Minutes/National Council/2021-09-16

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Meeting Minutes
This document is a record of a meeting. Do not edit this document without contacting the relevant group first.


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


Attendees

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

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)
  • 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

  • Tokel discussion report back (Andrew)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHQ7oou851k&t=605s&ab_channel=Tokel

  • 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)

Minutes

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

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