Pirate Emergency Congress 2021/Minutes

= Day 1: Saturday =

Formally opened 10:41 AEDT

 * Housekeeping notes
 * Acknowledgement of Country

Adoption of Standing Orders 10:43 AEDT

 * Miles walks through the rules
 * Comments in chat, things to be read on stream to be prefixed with COMMENT or QUESTION
 * Preselections are tomorrow (Sunday)

Motion: adopt standing orders

 * Ayes: Miles Whiticker, Roger Whatling, surprised, jedb, Andrew Downing, zach__, Motion, mandrke, Fred Gerner, Star_Tube, TaniaB, idcrisis
 * CARRIED unanimously (10:52 AEDT.)

Party updates
Miles Whiticker:


 * We've had lots of activity and drive recently, which is great. I've always been looking to increase that
 * Watch out for burnout though - it hurts you and it hurts the party
 * Highlights include the...
 * International Relations Committee - livestreams with both Euro and US Pirates
 * Policy Development Committee - big surge of interest and we always have to keep them up to date
 * Other promotional livestreams, including one just last night
 * Finally Miles would like to thank the NC over the last six months, extremely active and engaged

Alex Jago:


 * I just want to thank everyone who steps up and does something. Thank you, we need you, you matter.

Andrew Downing (PDO)


 * Not a lot of pure policy today
 * Lots of energy right now is naturally going in to Fusion work

Roger Whatling


 * It's been a privilege to be working with people who've been putting in so much effort
 * We ran a sticker drive, T-shirts are available for purchase...

Constitutional Amendment Motions (11:00 AEDT)
Miles: Fusion is an electoral coalition; a soft merger between us and three other small parties. This is incredibly exciting for me - it's not just us saying to the big parties "we're still here", it's an acknowledgement of our commonalities. This is us saying that our differences are our strengths. So we've been working with Science, Secular and Vote Planet to form Fusion. This won't be a bland mindless collective, I've been working to ensure we'll all retain our vibrancy and identity. That's the single biggest reason we're here today - we're asking the party to formally ratify the changes we'll need to make to formally proceed.

CAP-1

 * https://pirateparty.org.au/wiki/Pirate_Emergency_Congress_2021/Constitutional_Amendments

Miles: these are changes to allow us to work better in the Fusion structure. There are still decisions to make and work to be done within the Fusion structure - this is what we're at. You might not always agree with the name; I'll be candid - this was the name we picked because it's a compromise that we could agree to to ensure that we could work together and continue to contest elections. If we find a better name after the election, we'll switch to it.

Star_Tube comments that the 6-18 month timeframe to leave is quite restrictive (yes it is -AJ).

Star_Tube proposes to rework proposed wording around nomination fees (14.9.a). Andrew Downing comments on nomination fees: all four subparties will retain control over their budgets. The expectation is that PPAU will fund our candidates and other branches will fund theirs. I'm not sure whether we need to engrain that though.

Miles encourages all party members to start getting more involved with Fusion-level organising.

Andrew: I'd like to comment further on what we've done in the Fusion constitutional working group. We've stamped out a core set of things.


 * First, at Fusion's NC equivalent, each branch will have equal entitlement to representatives
 * Secondly, branches in Fusion will be free to pursue their own goals, explicitly. We get to pursue digital rights issues, Vote Planet get to pursue environmental issues, etc. This is a federation, not just a merger

But at the same time, there is a huge degree of overlap in what we agree on.

MOTION: Approve CAP-1 (11:27)

 * Ayes: Andrew Downing, Miles Whiticker, idcrisis, Star_Tube, jedb, zach__. Gold, mandrke, David Kennedy, surprised, Riger Whatling, Fred Gerner, twisty, Mark Gibbons, Alex Jago, TaniaB, Motion, milspec, molzy
 * Carried unanimously (11:30)
 * CAP-1 proceeds to full membership vote

Some time later, 'surprised' asks how policy differences and other issues will be resolved at Fusion level. Andrew answers: we're working carefully through the process we want to have, including e.g. the Fusion DRC should be able to declare a complaint vexatious.

CAP-2 (11:33)
Miles: This CAP is to clean up some inconsistencies between our constitution and the NSW Model Constitution. We're an incorporated association under NSW law so differences introduce compliance risk. This largely quite dry and has minimal impact on the day-to-day running of the organisation.

(Tangent from talking about member liability to thanking members for their financial support and what we could do with more money.)

Jedb raises there's a distinctinction in wording between Special and Emergency national congresses. Alex clarifies: they're both SGMs, effectively, but have different motivations. Specials are NC-initiated, Emergencies are member-requisitioned.

Motion: Approve CAP-2 (11:46)

 * Ayes: Andrew Downing, surprised, zach__, Star_Tube, Miles Whiticker, Roger Whatling, mandrke, David Kennedy, Gold, idcrisis, Motion, Tania, milspec, Mark Gibbons, Alex Jago
 * Abstain: jedb
 * Nay: twisty
 * Carried 15 for, 1 against, 1 abstention
 * Motion carried; CAP-2 proceeds

FM-1 (11:50)

 * This is the motion to formally affiliate to Fusion.
 * We've discussed this to a fair extent with CAP-1, which was the supporting structure.

Miles: "Hopefully everyone is well aware of what we want to do and what we've been working towards by now."

Andrew points out that working together our joint volunteer pool will be much more capable. One person with sign, eh, three people with a sign is a movement!

Motion: approve FM-1

 * Ayes: Motion, Andrew Downing, Miles Whiticker, zach__, Roger Whatling, twisty, jedb, David Kennedy, Gold, surprised, Fred Gerner, Star_Tube, TaniaB, Alex Jago, molzy, mandrke, MarkG, Justine123, milspec
 * Nays: idcrisis
 * Motion carried: 19 for, 1 against
 * Motion carried 12:01

PM-1 (12:03)
Andrew Downing reads through the policy and speaks to it: In the PDC we saw what e.g. Norway was doing and thought it a good idea. Australia's economy is very heavy on primary industries - but once we did those rocks up, they're used and gone, we can only take royalties once. The industry also needs regulatory certainty - these are multi-billion-dollar projects with substantial upfront investment on decadal timeframes.

So we don't want to reduce employment or exploration, but we do want to retain more of the value from resources. Proposal: reduce mining corporate tax but increase royalties to compensate. Fossil fuel taxes would increase in line with existing policy. Manage the Australian Sovereign Wealth Fund as an accumulatory fund - withdraw only profits, not capital - and run it as an "ethical-type" fund. This is not a hugely new system - we already have royalties - it's just that those go to state governments presently.

'surprised' asks: (1) how would that impact existing stakeholders? (2) What is the current effective tax rate on mining companies? (3) how do our mining costs compare?. Star_Tube asks why gradual?

Andrew: It should be revenue neutral, and it's gradual to give predictability. Currently the tax rate is the same for mining companies as any other company (30% of profits -AJ). I can't comment on international comparisons, I'm interested in what happens here. Mining has boomed here so I don't think it has problems.

surprised: Further question: so this is a redirection from state governments - how should we compensate them? Gnippots: Norway only invests overseas, thoughts?

Andrew: yes, investing internationally has anti-corruption benefits by avoiding conflicts of interest. Norway also have a bunch of ethical requirements around their investments. Regarding the state-government funding, it's only proposed that the additional royalties, over and above what are currently charged, go to the SWF.

Miles: ok, that probably needs some work to avoid being demonised.

Andrew

Mark G comments: Australia gets less public benefit from its resource wealth than any other major resource country. Many resource companies are multinational, and abscond with the profits.

surprised asks: OK, so the money isn't coming from state governments. but also mining company taxation is meant to go down, to offset. So isn't the money effectively coming from federal corporate tax income?

Andrew: that's a fair comment. The clear message from the mining companies is that what they mostly care about is consistent pricing over time. So it's possible to leave corporate tax alone and just increase royalties, if someone wants to put that motion.

jedb comments: "This seems quite similar to the Mineral Resource Rent Tax..." Andrew: this is explicitly royalties-based, not profit-based or price-linked. jedb: "Yes, I bring it up to be aware of the predictable opposition."

Star_Tube: "This doesn't seem to go into much detail re SWF management?" Andrew: yes, it necessarily can't be too prescriptive.

Justine proposes a clarification: Amend PM-1 so that "As royalty payments increase, redirect them into an Australian Sovereign Wealth Fund (ASWF)." now reads "As royalty payments increase, redirect the increase into an Australian Sovereign Wealth Fund (ASWF)." Andrew accepts the change; no further vote required.

Andrew: I see this as a good foray into economic policy, which will prompt further and wider discussion than our current offering does.

Motion: approve PM-1 (12:53)

 * Ayes: Star_Tube, Miles, Andrew, zach__. MarkG, milspec, twisty, jedb, RogerW, DavidK, idcrisis, mandrke. Gold, surpriosed, Motion, AlexJago, Justine123
 * Carried unanimously (12:55)

PM-2 (12:56)
Miles has been studying educational theory this year. There's a phrase in our policy about "learning styles". This is a specific term - "visual learning", "kinesthetic learning", etc. Learning styles are also a neuromyth - and not what we originally meant when we wrote the policy. So the update is to fix that.

Motion: approve PM-2 (13:08)

 * Ayes: RogerW, Motion, jedb, zach__, surprised, DavidK, mandrke, MilesW, AlexJ, AndrewD, milspec, Star_Tube, Gold, Justine123, twisty, MarkG
 * Nays: idcrisis
 * Motion carried: 16 for, 1 against.
 * PM-2 proceeds

Procedural motion: move the discussion topics forward to this afternoon

 * Ayes: RogerW, MilesW, zach__, AlexJ, AndrewD, DavidK, mandrke, twisty, idcrisis
 * Abstain: jedb, Star_Tube, Gold, milspec
 * Carried:

Procedural Motion: break for lunch for an hour (13:18)

 * Carried unanimously