Pirate Emergency Congress 2021/Motions

FM-1: Affiliate to "Fusion"
Put by: Alex Jago for the National Council

Motion
Affiliate to the electoral coalition about to be known as "Fusion: Science, Pirate, Secular, Climate Emergency".

Rationale
Recent legislation changes have tripled the party registration threshold to 1500. The party's peak membership (in the days when we did not require annual renewals) barely reached this threshold if at all, and more recently we were below even the 500 threshold. Therefore, the National Council has sought a coalition with like-minded and similarly-impacted minor parties. We believe joining forces is our best option to ensure Pirates will be on the ballot under our name, retaining our existence and identity.

If you are in favour of this motion, please vote for CAP-1 as well.

Result

 * Passed on the floor of Congress and proceeded to online member vote.
 * Passed online member vote (103 Aye; 6 Nay; 8 Abstain); no quorum for this type of motion.

PM-1: Sovereign Wealth Fund
Put by: Andrew Downing for the Policy Development Committee

Motion
Insert the following as a new subsection to "Economic Reform":

Sovereign Wealth Fund (SWF) as a Resource Tax

Mining as an industry has numerous conflicting considerations. There are environmental issues, land rights, and economic issues around employment, taxation, royalties and other regulation. This policy is focused on the economic issues.

The Australian economy is heavily weighted toward primary industries. According the RBA, resources represent over two thirds of Australia's exports, and Australian Bureau of Statistics data show a 500% growth in mining derived revenues since the 1980's.

From the industry perspective, the economics of mining industries is that they start with the richest, most accessible deposits, then over time they shift to less rich, less accessible deposits, and productivity declines. The Productivity Commission's report into mining from 2008, showed slowly declining productivity, amidst long term investment in technology and automation that was yet to yield returns. A more recent report from 2020 highlighted the industry's need for "regulatory certainty". This is because they need to perform a lot of exploration and upfront investment before ever seeing any mining returns. Without certainty about taxes and regulations, they are taking on unmanageable risk.

From a long term nation building perspective, minerals are a limited resource, and although we are gaining efficiency in their extraction, we will eventually face diminishing returns. Living off the recurring income from taxation and royalties of a limited and diminishing resource is not a sound long-term strategy for Australia.

A general effect of taxation, is that it tends to reduce the thing that is taxed. In relation to mining, we don't want to reduce employment or exploration, but we do want to retain more of the value that is generated from the extraction. We can accumulate an increasing portion of mining profits into a sovereign wealth fund. We also do not want to make sudden regulatory changes that would prevent future investment.

Pirate Party Australia advocates the following reforms:

Establish a Sovereign Wealth Fund from resource royalties

Gradually reduce mining corporate taxation over time, so that exploration and operational costs reduce and, in lockstep, gradually increasing royalties on resources extracted, so that taxation reflects actual resource extraction, rather than employment or exploration costs. Taxes on resources with high negative externality effects, such as carbon producing coal and gas, would increase according to our existing climate policy. As royalty payments increase, redirect the increase into an Australian Sovereign Wealth Fund (ASWF). Where Australian government funded mineral exploration is the basis for new mining sites, there should be an open commercial auction for the rights to exploit the new sites. Manage the long term investment of the ASWF, as a broadly internationally ethical and diverse investment fund, where only future profits above inflation may contribute back to national interests such as healthcare, pensions and other social security needs.

Result

 * Passed on the floor of Congress and proceeded to online member vote.
 * Passed online member vote (94 Aye; 2 Nay; 21 Abstain); no quorum for this type of motion.

PM-2: Education Policy update
Put by: Miles Whiticker

Motion
Update the "School education" section of the Education and innovation policy to replace the phrase "teach in different ways to accommodate different learning styles" with the following:

teach in different ways to accommodate the individual needs of their students

Rationale
"Learning styles" is a term of art in education which doesn't have quite the same meaning as how we were using it.

Result

 * Passed on the floor of Congress and proceeded to online member vote.
 * Passed online member vote (107 Aye; 1 Nay; 9 Abstain); no quorum for this type of motion.