Australians: Take Back Your Country!

What is it with our politicians?

Changing the cheapest electricity prices in the world to the dearest, making electricity unreliable, threatening jobs and businesses, presiding over a dramatic fall in educational standards and a criminal justice system which seems more concerned with the criminal than with the victim, persecuting our farmers and  self funded retirees, making droughts and floods far worse than they should be, separating water from farming land to hand that over to international speculators, raiding the defence budget to buy votes, undermining the morale of our soldiers, sailors and airmen, seriously mismanaging  the Wuhan or COVOID-19 virus, (rejecting world's best practice and instead, choosing the ruinous communist model, all the while falsely claiming credit for the natural advantages which flow from Australia being a remote island nation), our politicians seem determined to turn Australia into, if not the Venezuela, the Argentina of the South Seas.

It's  hard to think of any one problem confronting Australia which, if it were not created by the politicians, has not been made significantly worse by them.

Not one. 

Our representative democracy has been seriously damaged, almost destroyed, by the emergence of a rigorously controlled two party system followed by the capture of those political parties by cabals of power-brokers, factional leaders and lobbyists.

The CODID-19 pandemic has shown political leaders disregarding the constitutional system and making regulations too often without the checks and balances normal even in colonial times, avoiding audit by the Executive Council and scrutiny, even  disallowance, by houses of parliament.  

As Lord Acton famously said: "Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." 

There is a solution. 

It doesn't involve swapping our crowned republic for a politicians' republic. 

It means returning power to the people, who under the Constitution remain sovereign.

Let the people's common sense prevail. 

Bring in Direct Democracy.

As successfully practiced in Switzerland.

As adopted by our Founders for approving changes to  the Australian Constitution.

Australians: Take Back Your Country! 

If you agree, sign the petition.

Change our country for the better. 

The solution, we believe, is to do what are predecessors did to achieve Federation.

Realizing that Federation would never be achieved by the politicians – who were far better than those of today – the people took the process into their own hands.

This was under the COROWA PLAN  adopted at the Corowa  People's Conference in 1893.

Once it was finally followed, the people elected a convention to frame the Constitution.

After wide consultation, a draft Constitution was put to the people to a series of referendums.

For the first time in history, a Constitution was actually approved by the people.

The whole process, including getting it through the British Parliament, took less than  four years. 

Today we can't build a dam or even lay a tram track down George Street Sydney in four years. 

Yet we made a nation in less than four years.  Without the internet, jet planes and modern forms of communication.

As a result, we are the only nation to occupy a continent.

One of the oldest continuing democracies in the world.

We can do this again to fix up the problems today's politicians have put us in.

We must demand the election of a peoples'  convention of unpaid delegates to review the constitution.

An outsiders' convention.  

Just like the one which achieved Federation.

Their task will be to reform the way we are governed.

This is urgent.

Australia cannot go on the way it has been going under the gross mismanagement of the politicians.

The solution is an elected outsiders' convention to consider and we hope to  adopt what we call THE FIVE Rs.

This would involve empowering the people to correct the failure of representative democracy in five crucial ways

The FIVE Rs:  Return to the Constitution, Reduce Canberra's powers and its excessive taxation, Reform the political parties, Recall elections and Referendums initiated by the people. 

The First R: Return the government of the country to the principles set out in the Constitution and agreed in our old constitutional system. On one carefully considered expert report to the Premiers, returning to world best practice federalism, as our founders intended and the people approved, this would save about $160 billion, not once, but every  year. In four years we'd pay off the debt. We could also start on important infrastructure projects, especially harvesting water to make us that food bowl of the world the politicians are always talking about. All governments, state, federal and territorial, must again  be subject to the checks and balances which were considered normal in colonial days.

The Second R: Reduce Canberra's powers and its excessive taxation. This will follow from the First R, returning government to the Constitution. Canberra cannot deal competently with the powers given it in the Constitution. Yet they constantly push their noses into matters constitutionally reserved to the states and only make a mess of them. That is why our education standards are now even lower than Kazakhstan’s. By reducing Canberra’s powers and income, government will be vastly more efficient. We will save at least $160 Billion. That is not once. That is every year.

The Third R: Reform the political parties. Require that in return for the vast amount of financial and legal privileges they receive, they be taken from the hands of the power-brokers and lobbyists and they become open and transparent and democratic. As they are in most comparable countries. Why are our parties like those in a banana Republic? 

The Fourth R: Recall elections. You are accountable in your work 24/7. So why  shouldn't the politicians also be accountable 24/7? Instead they only face the people every three or four years, too often in pre-selections where the successful candidate is chosen not on merit. The candidate is chosen because he or she will do the bidding of some powerbroker or lobbyist.

The Fifth R: Referendums. Why shouldn't the Australian people be able to do what the Swiss can do and petition for the holding of a referendum to

·       change the law,

·       introduce a new law,

.       approve or denounce a treaty,

·       review an interpretation of the Constitution by the High Court or form a new state to reduce the excessive centralization of power in distant state capitals which are too often mainly interested in the regions for their wealth. ( North Queensland is the most glaring example of this), and 

.        restrain politicians from acting like dictators and avoiding traditional checks and balances on power, 

 

The country is calling out for reform.

We are in a desperate position.

It's hard to think of a problem we are facing which if it was not created by the politicians has been made worse by them.

If you agree that something must be done, sign this petition. This is for a  peoples'  convention to review the constitution like the one through which the people achieved what the politicians failed to do, turn six colonies into one country.

Australians: Take Back Your Country!