State Branch Formation

In the leadup to Congress I sketched out a plan to activate State Branches. Due to the focus on Strategy I left it off the agenda because we have more important things to discuss. With Congress over and a demonstrated lack of organisation at the State level in NSW, this is probably a good time to lay it out.

I put it in the old thread to give the current proposal some context and history.

State Organisation

In order to bridge the gap from where we are to where we want to be, we will need to make state branches functional. It is easier to get elected to local councils or State legislatures than it is to get elected to Federal Parliament. If we manage to get into government somewhere, it will be easier to get into government anywhere, in part because being elected lends legitimacy and in part it makes getting media much easier.

I propose we try to recruit a few volunteers in each active state to be a steering committee, each with their own role. If we don’t have enough interested people, filling any of the roles would be better than having none filled. I think the roles should be:

State politics coordinator- Responsible for keeping abreast of state politics, using social media to share related content and organising Pirate participation in politics. Talking about state level politics will hopefully generate interest in state level politics which will help draw in more activists.

Bureaucrat- Responsible for collecting details etc. in order to get to the position where we could register a state party. Getting registered is a serious pain in the arse, we need someone to take on this onerous responsibility. I pledge to buy anyone who successfully deals with their state electoral commission to get a branch of the Pirate Party registered a beer, everyone else should make the same pledge for it is an onerous task.

Organiser- Responsible for organising meetings and events and communicating with the NC and the rest of the party. Also responsible for sharing Pirate events on social media.

This can be expanded as required by the steering committee as volunteers get involved. Each state should eventually have their own tasks for pirates page on the wiki, so actions on the state level can start happening.

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