Hello everyone,
Please be advised that our first PDC committee meeting will be on Thursday 25th February at 7pm AEDT on Discord voice https://discord.gg/dd2S5Rg
All members are welcome to attend. We have a list of things to do from the previous National Congress, and there are also a number of other policies we may want to explore.
Hello everyone!
The full (and slightly messy) minutes of the meeting can be found below.
Policy Development Committee Meeting
Thursday 25th February 2021 6pm AEST/6pm AEDT (Advertised in Discord channel as 7pm AEST/AEDT)
Attendees:
Pip Foweraker
JohnA
andrewdpirate
Timing: The attendees agreed the meeting would last between 30 mins and 1 hour, with a hard stop of the formal meeting after 1 hour.
Time start: 7:02PM AEST
Agenda:
Discuss items as per agenda briefly
Discuss other topics of interest
Prioritise and assign goals
Time check
Break for more unhurried analysis and some drinks until close
See Pirate Congress 2020/Motions - Pirate Party Australia Wiki
See Pirate Congress 2020/Minutes - Pirate Party Australia Wiki
** PM-5: Set the proposed Universal Basic Income at the poverty rate
*** Pirate Congress 2020/Motions - Pirate Party Australia Wiki
*** Concerns were noted on the floor that adopting this motion would mean the larger section “Economic Reform” may become economically unsustainable. The committee should review this amendment in light of the three possible payment rates (see Congress minutes) and determine how best to integrate (or not) the amendment with the larger policy.
UBI motion needs particular attention:
andrewdpirate is to engage Mark Gibbons on body of text and references
andrewdpirate PM-5 to take lead on consulting and coming up with restructure - application of poverty rate mechanics + some expansion of policy to account for specific recommendations
** PS-2: Free Speech, Hate Speech and Section 18C
*** Pirate Congress 2020/Motions - Pirate Party Australia Wiki
*** User:Miles w/18c 2020 - Pirate Party Australia Wiki
*** See Congress minutes for context and rationale. As PS2 was a compromise which no-one was happy with, a formal policy motion should be prepared which better encapsulates party position and moves the PS into party policy. NOTE: PS2 was a rush job and there are problems with it which were rightly criticised. This is a very difficult ideological issue to take position on and will require larger discussion in the party.
JohnA:
JohnA to prioritise discussions to the policy for emuneration into more detailed and referenced policy.
JohnA to publish the motion to our policy pages and link into Discuss for welcome commentary from Pirates at large.
** Code of conduct for PPAU volunteers in light of multiple LNP staffer sexual assaults
Pip: to develop basic CoC and report back to PDC committee 3 March, noting the following:
Try to avoid obvious mistakes
Treat each other respectfully and honestly
Be clear about intent
Assume positive intent, and assume incompetence before malice.
**** CBDC (Central Bank Digital Currency) Policy**
Andrew: What is CBDC? Central governments and banks deciding to do away with cash, and make a digital-only currency. A direct account with a central bank means your cash-equivalent becomes based around a relationship with a central bank. Nominally via crypto etc but basically they’re trying to leapfrog into a natrional, fiat-lite digital currency as opposed to hardcore anon cash, digital or otherwise.
This is fraught with potential for abuse, because anonymity is anathema to centralising governments, particularly in authoritarian ways. Individually controllable transactions means your ability to commit small and necessary crimes is subject to invasive scrutiny.
[We] predict that this is going to be strongly pushed and advise resisting it fiercely. There is no reason why a decentralised national currency could not take place instead. Central banks being central banks, they want to control everything, which is contrary to our preferred goal state.
Andrew proposes to have a broader discussion, bring in more references and notes, get all the details down and then put forward to wider internal audience.
JohnA: Central banks shouldn’t have the power to coerce people away from [money]. Be careful of when people apply pressure to push people away from cash. We note very carefully that CBDC is not the same as a cryptocurrency.
JohnA: In terms of policy, we should ensure that the government is not able to make illegal, coerce, or prompt people away from using cash.
****** Right to Repair
JohnA: We put together submission to productivity commission which did some things. We think a corporation should make stuff and sell stuff for its own profit. After a product is purchased, as long as you’re not selling knock-offs, then you should be able to modify, change, repair and alter that product. Companies should be somewhat constrained in how they make it difficult to change, repair, and alter products.
Fleshing out some of the contents from the submission, and perhaps borrowing from some of IP sections as well, we should be able to co-link them because these are all aligned with our strategic and policy positions.
Issues of safety, personal safety, and areas where the State has a legitimate interest in the experience of all users. Some absolution from liability naturally transfers to the company to reward their civilisational cooperation.
Beware of reasonable concerns being co-opted by corporations for their own strategic goals. We strongly not allience with Australian farmers.
JohnA: Basically, JohnA wants to develop a policy and propose it for the next National Congress. Seems like low-conflict policy to approach. Internal audience to begin with. PR opportunity for the party.
**** Nuclear energy**
Pip:
People now more mature about nuclear technology compared to a few decades ago, they still strong emotional responses but we can attract attention by being rigorous in our updating people’s beliefs and drawing on science and being clear, confident communicators. There is substantial economic benefit from taking advantage of available fissile material in Australia, we are missing out on the economic benefit of local processing and economic extraction throughout the entire value chain. Pip advocates for a strong pro-nuclear position.
Suggest multiple pronged approach, including fusion, but current political priority to increasing funding for nuclear research. Suggests historical problem with Greens approach being negatively emotional about nuclear power clouds their better judgment for a power source more functionally aligned with their medium to long term plans.
More overall advantage to Australians if we choose to deliberately take advantage of locally available fissile material.
ACTION: Each participant to take their policy discussion notes and extend into something workshoppable for next meeting. Make new pads each and post in Discord for other people to be able to participate.
GOAL: End of next week’s meeting, have something that could be posted as potential policy for discussion to internal audiences in Discourse forums
Meeting adjourned 8:03PM AEST by unanimous consent.
Have any solid policy proposals ended up being written for nuclear energy yet? If not, I think it’s about time we put a simple dot point into the energy policy about repealing legislative nuclear prohibitions as recommended by the South Australia Nuclear Fuel Cycle Royal Commission.
No-one has written anything about that yet. I argue for nuclear personally but I think it would be sensible for the party to be cautious.