Words from President
Hey pirates!
I’ve been in Sweden for a month now. I met with the Swedish Young Pirates. I’ll be speaking at their General Assembly in March about PPAU. 
Unfortunately, I also managed to catch pneumonia and other ailments, and simultaneously had to deal with the extremely disappointing situation relating to PPI. I am therefore taking a leave of absence for the next three months in order to recover from burnout. The National Council will handle any duties assigned to me in the mean time.
Expect mostly business as usual.
Regarding membership renewals, the work still isn’t finished due to illness. If anybody is able to assist Fletcher (Python experience very useful), please do let him know. We’ll get this done a lot faster with a couple more hands on deck!
I’d also just like to remind everyone that we are still seeking volunteers for various committees.
Rundown of recent happenings
In the Party
- The PPI board voted in favour of our draft Online General Assembly proposal.
- Brendan wrote an article for the Pirate Times heralding the upcoming GA as the last chance to fix PPI.
We’ve begun work on our reform proposal. - The PPI board decided to revote and scrapped the Online GA later introducing a VoIP-only online meeting with no ability to amend the statutes.
- PPAU resigned from PPI.
- We launched a new meeting place for Pirates around the world.
- All rewards from our Pozible translation campaign have been sent out.
- Brendan Molloy has taken a three month leave of absence.
In the World
Interesting things happening in the world are posted under the following categories.
Active campaigns
- Our ongoing petition against three strikes and Internet censorship
- The nascent Stop the Spies campaign that the Party is supporting, please do get involved. Write to Labor members specifically to convince them to not support data retention legislation. It is still possible to get them to block this if there is significant public support for it being blocked as they have no firm stance on this matter at this time.
Recent meetings
Minutes for all official meetings of the National Council and Party Committees are recorded on the wiki.
National Council
Policy Development Committee
PDC general meetings have been moved to the second Wednesday of the month to make room for more working groups.
Submissions
- Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Amendment (Data Retention) Bill 2014
- As always past submissions by Pirate Party Australia are listed on our website
Press releases
- Classifications Board continues to treat adults like children
- Tony Abbott’s Consistent Misunderstanding of Data Retention
Finances
The Party is currently using Xero to manage our finances.
As of 3 February 2015:
- Transaction Account: $488.74
- Savings Account: incoming $7,233.61
Groups seeking volunteers
- International Relations Team
- Party Constitution Review Committee
- Internet Engineering Committee
- Policy Development Committee
- Press Team
- Programming Team
- Social Media Team
- Design Team
If you feel that you would like to be involved in any of these groups, or have any questions, please contact us.
Upcoming events and meetings
All official meetings and events are listed in the Party Calendar.
If you have any comments or questions, feel free to reply to this post!