The Pirate Party is distancing itself from the ‘Alliance for Progress’. The Alliance, an informal group consisting of a number of progressive minor parties, was formed to promote collaboration on common interests and the negotiation of preference arrangements between its members. While these were commendable goals, and the Pirate Party values the cooperative ties that were established with other like minded parties, the Party wishes to distance itself in particular from any activities where Alliance for Progress members may be associating with the so-called ‘Minor Party Alliance’ and their ‘preference whisperer’.
Category: Elections
In less than a year, Pirate Party Australia will be contesting its second Federal election. With data retention having passed, a fifth wave of security laws in the works, further censorship proposals for the internet, and more copyright restriction in the wake of the TPP, there’s a lot to push back against. Our political system is rotten, monopolistic, and in desperate need of renewal.
But elections are expensive — it costs $24 000 in nomination fees just to contest each state. Our estimate assumes that the major parties will not jack up the price as they did right before the last election!
Our current bank balance is approximately $8,000 which is only enough to cover candidate fees in two states.
Basic election materials such as how to vote flyers and corflute signs cost thousands of dollars more. At the last election we contested in four states (not counting the WA re-run).
Below is the list of our main expenses from the last Federal Election campaign:
Candidate nomination fees: $16,000
Corflute sign printing: $2,546.50
Advertising in MX Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne: $6,593.40
How to Vote flyer printing: $2020 (4 designs. 20,000 for each of 3 states and 6,000 for 1 state)
With so much at stake, we have to prepare in advance so that we can run the best campaign possible. Given the risk of an early election, we need to start building a warchest now with a target of $40,000 to ensure we can cover nomination fees and produce essential campaign materials.
While every donation makes a difference, we urge those who can afford it to set up regular transfers. A regular stream of funds could facilitate us also reaching our goal of hiring a paid staff member to lighten the bureaucratic burden on the (entirely volunteer) National Council members, freeing us up to campaign harder on issues which define our Party. This is a goal which we will pursue with vigour once we have enough money in the bank to contest the next election.
For more information on how to help, go to our “Election Warchest Campaign” page at: https://pirateparty.org.au/warchest/
Thank you again for all your support.
Kind Regards,
—
Simon Frew
President
Pirate Party Australia
In the final day of the Canning By-Election, Pirate Party Australia’s candidate Michelle Allen is making her final pitch to voters. Whilst both major Parties are offering more of the same, the IT Manager is putting forward a different way of tackling the social issues faced by the people of Canning.
The following is a statement to the Canning electorate from Michelle on behalf of herself and the Pirate Party.
Hello Canning voters, my name is Michelle and I’m standing for the seat of Canning on behalf of Pirate Party Australia. Today is international Talk like a Pirate day, and I’d urge you to turn it into Vote like a Pirate day, I’m not only here to say “Arrrr”, I’m here with policy substance as well. For me Talking like a Pirate means to talk about sensible scientifically driven, evidence based ideas, that are the best ideas for our country’s future and which are designed to derive the most social benefit for our people. In other words, for you and me.
The Pirate Party is a political movement founded primarily upon concerns about civil liberties, digital rights, equality, fairness, personal privacy, government transparency and participatory democracy. These are all principles that reach all the way down to the local level, including for the people of Canning. Our full and growing platform can be found at http://platform.pirateparty.org.au/ I think you’ll find that most of what is in there makes good sense and should ring true to you. Today I’d like to focus on how some of these polices can be applied to the issues that I’ve been hearing are of concern to people in Canning and which the major party candidates have been making quite a bit of noise about.
We have been hearing all of the usual rhetoric from the major Parties in this campaign. The Liberal Party candidate Andrew Hastie has called for a crack-down on Ice[1][2], with harsher penalties and more enforcement. The war on drugs has raged for my whole life and probably yours as well. If the solution was more punishment, then this issue would have been solved decades ago. We believe drug addiction should be treated as a health issue. Criminalising users only makes more prisoners, it does nothing to tackle addiction or the social dislocation that creates addicts.
The Pirate Party offers an alternative vision[3]. In Portugal we have seen the benefits of drug decriminalisation and addiction rates have plummeted[4]. The streets are safer and the risk of drug users overdosing has significantly decreased. We believe that a similar approach in Australia would make more of a difference than another ‘tough on crime campaign’. To tackle social dislocation, a driving factor in people turning to drugs, we propose a guaranteed basic income[5] instead of the meagre payments people can access while unemployed. This enables people to survive whilst learning new skills and removes the stigma attached to being out of work.
Meanwhile the Liberal party assault on young Australians who are victims of the governments own economic failings continues, with Social Services Minister Scott Morrison reintroducing his bill to extend waiting times for jobseekers to access Newstart payments[6].
If the Liberal party were serious about finding solutions to crime, why introduce a Bill that could force young people to choose between crime, or hunger and homelessness. I ask Andrew Hastie, does he share Morrison’s view that denying welfare to jobseekers somehow magically creates jobs that previously did not exist? If they are serious about welfare reform, why not look at the entire system and not just look at ways to make it tougher on Australians already doing it tough?
If the track record of this government continues, unemployment is only going to get worse. Not only have Hastie’s friends in Canberra attempted to peg the economy to a waning resources boom, they have aggressively set about destroying possible new areas of innovation and job creation by smashing our local renewables industry. Manufacturing has been abandoned and sent offshore, while CSIRO funding has been slashed. The disregard for science and innovation by this government has been obvious to everyone from day one, they didn’t even bother to appoint a minister for science.
Science, innovation and investment in new industries such as the renewable sector is essential for the future of our country. We cannot rely on mining forever, and nowhere is that more starkly obvious than here in WA. We stand to suffer greatly from any further downturn in the market for resources. Comprehensive investment in education and science is essential. The Pirate Party education policy not only enshrines this focus on science, but advocates for a national science plan.[7] Allowing people the education, skills, freedom and ability to explore new innovative and creative business ideas is one of the ways we can better prepare ourselves for a changing economy.
The Pirate Party policy for a Basic Income through reverse taxation is the kind of bold innovative reform to welfare and taxation that our country needs. Not only will this ensure people have the freedom to try out new innovative business ideas, but its simplification of the current morass of different welfare payments and taxation systems will spark investment, save money spent on bureaucracy, empower people to take control of their own destiny and help protect the Australian people and economy from market fluctuations, automation and the offshoring of jobs. A basic income is an idea that has ben trialled with success and is getting more attention[8] as we move into a future of increased automation and labour market change.
Both the Liberal and the Labor party offer more of the same old simplistic solutions to complex issues, with some differences to each other around the edges. Canning does not have a monopoly on these issues, but some are felt harder here than elsewhere in the country. These are issues which have their roots in national and even global forces. I don’t refute the fact that both Andrew Hastie and Matt Keogh probably mean what they say when they claim that they will work hard, “roll up their sleeves” and dedicate themselves to tackling crime, ice, drugs and jobs in Canning. But while their promise of hard work are commendable traits, and I’m sure every candidate on the Canning ballot will put in hard work and dedicate themselves to the people of Canning, I know I would, hard work alone is not enough to solve these issues. They need new ideas and new approaches first.
Andrew Hastie for instance seems to think he can bring to bear his military training to solve these issues through brute force of will and via his toughness forged in combat. Matt Keogh has shown himself all to willing to be just another cog in the Labor party machinery. Both major party candidates offer more of that same and that is no longer working for our nation.
Tougher sentencing, war on drugs, harsher treatment of welfare recipients, increased surveillance, harsher penalties, more policing… it is the same thing over and over again that has been tried and failed over and over again. We need new solutions, and a new way of doing things if we are to really tackle the problems we face. The answers aren’t the simplistic and easy answers that the major parties want to distract you with. This by-election gives you, the people of Canning, an opportunity to show the major parties that we are sick and tired of trying the same failed tactics over and over again. Let’s show the major parties, and the career politicians behind them, that we are willing to try to do things a smarter way, to end the delusion that doing the same thing that has failed elsewhere will somehow work here. If we keep swapping our “1” votes between the two major parties, they will continue taking us for granted. I’d like to think we are all better than that.
Michelle Allen,
Pirate Party Candidate for Canning.
[1] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2015-09-10/canning-candidate-andrew-hastie-calls-for-stronger-ice-penalties/6764510
[2] https://newsroom.unsw.edu.au/news/health/ice-use-australia-%E2%80%93-perception-very-different-reality
[3] https://pirateparty.org.au/wiki/Policies/Drugs
[4] http://www.tdpf.org.uk/blog/drug-decriminalisation-portugal-setting-record-straight
[5] https://pirateparty.org.au/wiki/Platform#Tax_and_welfare
[6] http://www.skynews.com.au/news/politics/national/2015/09/16/morrison-told–stop-flogging-dead-horse-.html
[7] https://pirateparty.org.au/wiki/Policies/Education
[8] http://www.news.com.au/finance/economy/would-you-work-if-you-didnt-have-to/story-fnu2pycd-1227531288369
The Pirate Party continues its tradition of democratically-determined preferences, as chosen by its members.
The Canning By-Election is the first time that the Pirate Party has run its internal preference ballot for a lower house election. The Pirate Party’s first lower house election, the Griffith by-election, was held so soon after the 2013 Federal Election that a second preference ballot was deemed unnecessary.
However, the political situation has changed significantly in the two years since we last undertook this process for the WA Special Senate election[1] and the Pirate Party’s National Council thought it appropriate that a new ballot be conducted to determine the recommended order of candidates on its how-to-vote cards.
Today the Pirate Party is launching a crowdfunding campaign[1] to raise at least $3,000 for its candidate Michelle Allen, running in the Canning by-election[2].
“Crowdfunding the resources we need for elections has proven to work well for us in the past,” said Tom Randle, Pirate Party Councillor. “Given our embrace of distributed participation, we’re able to run our election campaigns at a very low-cost while connecting our members from all over Australia to help Michelle’s campaign to be as successful as it can be.”