Policy Meeting January 2024/Minutes

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

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Please note: times are in AEDT

Open and housekeeping [10:00]

• President Miles Whiticker explained the history & purpose of the policy meeting

Adoption of Standing Orders [10:10]

• President Miles Whiticker is chairing the meeting and explains the standing orders
  • Acting as remote and primary chair

• Standing Orders adopted at 10:13 AEDT

Policy motions [10:15]

PM-1 Taiwan

Milspec speaks to his motion.

• "I'll declare an interest here - I was born in Taiwan"
• Taiwan is a liberal democracy like us - they have democracy, free speech, LGBTQ rights
• There appears to be a majority desire for some sort of independence
• Milspec summarises the outcome of the Chinese Civil War
• As a result of issues recognising Taiwan as its own country, organisations like WHO, Interpol, ICAO all currently exclude it

Miles suggests a small amendment to the text, second last sentence of the first paragraph currently reads:

• "We firmly support Taiwan, a vibrant democracy facing increasing pressure from an authoritarian neighbour. "
• suggests mentioning China explicitly

Alex Jago notes that this motion says the text could be either adopted as primary-level policy or as a position statement, and proposes to amend it to be a position statement. Milspec concurs.

John August raises concerns, linking support for Taiwan to being anti-China and pro-US.

Liam Pomfret: I don't think any part of this policy implies support for US foreign policy. If they also support Taiwan - a broken clock is right twice a day. We're not supporting Taiwan due to their history, just because they are being excluded from global institutions because one other powerful country has issues with it. Perhaps we could add something to make it more explicit. As for Assange things - we support him as a journalist, but that's neither here not there.

Jed B: we may wish to avoid language like "stand with Taiwan" since that may imply getting involved in the event of China/Taiwan war starting back up. The other thing that came to mind was considering calling for formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, which ties in with the sovereign right to pursue relationships, and the number of countries that actually have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan right now is... small.

Liam: ultimately, I think Taiwan's wishes are a big thing here.

Milspec: the new president is functionally pro-independence, but won't make any substantial changes. Depending on how we want to lean we can go between supporting their independence or supporting their right to sovereignty.

Milspec: thanks John for your feedback. We certainly want to support both Taiwan and whistleblowers. Is there a sentence that overly supports alignment with the US? I mention the US as a regional partner, but it's one of several partners.

John: the sentiment that might keep me happy is distancing ourselves from the broader US policy package while recognising they're probably helpful here. China is clearly a bully here, but so is the US in many cases.

Liam: I don't think we need to add a line distancing ourselves from the US is an unnecessary tangent. If we want to denounce issues with US foreign policy, that could easily be its own statement. Let's keep this focused on Taiwan. Similarly, we should get something up on Ukraine!

Jed B: when it comes to supporting and not supporting countries with foreign policy statements like this, less is more

Miles: the Pirate Party has always been critical of the US. It's frustrating that criticisms of China (which are also legitimate) are deflected by "well, the US does it too". Our position here is fully consistent with our core principles and those principles are behind literal decades spent criticising the US.

V (int'l member): it is a perilous move, but it's always a good idea to make position statements for independent countries who are on the same view-point of our core values as pirates.

Liam concurs with Jed and V: better to have more position statements than more in one statement

Milspec: going back to "stand with Taiwan" implying military support, I'm open to re-phrasing that.

Jed: switching out "standing with Taiwan" for "supporting Taiwan" is probably about the best that can be done with what's in the statement since there is a lot of other references to supporting Taiwan in there.

Jed: my personal preference is to be more neutral in foreign policy, call for opening formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and let follow on effects from that speak for itself, hence "less is more", but that would be significantly different from what's being proposed here to the point of being a whole different policy proposal

Proposed textual amendments summary:

1. . explicitly mention China in paragraph 1
2. . "standing with" -> "supporting" in final paragraph
3. . "The US has a problematic foreign policy record, and we do not endorse their broader position, but recognise the possibility of positive contributions here" at the end of paragraph 3

Milspec agrees to the the first two amendments but wants further changes to the third, "it's easy to misconstrue, they might think 'broader position' refers to US-Taiwan relations at the moment".

Proposed motion amendment:

• "Adopt the proposed text ... as Position Statement 2024-01"
  • Proposed by Alex Jago
  • Agreed to by Milspec
  • Carried without opposition

Motion: John's amendment [11:00]

• Motion to add the following at at the end of paragraph 3:
  • "The US has a problematic foreign policy record, and we do not endorse their broader position, but recognise the possibility of positive contributions here."

• • Ayes 1 (John)
  • Nays 2 (Alex, Liam)
  • Abstain 4
  • Motion lapses

Motion: approve PM-1 as amended [11:11]

• Put by: Miles Whiticker
• Ayes 6 (Miles W, milspec, Jed B, Andrew D, Alex J, Liam P)
• Nays 0
• Abstain 1 (John A)

• CARRIED at 11:13 AEDT

PM-2 LEO Broadband

Milspec speaks to the motion.

• This is something I've been thinking about for a while as a geostrategic asset
• The Russian invasion of Ukraine has made the need for satellite internet really clear. Similarly, China has severed internet cables to minor islands in the Taiwan Strait.
• I also think this would have a positive impact on our economy and it fits well with our ethos as Pirates
• Alternative tech to provide rural and regional broadband.
• NBN already has satellite broadband but those are much higher orbit (and higher latency)
• Low Earth Orbit is a better product, but you need more satellites. So it's an international programme.
• Our allies could also benefit and could help share the cost.
• This could also help our fledgling space agency. It was established a few years ago but their budget isn't secure and they don't have a big project to drive things forward.

Jed B asks: milspec, how did you manage to write "In an era defined by technological advancement, Australia stands at the forefront of innovation" with a straight face?

• milspec: I wouldn't say AU is the most innovative country but we do have areas we are good at. For a while we were leaders in hypersonic flight at UNSW. And didn't we invent wifi? Things don't take off here due to funding issues. So I think that ties in. If we want more innovation and advancement then scientists and engineers need support. But I take your point, happy to re-word it.
• Miles: we do have issues with stagnation here. But we have education, we have resources, we have so much potential. So we at the forefront of advocating for science and tech should be in support.
• Andrew: we innovate well, it's commercialisation that's the problem.

Liam P speaks to the proposal

• In favour of the concrete reform proposed I'm in favour. In terms of the explanatory text I have some issues. For LEO satellites there are a lot of potential unintended consequences. As a multilateral project, this is a natural network of government surveillance. I hate the idea that people should have to pay for privacu and if this is the network of first resort it's a big issue.
• I echo John A's comments that LEO satellites are a problem for astronomy and our view of the night sky. This also has cultural and environmental issues.
• A pre-print published late last year looked into the environmental costs of using LEO satellites to provide broadband - the impact is something like 30-90x higher than terrestrial mobile broadband.
• So I wonder if we shouldn't get better launch chemistry first.
• Finally, end-of-mission is a big concern, and then there's the potential for cascades. One nation that did not care could create catastrophic problems.
• So I think this should ideally be managed by the United Nations for the benefit of all of humanity. Is that realistic? Probably not.
• We absolutely need more research into this, for launch impacts, for astro impacts. I think it's good we're thinking about this early. I think we're also seeing the ultra-rich rushing into this before it's fully ready and without considering the full and broader consequences

Milspec: I think I speak to surveillance a bit already. I'm open to amendments here.

Andrew: How are the surveillance implications of this any different than the NBN today?

• Milspec: internet surveillance or ground surveillance?
• Liam: I mean it's physically harder for (e.g.) the US to tap into NBN equipment.
• JedB: the difference from the NBN today is that you have many more countries vying for surveillance and control of speech
• Andrew: Right, so the risk is not the tech per-se, but the partnerships
• Liam thinks aloud about relative difficulty of tracking.
• Milspec: I think in terms of geographic tracking it's much of a muchness. You know where both the satellite and the NBN equipment is. In terms of broader surveillance I suppose there are many nations with access to the system.
• Liam: functionally I think this would be managed by a treaty. Have we even ratified the outer space treaty?
• Milspec: If you look at the actual proposal, it's to establish a dialogue to set up a framework
• Andrew D: Visual ground surveillance from orbit involves considerable expense in special optical equipment that would add massively to the cost of every satellite
• Liam: yes, I don't think you'd see that. Then again, the LEO satellites can get in the way of the spy sats higher up!

Milspec proposes deleting the sentence: "By offering navigation services, encrypted military communications, and potential surveillance capabilities, Australia can contribute to regional stability while countering the influence of other global players."

• Liam: it's certainly weird for Pirates to be talking about the benefits of surveillance!

Liam: I guess what got me was the second-last paragraph: debris is not the only pollution and risk here.

• Milspec: yes, that came from discussions in the weeks leading up.
• Liam: absolutely, it's an under-discussed issue.
• Milspec: as for the carbon impact of launches it does matter what fuel they use. E.g. Hydrogen/oxygen fuel could be zero-carbon, methane (which SpaceX uses) isn't.

Jed B: a lot of this keeps coming back to needing to look into better launch technologies

• Liam: absolutely. Remember space elevators?
• Jed: they're still unobtanium

Andrew: If we went the route of literally shooting solid-state satellites into low earth orbit, then if existing satellites are destroyed, replacing them could be quite rapid

• Liam: replacing deorbited satellites is one thing, replacing a satellite which is a bunch of debris is harder.

Liam: again, there is finite space in LEO. I can understand the urge to fill some of it before hostile countries or private corporations do.

Milspec: I wanted to keep it agnostic to launch tech.

• Liam: I agree, but I think we could mention support for trying to find alternative launch tech with less environmental impact.

Liam: ultimately I think what's missing is an assessment of the environmental costs of having all that material in LEO.

• milspec: I think we could address this with policy to deorbit satellites and remove debris as we put more up.
• Liam: yes, I think that's a necessary long term thing. Certainly SpaceX and China don't seem too concerned.

Andrew: Anything in low-earth orbit is essentially self-de-orbiting.

• Milspec: yes, the lifetime on these is quite low.

Liam: people talk about latency and such, but if this is fundamentally a backup network then perhaps you don't need LEO anyway? The baseline is a lot lower than 4K streaming video.

• Andrew D: Low latency means real-time remote control, which has military consequences. 4K streaming video is not a latency requirement issue - that's bandwidth.

Jed B: there is an argument that something that needs a lot of space launches to maintain is beneficial because it then supports cheaper space launches for other purposes.

• Liam suggests that there's a potential for overoptimising for LEO launch
• Alex suggests that LEO satellite launches tend to be a lot at a time, so there's swings and roundabouts

Jed: comment: environmental issues would be the three categories of launch pollution, light pollution from satellites once they're up there, and space debris, right?

The Chair called for specific amendments

• Liam repeats previous points (primarily about environmental issues) without proposing specific text
• Alex proposes to make this a position statement (as was done for the Taiwan proposal)
• Milspec: we'd agreed to delete the sentence about surveillance capabilities
  • Alex: but then the paragraph is gone.
  • Liam proposes replacing: "By offering navigation services, encrypted military communications, and potential surveillance capabilities, Australia can contribute to regional stability while countering the influence of other global players." with "By offering navigation services, and encrypted communications, Australia can contribute to regional stability while countering the influence of other global players."
  • Andrew further proposes "secure" rather than "encrypted" given that anyone using the network should be responsible for their own encryption.
  • Amended version: "By offering navigation services, and secure communications, Australia can contribute to regional stability while countering the influence of other global players."
  • Milspec agrees to this amendment.
• Liam and Alex propose an addition to the first sentence of the second last paragraph.
  • "and to explore new, less-polluting launch technologies.
• Liam proposes "naturally and safely de-orbit" in the second sentence too.
• Milspec agrees to both amendments. "Thanks Liam."
• Copy-edit from Alex in the final paragraph "the Pirate Party Australia" -> "the Pirate Party"
  • Agreed to.

• Now for the first paragraph
  • Miles proposes "Australia stands at the forefront of innovation" -> "Australia has the potential to stand at the forefront of innovation"
  • Milspec agrees, and adds "recognising" -> "by recognising"

Some discussion over whether this ought to be a position statement or under Infrastructure

Vote: specify where this ought to go

• Infrastructure category: 1 (Miles W)
• Position Statement: 4 (John A, Alex J, Liam P, Andrew D)
• Abstain: 2 (Milspec. Jed B)
• Conclusion: It's a position statement

Motion: approve PM-2 as amended

• Ayes 5 (Miles W, Liam P, Alex J, milspec, Andrew D)
• Nays 0
• Abstain 2 (John A, Jed B)
• Motion CARRIED at 12:29 AEDT.

Lunch [12:30]

• President Miles identified the afternoon agenda, and then moved to break for 1 hour.

• Ayes 7 (Miles W, Liam P, milspec, Andrew D, Jed B, John A)
• Nays 0
• Abstain 0

• Resumed at 13:37 AEDT

Policy discussion [13:30]

Policies to defer to Fusion on

Miles: the Environment policy is a bit out of date and it seems a good candidate.

Alex: I'm inclined to agree. It primarily dates to 2015 or so.

We aren't going to adopt anything specific today, but we could consider adopting things like "we defer to the Fusion policy on this, with the exception of ABC and the addition of XYZ

Jed B: Fusion policy on climate has been perhaps a bit... excessive... with points like 800% renewable electricity production despite Australia's isolated geographic location

• John A: That 800% was about exports that would otherwise be carbon-associated.
• Miles: yes, the 800% allows for exports, and you need that amount of generation capacity anyway to meet demand. The Net Zero Australia report posited something like 40x our current generation capacity by 2050 to meet current demand, growth in demand, and to replace GHG exports.

John A: I note we notionally have a more nuclear friendly policy, but equally I'm not sure it is that close to our core principles and should be "run up the flagpole". I say that as someone mildly pro-nuclear myself.

Miles: in conclusion, there's a number of things we could defer on. Looking at things the Economics policy is huge compared to others - thanks milspec.

Alex flags Fusion's upcoming Housing Affordability policy as one to explicitly adopt once it's done (noting potential clashes with our Econ policy

• Miles: this has been in the works a long time and I'm not sure when they'll have a result. The project needs some management.
• Jed B: housing affordability policy is a problem because it intersects multiple policy areas and several of them are more state level policy instead of federal

Jed B: PPAU isn't the only party that has one or two comically oversized policies in their platform, and I've often used that as a metric to see what a party is really concerned about.

• John A: The issue is whether such a large economic policy does more good or harm - make us credible because we are serious, or less credible because we're axe grinding?

Alex: this isn't at a Fusion level, but we could also consider adopting a Republic policy from Science or Secular.

Miles: I'd like to highlight the Secular Humanism policy - I'd like to respect Secular's lead on that issue. Similarly, "future focused" and "education for life" are broadly from Science.

Miles: I'm moderately in favour of keeping our platform wholesale, and using it to advocate for change within Fusion and working as a differentiator.

Alex: I've also realised that we need a note at the start of the platform outlining the relationship with Fusion and that Fusion policies get priority if anyone's elected. Could also note the cascade: Pirate > Fusion > status quo

• Milspec points out that the National Science Plan could be uploaded to Fusion

Conclusions

• Need an additional note explaining relationship with Fusion at the policy level

Missing policies

John: maybe nuclear, but we can just ignore that. At the last Congress we had a proposal to update the Marriage policy also. We had contentiousness over sin / self-harm taxes like sugar and smoking, and other things like fertiliser. I know there was a bit of other contention around milspec's proposal.

John: An important missing thing would be something around Artificial Intelligence.

• Miles: funnily enough, the next Fusion monthly members' meeting on Feb 7th is about AI!
  • We can and should get a jump on it.
• Liam P volunteers as tribute
• Copyright angle also important
• Liam: this does encourage us to be introspective about our copyright positions. We want positions that enable smaller creators, rather than enabling an oligopoly.What we don't want to see is big corporations taking small creator's work illegally, even under our preferred short copyright term.
• Miles: there's more aspects around AI safety as well. Surveillance, data-gathering, automated policing, automated weapons. We know that has a lot of e.g. racial biases. There's impacts on insurance, background checks, all sorts of applications. And of course there's the superintelligence existential risk side.
  • So there's huge ethical considerations - if we develop sentient AI what are our responsibilities to it, etc
• Liam: the moonshot chance of superintelligent AI is probably the last thing we need to address. If it happens in the very short term it's too soon for us to make a difference anyway.

Miles: I feel like there's ways to expand our foreign work. In the Foreign and International Relations Committee we've talked about an Asia-Pacific Pirates forum. So even outside policy per se, there's work to do.

Jed B: I would suggest that the truly dangerous part of an authoritarian regime with mass surveillance is actually the mass surveillance part, and likewise the truly dangerous part of malicious superintelligent AI with access to mass surveillance is the mass surveillance part; if you get rid of stuff like mass surveillance and excessive internet-of-things networking then you solve many issues in a way consistent with upholding civil rights as per other parts of pirate policy.

Liam: speaking of policies we don't have, we don't have an explicit Industry policy, do we? We talk about a bunch of related things, but in terms of e.g. identifying specific industries that we want to push and encourage locally, encouraging the development of Australian owned businesses, not just foreign investment. We touched on that earlier, with that satellite policy, if we want launch capacity in Australia we need more aerospace industry here, etc.

• Miles: I think we have a bunch of bits spread across other policy. Education, environment, ...
  • Hey, this is what policy statements were originally intended for!
• Liam: yes, it's about how we're positioning and presenting specific policies. Having a specific statement on Industry might be useful to appeal to centrists.
• Milspec: I guess we can expand on the existing negative-externalities text to look at positive externalities too. Another approach would be to have that within the topic - e.g. a subsidy for the early stage green hydrogen industry in the environment section.
• Liam: yeah if someone asks "what's your jobs policy, what's your industry policy" we want it all in one place for them.

Miles: I'll add: what are we missing from the Fusion policy that we should push up from the Pirates, or are we missing it at both levels?

• Right to Repair mentioned (it's a position statement)

• Liam: In terms of housing, we should consider an Anti-Vacancy tax, and potentially even punitive taxes against short-term stays. A very extreme position is do we need anti-consolidation.
  • Alex comes in to bat for institutional landlords being more diversified and potentially better in some circumstances - certainly lower variance.

• Renters' Rights a definite missing item.

Jed B comments: zoning reform would have a bigger effect on housing prices than landlord ownership limits, since zoning improvements would actually increase the supply, but this is an example of something that is really state level and currently even delegated to local level

• • Liam: we definitely need more high density housing but if everywhere's a 2 bed apartment it's hard to raise kids in them.
  • Alex: conversely, unaffordable housing (even if it is a 4 bed house) hits the birth rate just as much!

Comments on negative gearing - we used to mention it, now we don't. Milspec notes that e.g. corporations pay tax on their net profit, so NG in a way extends the same principle to people.

Conclusions

• Need an AI policy
• Need an Industry position statement (collation-style)
• Figure out a way to mention we support Right to Repair in the main policy text, for ctrl-f purposes
• Need work on housing stuff.

Needed updates

Liam suggests that the transition to a flat tax system (currently 6.2) needs to be made a sub-point of 6.1 to emphasise that it's not something we'd do on its own.

• General agreement

Alex: in our Patents policy we sing the praises of a Declared Value System and then say "if we get in we'll do a feasibility study". I think we should get behind it fully for Patents, and even consider expanding it further into our Copyright policy.

Alex: I had an anti-brumby amendment but depending on what we do with deferring to Fusion on environment policy it's a bit superfluous.

Revisit previous controversial items

• Alex explains PM-2 from last year, which wasn't put forward for adoption

John: I should explain that I hoped to revisit previous topics which we had run out of time on, rather than which we'd gotten too heated about.

John: as far as sin/self-harm taxes go I think we might've resolved that by putting the tax on the supplier rather than the consumer. I also recall something about fertiliser.

Milspec: as far as sugar goes, we're not necessarily trying to target behaviour, we're trying to target negative externalities. Sugar has big health impacts, which increases costs to the health system, so a sugar tax helps pay for some of that.

Jed B: a common aspect of many policies is to set up incentives so that the easiest and most convenient choice at the individual level is also a beneficial choice for the overall societal level, this concept covers all sorts of things from sugar to transport.

Liam: getting back to the industrial policy, it might be useful to expand "space" to "aerospace". As an island country as isolated as us it's a bit awkward to be reliant on other countries for something like air transport. Perhaps it's something we should seek to develop here. I guess I'm looking for meat-and-potatoes policies to talk about blue-collar jobs. For example, many people currently in fossil fuels!

• John: I guess the bottom line is we want the economy doing more Real Stuff and less Speculative Stuff. We can talk about LVT and stuff - we can talk about how the goal is to pivot away from speculative stuff, which spurs more real stuff.
• Liam: I guess for a lot of voters, the persuasion comes from tangibility. It comes down to specific benefits.
• John: yes, you can tie the US Rust Belt issues to globalisation, and Trump-voting to anti-globalisation. Similarly for Brexit, the UK economic growth is mostly City of London. You can understand the frustration. The economy is apparently going great, but it isn't for them. The economy is often something that works against them.
• John: yes, e.g. Mark Gibbons contrasts plain old economic growth with "inclusive economic growth"
• Jed B: instead of thinking about "what's good for the economy" how about "what's good for the middle class"
  • Liam: yes, that's a very interesting term. Lots of people think of themselves as middle class, but aren't really. Given the housing affordability issue, there's a big difference between wealth and income, especially disposable income for young families.
  • Jed: I mean that both in the sense of benefiting those who are currently middle class and enabling those who are poor to become middle class, for whatever the loaded "middle class" term means.

• Liam: we're also missing policy around minimum wage. Basic Income is a package, min wage exists outside of that.

Marketing and sloganeering

John: I was speaking to a friend in Melbourne who's handed out stuff for me before, and he had some ideas about slogans. We need slogans beyond "freedom, democracy, science".

• Celebrating the Individual. Recognising Community"
• "A healthy economy - without pandering to vested interests"
• "Challenging Corporate Internet Totalitarianism"
• "Transparency, Accountability and Support for Whistleblowers"
• "Challenging the Goverment-Corporation Surveilance Complex"

Close [15:25]

• Motion: close the meeting
• Put by: Miles Whiticker
• Ayes 7+ (Miles W, Simon G, Liam P, milspec, John A, Jed B, Alex J)
• Nays 0
• Abstain 0

• Motion carried at 15:25 AEDT.