Minutes/National Council/2021-09-16

National Council Meeting 16th September 2021 Scheduled start time: 20:30 AEST

National Council

 * Alex Jago (Minutes)
 * Miles Whiticker (Chair)
 * Andrew Downing
 * Roger Whatling
 * David Kennedy
 * Fred Gerner
 * John August (from 20:38; until 22:52)

Members and Observers

 * Liam Pomfret (DRC)
 * Zach__
 * Jay Stephens
 * Justine Wilkinson

Science Party Guests

 * AaronH
 * Michael Maroske
 * Sahar
 * Andrea Leong (Science Party President)

Agenda
Call to order


 * Previous minutes (Alex)
 * https://pirateparty.org.au/wiki/Minutes/National_Council/2021-09-02

Upcoming events, reports and correspondence


 * Science party report back (Roger/Andrew/Alex/Satch)
 * Party network meeting (Miles)
 * Merchandise update (Alex)
 * Membership count update (Alex)
 * Reddit AMA on Friday (Miles)
 * https://pad.pirateparty.org.au/p/ama_briefing_sep2021
 * PPUS livestream 30th Sep (Miles)
 * Australian speaker needed... external or PPAU candidate?
 * John Wesley Days?
 * IR Committee meeting on 23rd Sep (Miles)
 * PPI
 * Science/Pirates pre merger discussion (Miles)
 * Science/Pirates joint livestream on nuclear (Miles)
 * Mid/late october

Event reports

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHQ7oou851k&t=605s&ab_channel=Tokel
 * Tokel discussion report back (Andrew)
 * Donation disclosure (Miles)
 * PPDE 15th birthday celebrations (Miles)

Action Items


 * Call for preferences correspondence (Miles)
 * Authorise to pay NSW Fair Trading fees (John/Alex/Miles)

Discussion Items


 * Infrastructure planning for merger (Miles)
 * LQFB trial update (David/Miles)
 * Needs to start drafting use cases doc
 * Science party merger (all)

Science Party report back

 * Good people, a few of us and AusDems in attendance
 * General monthly meeting
 * about 15 people there total

Party Network Meeting

 * This Saturday!
 * All NC invited
 * Us and a bunch of other minors re joint campaign and merger possibilities
 * About half a dozen parties looking to attend
 * Miles will be taking a personal proposal for smaller (<1500) parties to merge, and for all to work on joint campaigns
 * Miles to coordinate attendance

Merch update

 * Roger reports the shirt arrived
 * cool, that can go live for Sat
 * Also the sticker drive hit target
 * Closes on Saturday

Membership updates

 * Alex has the distinct and dubious honour of informing the NC that expirations have exceeded new members over the last 30 days
 * time to call people
 * Alex to do up a list on Sunday

Reddit AMA tomorrow

 * John, Brandon, Tania to participate
 * Capitalising on the recent interest in the Identify and Disrupt Bill
 * 6-9pm tomorrow night
 * Ghostwriters appreciated

US Pirates joint event

 * It's another international video event :)
 * Joint topics to agree on
 * Looking for another Aussie
 * Hopefully John Wesley Days might be willing
 * Mid-October

International Committee meeting

 * Next Thursday
 * Hopefully Mitch will have his proposals
 * Further work with PPI

Pirates Science joint nuclear livestream

 * A good time to be had by all
 * Hopefully a joint event will have further reach
 * Couple of months away

Tokel report back

 * "They want to tokenise everything" - Andrew
 * Early stages, still building it
 * Basic system and scripting
 * Andrew raised some socio-political-legal issues
 * e.g. DMCA takedown process abuse
 * Actual proof of ownership would expedite and greatly improve things
 * Miles discloses: Tokel is pretty involved with PirateCoin from his understanding, and he has some holdings.
 * Recusing himself from heavy involvement with this from now on.
 * Andrew adds that there's very little insight onto crypto donations to political parties
 * Obviously we need to know who our donors are for transparency

Liquid Feedback

 * Mature tech
 * Hefty support fee, but it is FOSS so...
 * Andrew: this looks like a great bit of software, but if nobody uses it more than currently use Discord, we haven't done much better. We need to be able to use it in a way that actively engages the entire membership
 * "if it's just another tool it's a maintenance cost even if we don't pay anything for support"
 * Roger desires a more fleshed-out cost-benefit
 * Miles: this is largely inspired by many years of National Congress getting bogged down in minutiae
 * Andrew, Roger, Satch, Fred, Miles to subcommittee it next week

Action Items

 * Preferences correspondence: Miles has made a forum post
 * Also https://pad.pirateparty.org.au/p/2021_call_for_preferences
 * General consent for Miles to send it out


 * NSW Fair Trading the next
 * Alex's Monday task to collab with John

Science Party joint meeting and merger discussion

 * Miles: everyone's aware of the electoral rego changes
 * Everyone is reaching out to everyone
 * There's a developing community of left-minor parties

People here tonight

 * Aaron Hamming, Science (Exec, fmr candidate)
 * Alex Jago, Pirate (Secretary)
 * Andrea Leong, Science (President, fmr candidate)
 * Andrew Downing, Pirate (NC, Policy Dev)
 * Liam Pomfret, Pirate (Dispute Resolution, fmr candidate)
 * Roger Whatling, Pirate (Dep Sec)
 * Drew, Science (Exec, wacky policy ideas)
 * Jay Stephens, Pirate (Intl Rel)
 * John August, Pirate (Treasurer, fmr candidate)
 * Justine Wilkinson, Pirate ("I have the regretful pleasure of introducing my son, Miles Whiticker"; big UBI fan)
 * "Koala": Adrian with the Aus Dems
 * Michael Maroske, Science (Treasurer)
 * Miles Whiticker, Pirate (President)
 * Sahar, Science (Exec, also a UBI fan)
 * David "Satch" Kennedy (NC)
 * Fred Gerner, Pirate (NC "I'm one of the boat people, from Sweden")
 * Zach__, Pirate (fairly new member)

What a merger could look like

 * Drew: It's important that neither of us lose out on the things that we've invested time in and that work
 * Need to reconcile institutional knowledge
 * While we both know that presently there are more Science members, we wouldn't want to lose the vibrancy that PPAU has
 * various name discussion
 * LiamP suggests "The Coalition", tongue only slightly in cheek
 * It seems a factional model is a good starting point for any larger coalition. Just us could make it work, but we're very close.

Policy Bugbears

 * Roger picks on Science Party 800% target, Andrew defends
 * Then discussion of Science's new city policy
 * Alex suggests location
 * Roger questions city-founding meta
 * Drew raises that the city-founding meta has shifted: transport convergence
 * Andrea raises issues to go through
 * crypto; copyright; patents are things Science doesn't closely address
 * "oh, our crypto policy is way behind right now" - Roger
 * extreme conversational derailment at this point which your humble Secretary shall not attempt to minute further


 * Miles has a proposal for reconciling different policies
 * step 1: blank slate
 * step 2: mass assembly, people make proposals
 * precursor to this is a joint working group doing side-by-side comparisons and developing a joint proposal
 * "That's not dissimilar to what I would've thought" - Andrea

General Discussion

 * Aaron asks what do the Pirates *really want* out of this
 * Are we just after ticking the box, do we want factions, what do we *want*
 * Miles comments: "we could talk about the tactics and stick it to ScoMo, but what you and us and the ones we'll talk to on Saturday is that by and large we share a passion for and dedication to democracy"
 * "So despite the initial factions that we might have, it's direct democracy that unites us. That's the legacy of Occupy and Extinction Rebellion and it's what will sustain us for a decade and more"
 * Andrea: "one of the opportunities presented by a merger is a branding change, beyond the same small parties that we currently are"
 * Miles: "if everyone in Saturday's parties actually joined together, we actually come close to outnumbering everyone but the Greens"
 * Andrea: and a little incompatible with a faction model


 * Andrew: Science, you've done previous working-together things, what's your organisational takeaway?
 * Aaron, Andrea: it was a marriage of convenience in a number of ways; the Venn diagram wasn't there
 * Andrea: I believe a political party can take ownership of a pretty bland name; see the majors
 * Michael: also don't forget the personality clashes. Principles and processes are what get us through that.
 * Roger: so what's the difference between process and policy? Big difference between those who want to be Part Of The Party, and those who want to live their lives. Active vs passive.
 * Roger: We have foundational principles, and I'm sure you do to.


 * Andrew: I want to propose a twist: a federated model, not a coalition model. It's defined by what you have in common.


 * Andrea: "I'd like to add: My political awakening was when Jeff Kennett 'successfully merged my school with another one' aka closed it down. In 2013 I wrote my Labor member re. a $7 Medicare co-pay and got a quick positive response, then in 2014 the metadata retention thing happened and disillusioned me. So it's important to keep running in elections and challenging the majors directly, on the ballot."
 * Roger brings up that traditionally, the parties properly represented the white/blue collar divide. Nowadays that's... not the case.

Infrastructural merging

 * Miles: "In PPAU we're quite proud of our systems; a huge amount of our stuff is in house, self hosted, open source"
 * Very strict processes around our member data and member voting
 * So in a federated/factionalised structure we'd be happy going our own ways
 * Andrea: "Thanks. I don't think there's too much on our side that we're wedded too; I'd have to check the implications."
 * Michael: "yeah, we're not too focused on the backend. NationBuilder."
 * Roger: we probably want to consolidate on the best options. Having said that, data migration is not a small task.
 * Miles: "despite everything, I do like NationBuilder. It has features I wish PPAU had, stuff like integrated phone banking and spatial/categorical analytics. So there's an arms race around data analysis that PPAU has made the principled decision to cut ourselves off from, but we're at a competitive disadvantage for it."

Motions

 * Motion: adopt previous minutes
 * https://pirateparty.org.au/wiki/Minutes/National_Council/2021-09-02
 * Put by: Miles Whiticker
 * Carried unanimously 20:37


 * Motion: close the meeting
 * Put by: Dave Kennedy
 * Ayes 6: MW, FG, DK, AJ, AD, RW
 * Motion carried 23:16 AEST; meeting closed.