Platform

Declaration of platform and principles
Pirate Party Australia is founded on the basic tenets of:


 * Freedom of culture and speech,
 * The inalienable right to liberty and privacy,
 * The protection of the freedoms provided by the evolving global information society,
 * The transparency of institutions, and
 * The restoration of the freedoms and balance lost through the encroachment of harmful and overbearing intellectual monopolies.

As part of an international movement, we seek not only to change national laws, but to reform perceptions and effect worldwide change. We seek this democratically, through parliamentary elections and lobbying of government.

Copyright
Copyright laws are a statutory monopoly artificially applied to information and culture that are traditionally justified as a balance between the rights of content creators and the rights of society. Properly applied, such laws encourage creative output by providing a limited monopoly for artists and writers over the use and distribution of their work. On expiry of copyright (which originally lasted for 28 years) work entered the public domain to be used and built on by others.

The overreach of copyright
In recent times the essential balance underlying copyright law has been lost, and a mechanism intended to serve the interests of the general public is now threatening fundamental rights and cultural growth. Copyright duration has been repeatedly extended, and now persists for 70 years after the death of the original creator. This massive duration is actively harmful for the creative community, because it kills the flow of material to the public domain, denying the opportunity to draw on it. Perpetual copyright benefits only large businesses, and encourages them to reuse old content rather than undertake relatively risky and expensive investments in new material.

Higher duration has been paired up with increasingly draconian enforcement. Enforcement of copyright has encroached into the realm of non-commercial use—a recipe for abuse of the general public. Individuals are now being prevented from listening to public radio, or fined millions of dollars for downloading a handful of songs.' Community groups and charities have been threatened with legal action for allowing children to perform Christmas carols, and corporations are preventing access to public footage of historical events. The rights of the general public are being trampled in the name of protecting obsolete, rent-seeking business models.

Seeking to defend their behaviour, lobbyists and corporate interests have adopted terms like ‘piracy’ and ‘theft’. However, when normal behaviour such as culture sharing is criminalised, everyone is a pirate. The Pirate Party has adopted the term to draw attention to this fact, and to focus attention on threats to a range of fundamental rights:


 * Privacy has been directly undermined by attempts to force ISPs to monitor private communications in the name of copyright enforcement.
 * Participation in the free market is threatened by copyright bills such as SOPA and PIPA, which would have granted US copyright holders unilateral power to shut down the websites of other businesses anywhere in the world on the basis of an allegation that the site "enabled" copyright infringement.
 * The presumption of innocence is taken away by ‘three strikes’ or ‘graduated response’ laws which allow Internet users to be disconnected by copyright holders upon an allegation and without fair trial or due process.
 * Free speech is similarly threatened by compulsory disconnection. The Constitution contains an implied guarantee of freedom of communication in relation to political matters, which the High Court has determined is essential to the proper functioning of Australian democracy. Disconnection interferes with the right to assembly and political communication, and violates the Constitution as well as High Court determinations and international covenants. The Internet is essential for everything from financial affairs to childhood education, and laws enabling disconnection are a frontal assault on free speech and modern life.
 * Consumer rights are being eroded as technology becomes increasingly crippled though measures such as Digital Rights Management (DRM). DRM can be a prelude to surreptitious surveillance and unauthorised data collection. It cripples culture and knowledge distribution, and is an electronic equivalent of a barbed wire fence around data consumers rightfully own.
 * Access to our cultural heritage is jeopardised by the (thus far) successful campaign to impose a ‘forever less one day’ period of copyright duration. All copyrighted works are, to some extent, based on or inspired by prior work. Modern attempts to combine perpetual duration with the prevention of reuse and remixing threaten the mechanisms of progress and impose restrictions that creators have never faced before. They amount to a strangling of the creative process.

Reforming copyright
Placing copyright law in direct opposition to fundamental rights guarantees failure. File and culture sharing are, predictably, continuing to grow in defiance of all attempts to control it, and recent attempts to impose additional enforcement were crushed by determined opposition in the European parliament and US Congress. People have always shared poetry, music and culture, and modern copyright laws fail because they attempt to criminalise innate human behaviour.

Copyright is changing, and we are seeing a completely new and different social understanding of copyright – a generational shift in the way we relate to and participate in culture. It is thus concerning that the Australian government has announced an intention to consider imposing the thoroughly discredited ‘three strikes’ disconnection model on Australian Internet users. Copyright was written to serve the needs of the general public, and this purpose is not accomplished by criminalising an entire generation. Fundamental rights do not need to be “balanced” with copyright enforcement.

A copyright law for our time must combine the balanced approach of the past with recognition of the situation we confront in the present. Normal interactions in the digital sphere should no longer be monitored or threatened. The digital realm offers artists and creators vast new opportunities for exposure, free of old-fashioned limits on distribution, and the overwhelming weight of research shows that file sharing has not reduced revenue to artists. The law should account for this. Copyright duration should also be contained to around 15 years — which is calculated to be the optimal term to drive maximum creative endeavour. Creative remixing and reuse of existing content must be allowed, as preventing them is equivalent to attacking freedom and progress itself.


 * View detailed copyright policy text.

Patents
Thoughts and ideas cannot be “owned” as natural property. Patent laws do, however, grant a temporary monopoly over an expression of an idea. This trades a reduction in free access for a greater incentive to disclose and develop ideas.

However, as the information age has reshaped society, patents have become increasingly anachronistic and inadequate in fulfilling their intended purpose. The original twenty-year patent duration was codified at a time when ideas and products took years to spread. It is out of step in a world where products can be developed and marketed to millions of people in a space of weeks, and most credible research now favours a significantly shorter term. The disconnect between patent laws and modern life is worsened by rampant abuse of the patent system. Hoarders and patent trolls are using patents to force creators and inventors to pay additional costs or face litigation – a use that undermines the creation process patents were meant to protect.

Modernising the patent system
Monopolies on ideas are not natural – they are created by the state. While interventions in the free market are sometimes necessary, it is important that they serve the public interest, and reflect the best research. A reduction in patent duration is now clearly overdue, and this should be paired up with explicit protection for public research. Since patents were introduced on the basis of enabling products to be developed, we believe that legal defence of any patent should require the litigant to prove they are using it. Patent law should also permit independent development of the same invention.

Taken together, these measures will curb the incentive to register trivial and defensive patents. This should reduce the quantity of patents, and improve the quality.

Software patents
Patents on programs must reflect the uniquely dynamic nature of the software industry, and durations should be shorter than those applying to other patent types. Functional claiming (which patents the end result of software) should be abolished, as it removes the capacity for the free market to create newer and better approaches. A larger fee should also apply for software patents to fund additional scrutiny and a raising of the threshold for obviousness and prior art.

Genes and organisms
“Products of nature” are explicitly not patentable under first principles of patent law. However, patents on human genes have been granted on the basis that extraction of material from its natural environment is akin to having invented it. This is an absurd legal artifice that, if applied in other fields, would lead to patents on coal, cotton, and wood.

The granting of monopolies over human genes is a particularly destructive form of corporate welfare because it allows private interests to lock away fundamental information about our bodies. Essential research is being hindered by the obligation to negotiate among dozens of gene patent holders, who bear no obligation to contribute to research themselves. Gene patent holders are imposing huge costs on sick and dying patients for simple tests and treatments. Curbing these practices requires no more than a return of patent law to first principles, which provide no basis for patents on genes and organisms.

Pharmaceutical patents
Pharmaceutical patents fall into two categories: patents on a process for creating a drug, and patents on a drug itself. Process patents may encourage companies to seek alternative and better ways to produce a desired outcome. However, drug patents have the reverse effect, shutting down free market competition which might otherwise drive improved techniques.

Drug patents are typically justified by the assertion that a strong incentive is needed to support the long and complex research and development cycle for drugs. While drug research is important, patents are a flawed method for accomplishing it, for two primary reasons:


 * The price problem: A guarantee of a twenty-year monopoly on a drug removes any necessity to compete on quality or price. Very high prices result, and since a large number of drugs qualify for the pharmaceutical benefit scheme (PBS) the government is ultimately forced to fund the monopolies it has created, to the tune of billions of dollars a year (the cost of patented medicines in the F1 category of the PBS rose by more than a third between 2005–06 and 2009–10). The situation is worse in developing nations where high prices demanded by patent holders deny impoverished people access to lifesaving medicine.
 * The incentive problem: A cure for a condition can only be sold once, but a temporary fix can be sold repeatedly. Drug patents thus contain a structural incentive to engage in the wrong kinds of research. Consequently, only around two per cent of new active ingredients and applications devised by drug companies are considered to make real medical progress. This means that only a small proportion of taxpayer revenue directed to drug companies ultimately funds genuinely useful research. Firms in China and the US also subject Australia to many dubious and harmful patents, imposing additional barriers on potentially useful research.

Drug patents are ultimately far too indirect and unreliable to work as a platform for something as vital as medical research. An alternative approach is needed. We propose the abolition of drug patents: this will allow the PBS to make use of generic drugs, freeing up significant funds which can be redirected towards publicly funded medical research. This research can target critical areas and ensure the development of meaningful cures. Drugs developed with public funds will enter the public domain where generic manufacturers compete on price and quality in a free market. The resulting drugs can be provided at low cost to consumers, and exported as aid to impoverished countries unable to afford monopoly drugs.

Funding will also be directed towards a trial ‘bounty’ system in which rewards are offered for the creation of drugs that serve an identified public good. Private research in this model will target areas not covered by public research, adding breadth to the system and reducing pressure on public research infrastructure. We will also seek to negotiate a new biomedical treaty, which would include a global bounty system to replace drug patents worldwide. Taken together, these measures will grant a far greater role for the free market than exists in the current monopoly system. They will provide a broader research platform and cheaper drugs built in accord with the right incentives.


 * View detailed patents policy text.

Privacy rights
Privacy is a fundamental right. It underpins human dignity, freedom of expression and association. It is the freedom to control your cultural presence, the information and identity that surrounds you, as well as your physical privacy. A free and open democratic society cannot function without the protection of a person's private life and sphere. Neither the state or private organisations should have the right to intrude without restraint into an individual's autonomy or compromise that dignity.

Fear, combined with surreptitious and intrusive surveillance work, undermines the fabric of our open and democratic society. The compromise of inalienable and unconditional rights does nothing to advance or protect us.

We hold this as one of our most important and cherished values within our democracy. We want to see tougher legislative requirements for organisations retaining data, and a withdrawal of the power to perform surveillance without notification from government bodies.

We will oppose any legislation that seeks to compromise this right – it is not negotiable.

We oppose the practice of 'security theatre,' in which governments and organisations implement policies that provide the illusion of safety, without providing any security. We support sensible security procedures that are demonstrated as effective and are respectful of people's rights. An extension of this principle is to strongly limit the use of CCTV cameras, especially those that are linked into large networks, where nobody supervises the watchers.

Mandatory privacy breach disclosure
In the case where data security is breached there must be legislative protection requiring companies to disclose the breach as quickly as practically possible, with penalties for nondisclosure.

Transparency
Democracy is dependent on the transparency of its government, law enforcement agencies and in political lobbying. Access to the discussion and reasoning for decisions made, the laws, regulations and obligations of government authorities and an ability for citizens to participate in the decision making process is vital. The digital environment enlarges the spaces for civic engagement, and provides a mechanism for openness in our democracy and government at all levels.

Whilst every individual citizen must have the right to protect their privacy, conversely the administration must not. It must be completely open and transparent.

Whistleblower protection
Pirate Party Australia supports enactment of whistleblower protection legislation, which allows for and encourages disclosure of evidence of corruption and wrongdoing, including genuine disclosure to the media and to the public, and protects whistleblowers and journalists from reprisals for doing so.

Freedom of information exemptions
Pirate Party Australia does not support exemptions from Freedom of Information based solely on a connection to security or intelligence agencies, including private contractors.

Any exemptions to FOI legislation should be determined on a case-by-case basis, accounting for the risk of a particular document being disclosed to the public, and any particular exemption should be for a strictly limited time, with the potential for extensions.

Political donations
Representatives elected to all levels of government should disclose all gifts and donations. Candidates and political parties should also disclose all donations. The current system involves accessing PDFs that are often hand written from Government websites. These are not easily searchable, and with modern technology there is no reason why representatives should not input this information into a database at the existing three-month intervals. Electoral Commissions should collate the information in a searchable database, accessible online and at all Electoral Commission offices by the general public.

Electronic voting systems must be openly available
Any electronic voting system used in Australian government elections or referendums should have a strict requirement that the specifications and source code implementations must be openly and freely available.

This scheme would provide the possibility of an electronic equivalent of election scrutineers. It would permit scrutineers to assess the validity of the counting of votes and improve visibility of the ballot process. In the case of electronic voting, making the source code available is the only way to provide that visibility and avoid the discredited practice of security by obscurity. The business interests of electronic voting companies should remain a secondary consideration.

Improving electoral participation
Pirate Party Australia encourages the maximisation of political participation. As part of the global movement that is well known for its interest in the concepts of liquid and direct democracy, we have strived to investigate new means of political participation. We intend to seize the opportunities that modern communication technologies provide to change the nature of politics towards increased participation. However, in 2013 Parliament passed a bill amending the Electoral Act which doubled the cost of the nomination fee for contesting elections.

It was unthinkable that Parliament would pass such exclusionary measures, but now that Pirate Party Australia has been confronted with this change, there is concern that future Parliaments may continue the trend of discouraging alternative representatives. In response to this, Pirate Party Australia pledges to do all it can to restore candidate fees to a reasonable level, and to oppose legislation that would introduce further unfair burdens on candidates.


 * View detailed improving electoral participation policy text.

All levels of government should recognise and facilitate e-petitions
Petitions are a well-established and recognised form of political participation. To broaden political participation, governments at all levels should recognise and facilitate electronic petitioning as a legitimate form of participation.

Petitions should enhance democratic participation
Recognition of all petitions must have attendant obligations upon the elected government when it reaches a predetermined quota, which include mandated parliamentary discussion, meetings with petitioners and formal recognition of issues raised within the petition.

Digital liberties
The grassroots nature of the Internet is causing considerable disruption to traditional power structures. Unsurprisingly, this is leading to push-back: corporate and government entities have been trying for years to increase control over the Internet through a range of measures including censorship, reduction of access, treaties to reduce the rights of Internet users, and ever-broader surveillance and monitoring powers.

Attempts to control the Internet take different forms over time, but all are justified through references to crime and other undesirable activities. They also all share one critical flaw: they are easily evaded by those with technical knowledge. They ultimately reduce the freedoms of the public while doing nothing to curb criminal behaviour. The Pirate Party will always defend the founding principles of the Internet, and resist any and all attempts to control it. A fast and free Internet, open to all, is a safeguard not just for our economy and culture, but for our basic rights.

Net neutrality
Net neutrality is a fundamental principle behind the development of the Internet. It ensures that the Internet is free and open to all by preventing gatekeepers from blocking, speeding up, or slowing down content based on the source, destination or owner. Net Neutrality guarantees that even the smallest entrepreneurs have the same access standards as established firms. The absence of such a guarantee would represent a perpetual threat to generations of new entrants.

Content providers and ISPs have undermined net neutrality by seeking to differentiate among different forms of information and data flow, and impose priorities. Abandoning Net Neutrality and subjecting Internet traffic to a commercial veto will hurt competition and innovation, and allow service providers to preference or block protocols and force consumers to use less desirable options.

Free, open and non-discriminatory access to the Internet is essential for our democracy and for our economic well-being and the Pirate Party will seek the adoption of clear net neutrality principles to protect the Internet from the introduction of any discriminatory practices.

Data retention
Surveillance of the public is expanding constantly, and has reached a point which threatens essential trust between the state and the citizen.

Plans have been tabled to expand surveillance further which would force ISPs to retain telephone and Internet data for 2 years, and force people to reveal their passwords on demand. This is a gross invasion of privacy and will create a vast database of material. Ultimately this database could become accessible through many channels not mentioned in the legislation, including subpoenas. The database will pose little threat to criminal activity, since many technical avenues currently exist through which data retention can be avoided.

Censorship
Internet censorship proposals create a permanent infrastructure for web blocking, and connect it to a permanently shifting category of banned content. The RC classification has been altered frequently by parliament and has become patchwork and inconsistent. We believe that the government should look to adequately funding law enforcement, removing illegal content and prosecuting those responsible for the manufacture of the material, rather than funding a filter that slows connection speeds, is liable to wrongly block websites and is easily circumvented.

Households may choose censorship programs for their own use, but that is the prerogative of parents: they must be permitted to make decisions for their own families, and the government should trust them to do so responsibly.


 * View detailed digital liberties policy text.

Support for Fibre-to-the-Premises Infrastructure Projects
The current copper network is not sufficient to meet the requirements of a growing digital society. A fibre-to-the-premises infrastructure project that connects the majority of Australians to a fibre network, where economically feasible, is fundamental to the creation of a vibrant digital society in Australia.

Bill of Rights
Australia is one of the few remaining western democracies whose citizens and residents lack any significant, constitutionally declared rights. This lack of protection creates an imbalance of power between individuals and the state, and poses risks to privacy, free speech and individual choice. A bill of rights is overdue as a way to restore balance and provide unambiguous checks on the creeping intrusion of the state into private life.

We propose a referendum to alter the Australian Constitution and include a bill of rights, codifying a basic set of human rights and freedoms. The Pirate Party proposal incorporates the most fundamental and essential elements of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.


 * Vew detailed Bill of Rights policy text.

Tax
Years of ad-hoc changes have left Australia with one of the most opaque tax systems in the world. Poor transparency in our tax system undermines government accountability and burdens us with costs: more than two thirds of taxpayers are now obliged to file returns through an agent. Our system is riddled with stealth taxes, creating unexpected costs which hit the poorest the hardest. Business levies imposed by state governments create hidden costs for consumers, and amount to stealth-consumption taxes. The GST uses antiquated invoicing systems which impose needless burdens on small business, while payroll taxes penalise job creation and hurt the prospects of the unemployed. The system urgently requires fundamental reform to improve transparency and progressiveness.

Transparency
Taxing consumption has merit since it doesn't remove incentives to work, save and innovate. However, such tax must be taken at as few points in the economic cycle as possible, and in ways that are easy to track. We support the Henry review proposal to clear out layers of consumption and stealth-consumption taxes and replace them with a single cash flow tax. A cash flow tax is paid by businesses on the difference between sales and expenses: it provides a transparent way to tax consumption which is efficient, simple to pay and difficult to evade.

Innovation
Global research suggests that tax laws are a key to innovation: reducing business taxes in particular is advantageous, since it frees capital for technology development and entrepreneurial activity. Australia imposes one of the highest company tax rates in the OECD, and tax breaks for innovation primarily benefit large firms. We propose two changes: firstly, company tax should match the rates of our international competitors. Secondly, the importance of micro-businesses as an engine of innovation should be recognised. A tax free threshold for micro businesses will nurture their innovative potential, encourage backyard entrepreneurs, and provide a financial incentive for the disadvantaged to develop their entrepreneurship and skills.

Progressiveness
Tax policy is an important mechanism for helping the poor. We believe that persons earning an income below the poverty line should no longer be forced to pay income tax. Increasing the tax-free threshold to match the poverty line will reduce the income tax burden for all taxpayers and free the poor from the costs of submitting a tax return. We also support the push from welfare and community organisations to improve progressiveness by closing tax loopholes employed by higher earners.

Progressiveness can also be improved by better targeting of exemptions. Currently, commercial businesses can claim tax exemption (and significant competitive advantage) if they are owned by religious organisations. Supernatural beliefs should be irrelevant for taxpayers in a secular society. We will seek to align the tax code to international norms, removing tax exemptions on commercial income and linking non-commercial subsidies to universally accepted standards of community benefit.

Finally, the Pirate Party will support the global campaign for an international transactions tax. A small tax on high frequency speculation will raise revenue to combat global poverty and environmental damage, and ensure that financial speculators are made accountable for some of the costs of the global financial crisis. It will redirect capital toward productive uses and away from short-term churning, which creates instability at the heart of the global economy.


 * View detailed tax policy text.

Welfare
Transfer payments include the full scope of government payments and benefits which act together to provide a social safety net. While such a safety net is essential, the operation of it has been corrupted in Australia by lack of systemic planning and continual vote-buying exercises. A range of ad-hoc middle-class welfare measures operate with little economic merit and poor coordination (as an example, the Howard-era Family Tax Benefit part B provides incentive to parents to stay off work, while the Gillard-era Paid Parental Leave scheme offers a counterincentive to stay in the workforce ). At the same time evidence is emerging that the fundamental purpose of welfare (alleviation of poverty) is no longer being adequately served.

Australia's tax free threshold is currently under $20,000 per year. Low income earners are thus routinely taxed, with the money subsequently churned back to them again through the welfare system. Greater independence, transparency, and social justice are provided if money is not taken in the first place (see: tax policy) and the transfer system operates efficiently, provides incentives to work, and targets the areas of greatest need.


 * View detailed welfare policy text.

Energy
Australia is falling behind the rest of world in harnessing renewable energy despite its massive natural advantages. Our approach to driving renewable energy is simply not comprehensive enough: policies including the Renewable Energy Target (RET) and carbon price provide only partial solutions to domestic electricity emissions, and do nothing to curb much greater and growing emissions from liquid fuels and fossil fuel exports.

Rising coal prices force governments to provide more than $12 billion per year in coal subsidies to keep domestic prices down. These subsidies far outstrip renewable investments and entrench our dependence on a dirty, finite energy source. Business as usual also carries a high imminent cost: Australia's coal power grid is deteriorating and will require investment of over $100 billion in the medium term. A circuit breaker is needed to address the chronic problems in our energy model.

Constructing a renewable energy grid
The ZCA2020 Stationary Energy Plan, produced by the Beyond Zero Emissions research organisation, provides an alternative to patching up our obsolete coal power grid. The report presents an achievable and costed 10-year plan for building a renewable energy grid capable of entirely replacing coal-fired power in Australia. A large-scale rollout of renewable power will enable us address climate change in the necessary time frame, create over 150,000 jobs, and provide urgently needed stimulus to the struggling manufacturing and construction industries. Associated costs can be met through the sale of completed power assets, and by reworking existing levies and revenue streams allocated to renewables. The project brings the ambition and vision encapsulated in the Snowy River Hydro scheme to the twenty-first century.

Utilising market incentives
Greater power generation in the community should support the grid. While solar PV is supported currently, the effectiveness is compromised by a "solar coaster" effect driven by continual policy changes among the states. Australia's share of the solar PV market has plunged from 7 per cent in 1991 to 1 per cent in 2008. We can turn this around by adopting global best practice in the form of a harmonised national solar PV tariff which covers businesses and community groups as well as households.

Liquid fuel emissions can be reduced with a Renewable Fuel Target, modelled on the successful UK scheme, to drive investment in low-emission hydrocarbon and bio fuels. Such a scheme should also drive take-up of electric cars and other efficient devices.

Plans to increase Australia's coal exports must be reconsidered: domestic reductions in coal burning provide little benefit if the coal is merely exported instead, or if export growth outstrips domestic cuts. We propose a temporary moratorium on new coal exploration until such a time as Carbon Capture and Storage technology (CCS) is viable and commercial, and we will encourage private interests to develop the technology on that basis. We can avert the potential impact on mining communities by ensuring that renewable jobs are created in close proximity.

A balanced mix of stimulatory state investment and market price mechanisms can drive the adoption of renewable energy in the necessary magnitude without compromising the economy. Detailed work by scientists and engineers has provided a roadmap for Australia to curb its emissions in the necessary timeframe and break our dependence on fossil fuels for good. All we need is political will.

Coal seam gas
Pirate Party Australia proposes a moratorium on coal seam gas extraction due to the uncertainties surrounding the impact of extraction methods on our reserves of clean drinking water, our environment, and our food security. The scope of the threat to waterways and groundwater is particularly poorly understood, and instances have already come to light of previously unforeseen impacts. In addition, CSG extraction carries a potential for significant fugitive emissions leaks, which reduces the effectiveness of the carbon tax and undermines the purported benefit of lower greenhouse gas emissions. CSG mining also imposes a permanent risk on farmers already operating under difficult conditions. The undermining of farmers rights to exercise control over productive farmland represents a threat to an essential pillar of Australia's food security.

Until our understanding improves, CSG mining must be subject to an onus of proof given the potential for significant unforeseen damage. We believe that a ban is necessary until technology improves and a strong scientific case can be made for the safety of this practice.


 * View detailed coal seam gas policy text.


 * View detailed energy policy text.

Marriage
The Marriage Act in current form denies same sex couples a human right which is taken for granted in mainstream, heterosexual society. The Marriage Amendment Act 2004 pushed this discrimination further by imposing a declaration, compulsorily recited at all weddings, that marriage in Australia is an exclusionary institution only to occur between a man and a woman. This imposes religious principles into state ceremonies, undermining the separation of Church and State—a principle which lacks explicit protection in the Australian Constitution. It also feeds existing stigmas related to homosexuality, which cause significant harm: discrimination against same-sex couples is known to cause alienation, anxiety and depression, and the rate for suicide attempts among LGBT is 2.5 times higher than that of the general population. The repercussions place a large burden on our health system.

As the modifications enacted in 2004 demonstrate, the Marriage Act is too easily used as a vehicle for political grandstanding, to the detriment of equality and civil liberties. Protecting marriage is not a matter of excluding particular individuals: we should instead exclude the state, which has shown itself to be incapable of overseeing fair and proper marriage laws. We accordingly support returning marriage to the community and replacing the Marriage Act with a Civil Unions Act. This will offer equal treatment to same-sex couples, and help to ensure that all Australian citizens receive the same recognition and legal rights.


 * View detailed marriage policy text.

Drugs
People have always taken drugs, and modern attempts at prohibition are at odds with history as well as human nature. The war on drugs is best understood as a war on a market. Such wars are futile: demand always creates supply, and ad-hoc attacks on supply channels do nothing other than reduce the quality of drugs, and increase the risks. History shows that even the harshest attempts to outlaw a market do not make the market go away, but merely create an unregulated black market in place of the legal one, making criminals of regular citizens and funding organised crime.

The cost of the war on drugs
At present the illegal drug market is worth around $300 billion per year, making a mockery of prohibition. The choice we face is not between drugs and no drugs, but between legal and illegal markets.

The illegal market funnels vast profits to criminals and imposes equally vast costs on society. The US alone spends $50 billion per year fighting the war on drugs, and global spending is far greater. The secondary costs are incalculable: jailing people for drug offences does far more to destroy individual lives and potential than the drugs themselves. The policy is poorly targeted, excluding alcohol and tobacco but imposing massive punishments on non-violent users of much less harmful products. In producer countries, the illegal market has enriched drug cartels, causing thousands of deaths every year, corrupting civil societies and creating a risk of failed states.

Prohibition offers no success to justify the cost: figures from the UN Office on Drugs and Crime show no observable decline in global drug use, nor is any decline evident in Australia. Results among individual nations show no correlation between drug use levels and the harshness of drug laws.

The alternative
The experience of Portugal—where decriminalisation led to an observable fall in drug deaths —suggests that a much better approach exists. Imprisonment is an immoral and ineffective way of handling mental health issues and other drivers of drug abuse. It is cheaper and more effective to handle these issues in the sphere of public health. Legalising and taxing safe drugs will raise revenue to fund better support services for addicts and their families. Decriminalising other drugs will broaden options for treatment and allow help to be extended without the threat of criminal sanctions. Effective policy must offer help and treatment, but must also recognise that most drug users are neither addicts nor criminals.

In handling drugs, policymakers should also take note of their one success: the campaign against tobacco. The anti-tobacco campaign has reduced the proportion of smokers by 40% over 20 years through a combination of advertising, warnings, and social sanctions in a legal framework. It is a far more successful model than prohibition, and a broader application of it should be considered.

Ultimately however, civil liberties must be respected. A belief in civil liberties does not require approval of every private choice, merely acceptance that choice should exist. The alternative has cost us too much, for too long.


 * View detailed drugs policy text.

Transparency and participation in treaty making
When Australia participates in international treaty or trade agreement negotiations, it is essential that the negotiations are conducted transparently, with oversight and with as much public participation as possible.

It is essential draft texts are made available prior signing, there is adequate and meaningful public participation and parliament is empowered with the authority to reject or accept the signing or accession to any international instrument.

The Party proposes a Constitutional referendum that limits the power of the executive's treaty making authority, requiring parliamentary oversight and consent, openness and participation.