, it is the 21st century. Remove censorship in media which treats society like children.

2. Halt the establishment of liquor licenses and cut the size of establishment of liquor licenses based on person size. Develop drug education and advertising campaign that teaches acceptance of alcohol and marijuana consumption, just a healthy responsible consumption. Encourage parents to lift on this issue.

3. Legalize marijuana and halt all policing against it on the basis of a waste of tax payer's money. Maintain the ban of growing and importation of narcotics.

4. Tax cigarettes more to fund money to hospitals and other health services. If these idiots want to poison themselves they should give something back to the health system which supports them so much.

5. Ban junk food advertising aimed at children, period. Introduce teaching on healthy food eating habits.

6. Make scientology a cult, everyone knows it is.

7. Cut tax breaks to wealthy religious groups who have money pouring out of their pockets. We are supposed to be a secular state afterall.

8. Maintain the system of private health subsidies which is allowing many to enjoy the benefits of private health while being assisted by the government for expensive health surgery, which ultimately ensures a fit and healthy work place.

9. Increase funding for education, establish the Karmel (sp?) report system which provides a base payment per child and an extra payment based on school needs. Drop the private public thinking.

10. Maintain, or increase the voting age, most kids don't have a clue about politics, and they are usually unaffected by the issues of politics usually voting on who gives the most money to their uni.

11. Maintain a standard of respect of our obligation to uphold refugee and asylum laws.

12. Maintain the trend of high court rulings, which in terms of society tends to be more shaped towards liberal individual rights.

13. Don't be soft and think that the way to solve Islamic terrorism is to bring in a number of restrictive terrorism charges, have some principles, the rights of Australians are still important. Hicks cases should not happen.

14. Maintain funding for national sports, such as soccer which help the health and well being of Australians and provides Australians with a chance to see quality sporting competitions thrive. No this leaving sport high a dry and then wondering why it loses money.

15. Invest in quality public transport services to cope with the growing demand. Buy more trams, develop frequent bus services which cover large, not small parts of cities.

Environment:

1. Establish the building of water tanks in every new home, along with other features such as solar heating. If houses are going to be expensive, they might as well be fitted with something useful. Don't do what the Victorian government did and ban water tanks. (oh dear )

2. Use nuclear power, it's clean, safe, will cut down our emissions and hasn't had an major accident for decades now. We have large areas for storage and the more we use it for power the less of it for nukes. Develop an alliance with Canada to help develop a pricing scheme for uranium and ensure it's shipped to nations intent on using it for non nuke purposes. These two nations hold pretty much a monopoly on uranium.

3. Respect the need to establish a green economy which will bring benefits.

4. Stop encouraging unsustainable agriculture.


Economics:

1. Slash middle class welfare, which is driving up inflation and is actually counter-intuitive to the needs of Australians.

2. Deport Wayne Swan, call him a terrorist, guerrilla whatever just get him out of here. Put Tanner in instead.

3. Place a cap on government advertising and pork barreling to the electorate.

4. Understand that rocks wont be in grounds forever, and we will have a post-resource period.

International politics:

1. Maintain our respect to international trade and internationalist multilateralism, instead of relying on a single relationship with the US.

2. Slash military spending, or at least if you're going to spend money on the military, don't spend it on useless junk, such as the Collins Class subs or the Seasprites. That's just tipping tax payer's money down the sink.

3. Respect the UN once in a while, Australia with Evett used to love the UN, now we despise it. No matter what you think about the UN if all nations worked together on it something might be achieved.

4. Move troops from Iraq to Afghanistan.

5. Promote good relations between neighbours such as Indonesia, not fear and hatred (such as fear that they are developing their military and could attack at any time) while still holding neighbours up to human rights standards (West Papua)

 

[crisco]

Just a few:

Voting is not a right, it is a privelage, all those who want to be on the electoral roll would have to complete a course or test to see whether they are qulaified to vote.

Legalize Marijuana for medicinal purposes everywhere, and have a capped number of 'coffeshops'.

Immigrants are not available to collect government welfare until they have become full Australian citizens.

Simplify the politcal system.

Abolish plastic shopping bags.

 

[Diamond Joe]

More later, but for now

1) Totally regulate the advertising industry to the point where ads are little more than still pictures of the good/product being advertised, with dot points outlining key, factual features of said product/service. (See 'advertising to kids - moral?' thread for more info)

 

[Upgrayedd]

Raise Tax on all forms of alcohol

Increase tax on cigarettes

Increase tax on imported cars

Tighten the Immigration Quota for unskilled migrants

Re-take all toll booths on roads out of the private sector.

Cut off funds to private schools, let them take care of their own schools,
and increase spending to public schools.

Build more low security prisons.

Increase jail-time/Fines for
Assault
Anything Drug Related
Rape
Littering

Fund "the crap" out of Clontarf.
Build Nuclear Plants to help cut pollution

 

[crisco]

Raise Tax on all forms of alcohol

Increase tax on cigarettes

Increase tax on imported cars

Tighten the Immigration Quota for unskilled migrants

Re-take all toll booths on roads out of the private sector.

Cut off funds to private schools, let them take care of their own schools,
and increase spending to public schools.

Build more low security prisons.

Increase jail-time/Fines for
Assault
Anything Drug Related
Rape
Littering

Fund "the crap" out of Clontarf.
Build Nuclear Plants to help cut pollution

good stuff

 

[Perrin]

4. Stop encouraging unsustainable agriculture.

So just what are our unsustainable agricultural industries and just who in government is promoting it?

 

[Perrin]

Mine sound more like refutals of previous posts than my own ideas (as I'm no expert on how to run a country.

Society
1 I's time to decentralise Australia. It's disturbing that the Australia's population and political power is confined to just a few cities. Not sure how this could be done though.
2. Multiculturalism is here to stay righties. Learn to accept them.
3. Time to drum the importance of our consitution, the roles of government and courts and the seperation of powers doctrine into every school student. I was never taught at school.

Environment/agriculture
1. No nuclear - Just look at the half life of radio active waste. Who can guarentee its safe storage for thousands of years? As polluting as it is stick with coal or go for natural gas.
2. Increase the tax rebate threshold for Farmers. At present once farm income reaches $20K the get rebates for fuel and farm costs kick in (and believe me many fudge the books to get this). Increase it to $100K and police it properly.
3. Attempt to address environmental issues that can realistically be addressed. I agree with Lomborg regarding climate change - in this case (and in this case only) treating the symptons will be much cheaper than treating the cause.
4. Land clearing and invasive species are much under rated environmental threats and need more attention. And yes they can be addressed.

Military / foreign policy
1. Stop been so paraniod about Indonesia. Their threats are within or to the North.
2. Bin the Abrams tanks and go for heli gun ships (tanks are nothing more than 20th century relic)
3. Its more important we establish good relationships within our own region rather than constant pandering to the US.

Health
1. Needs more funding but no free health system for anybody - ever heard of the free rider problem? The hypocondriacs would have a field day. We need to have a user pays but we don't want to see people turned away from treatment. Not sure what the answer is.
2. Subsidised private health insurance should stay.

That's it for now

 

[Lazyboy]

Social.

Trash centerlink and expand education/training programs for people under 45.

Drop retirement age back to 55 years.

Increase Jail time for all offences, society is getting violent and becoming drug and alcohole abusive. Build more prisons, massive penalties for serious offences, 3 strike policy.

Fingerprint and DNA all prisoners and people arriving into Australia. Not sure if we should start doing this at schools or not. I dont think its and envasion of privacy or rights. Its about time people started to respect the society we live in.

Sorry but we need to cut imigration down heavily. We are not france and it appears their system has failed.

Drop the legal age of Alcohole to 16, give teenages the chance to experiance alcohole legaly and learn acceptable levels from their guardians in safer environments.

Drop the rewards scheme for having children, introduce more education and awareness for schools, offer alternate uni paths for single mothers, increase childcare services. Increase welfare services and penalties for abusive parents.


Health

Allow stem cell and other research that will save lives.

Offer incentives to attract more potential doctors already in our education system.

Govt funded advertising and investigations into fast/junk food outlets. ALL products must use and list variables based on a new system that will be universal and understandable to all Aussies.

Finance is finance.

Military

Focus more on missile/sat tech. Less on troops and vehicles. Drones and AI should be a better option for the future. Will be alot cheaper than sending people.

 

[A Living God]

Cut Government welfare spending by at least 67% (more if possible)
Introduce flat personal/business income tax of 25%
Abolition almost all other Taxes/Levies
Reform system of Government to avoid unnecessary duplication
Significantly reduce size of the civil service
Sell of any remaining government assets
Make as much additional spending cuts required to bring budget back into surplus
Decriminalize most (all) controlled substance
Legalize Gay marriage
Legalize Prostitution
Legalize Pornography
Abolition the system of awards, have a single minium wage and nothing else
Abolish all goverment
Subsidy
Reintroduce a simplified verison of workchoices
Stop government bail outs farmers in time of drought
Remove all trade barriers
Legalize GM
Legalize Cloning
Legalize Stem Cell research
Allow increased Uranium mining/processing
Remove any legal barriers preventing the development of Nuclear Power
Abolish any laws such as the one the exist in Victoria that attacks free speech
Open border policy on Immigration

 

[KingsCrow]

sceed Tasmania to New Zealand

Abolish the Army, increase spending on the Airforce so we can see more arial displays

Increase taxes on smokers

Legalise Weed, tax it HEAPS.

Tax on imported Cars except BMW

Reduce migrants

Increase baby bonus, scrap it for those earning over 100,000.

Reduce welfare payments, particulary those for aboriginals (controversy woot)

Increase spending in regional areas to create employment (counter the cuts to aboriginal welfare payments)


Donate $10 Billion to the SA government along with a card saying sorry for screwing you over in terms of federal funding.


Anyone classified as mortally obese gets free lipo. Must work to pay it off though after they are back in the workforce










I will make a real list one day. lol

 

[KingsCrow]

What the hell is the obession with gay marriages on this forum. It just sickens me and blurs the meaning of marriage.

I'd legalise A civil union, thats it.


An FFS, cutting assistance to farmers, thats just stupid. Australia at this present moment feeds the mouths of around 80 million people. One of the worlds biggest challenges in the future will not only be climate change but also food supply. Just wait.

 

[Perrin]

Cut Government welfare spending by at least 67% (more if possible)
Introduce flat personal/business income tax of 25%
Abolition almost all other Taxes/Levies
Reform system of Government to avoid unnecessary duplication
Significantly reduce size of the civil service
Sell of any remaining government assets
Make as much additional spending cuts required to bring budget back into surplus
Decriminalize most (all) controlled substance
Legalize Gay marriage
Legalize Prostitution
Legalize Pornography
Abolition the system of awards, have a single minium wage and nothing else
Abolish all goverment
Subsidy
Reintroduce a simplified verison of workchoices
Stop government bail outs farmers in time of drought
Remove all trade barriers
Legalize GM
Legalize Cloning
Legalize Stem Cell research
Allow increased Uranium mining/processing
Remove any legal barriers preventing the development of Nuclear Power
Abolish any laws such as the one the exist in Victoria that attacks free speech
Open border policy on Immigration

Anarchy hey?

 

[A Living God]

Anarchy hey?

Abolish all goverment subsidies

 

[Richo83]

Cut Government welfare spending by at least 67% (more if possible)
Introduce flat personal/business income tax of 25%
Abolition almost all other Taxes/Levies
Reform system of Government to avoid unnecessary duplication
Significantly reduce size of the civil service
Sell of any remaining government assets
Make as much additional spending cuts required to bring budget back into surplus
Decriminalize most (all) controlled substance
Legalize Gay marriage
Legalize Prostitution
Legalize Pornography
Abolition the system of awards, have a single minium wage and nothing else
Abolish all goverment
Subsidy
Reintroduce a simplified verison of workchoices
Stop government bail outs farmers in time of drought
Remove all trade barriers
Legalize GM
Legalize Cloning
Legalize Stem Cell research
Allow increased Uranium mining/processing
Remove any legal barriers preventing the development of Nuclear Power
Abolish any laws such as the one the exist in Victoria that attacks free speech
Open border policy on Immigration

Strong libertarianism almost anacho-capitalism.