Pirate Party Australia has signed an open letter [1] with other parties, opposing the Coalition’s Party Registration Integrity Bill. The bill introduces new restrictions around party names and triples the registration threshold to 1500 members.

“This Bill is a blatantly anti-competitive attempt to wipe smaller parties off the ballot paper,” said Alex Jago, Secretary of Pirate Party Australia. “Firstly, there’s the name-squatting. The Liberals are full of conservatives, and the Nationals only try to represent about a quarter of the population. If they can’t live up to their own names, then they shouldn’t complain and change the rules shortly before the election.”

The registration threshold change also has other implications than just ballot access.

“The membership threshold increase is directly aimed at cutting down the ballot, but it does so indirectly and with unfortunate side effects,” Mr Jago continued. “Party registration is about more things than ballot access; there’s financial disclosure implications too. A high threshold harms transparency.”

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Election day. A time to reflect on what business as usual has delivered for Australia over the last 20 years:

  • More than sixty bills attacking civil liberties
  • Rising inequality and stagnant wages
  • Unaffordable housing
  • Record mass extinctions across our continent
  • Water pillage and gross corruption
  • Bungled wars of choice that never end

It doesn’t have to go on like that.

Today we can take a stand for freedom and civil liberties, a bill of rights, a shift of power back to communities, a basic income and better treatment for our poorest, proper environmental stewardship, action on climate change, transparency in government, a freer public domain and culture, decent digital age infrastructure, a national science plan, serious economic reform and a solution to parasitic rentierism, stronger animal welfare protections, an end to the war on drugs, and decent treatment for asylum seekers.

Vote for policies with actual citations. Vote to do things differently.

#votepirate

Our top 6 preference recommendations for all four states we’re contesting today.

The seat of Bennelong is up for by-election on Saturday 16 December 2017.

We are considering contesting this by-election, but only if we get enough volunteers to do it properly. If there are not enough volunteers by Monday, our campaign will not go ahead. We know that this isn’t much time, but there is a lot of paperwork to nominate a candidate and very little time to do it in as nominations close soon.

We are looking for volunteers locally who are in commuting distance to Bennelong NSW, and Australia-wide who can offer assistance online. We particularly need a coordinator who is on the ground in Sydney.

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We, the Pirate Parties and NGOs of the Pirate movement around the world, express our solidarity with the Catalan Pirates whose websites about the Referendum of Self Determination campaign and the use of Tor are currently being censored by the Spanish authorities. Additionally, we express our solidarity with all citizens of Catalonia who have been met with violent state repression for exercising their democratic right to vote in the independence referendum.

We denounce all political censorship. The internet censorship by Spanish authorities is an unacceptable violation of human rights and political freedoms, regardless of the legality of the Catalan referendum and the merits of the secessionist cause.

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“Pirate Party Australia is pleased to announce our basic income policy,[1]” said NSW senate candidate Sam Kearns. “Technology is going to impact on work in many ways, abolishing many jobs that currently employ thousands of people. Work will become increasingly uncertain and many people will find themselves without the means to survive.[2] We have a choice as a society, do we want to create an antagonism between workers and the machines that are replacing them? Or do we want to ease the social cost of automation by ensuring everyone has a solid economic foundation that reduces the economic and social damage of people losing their job?”

“The current welfare system is woefully inadequate to deal with these coming changes,” Mr Kearns continued. “Where other parties support people languishing on the dole, barely able to keep their heads above water, we propose granting all Australians a basic income regardless of situation. This will reduce the labyrinthine bureaucracy running our social security system and provide certainty for anyone unfortunate enough to lose their job.”

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