ONLINE Direct Democracy wants to reintroduce democracy – true democracy – back into Australia’s political system.
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The party’s New England candidate, Robert Walker, said democracy as it’s meant to be was not practised in the nation today.
“Democracy is for the people, by the people,” he said.
“In a democracy, the government is subordinate to the people. Today, it’s the reverse.”
The party has its own website, PollyWeb, where people can vote on every bill presented to Parliament.
Online Direct Democracy MPs and senators will then vote according to the direction of the online majority.
“We will recommend to our constituents how they should vote, but it’s up to them,” Mr Walker said.
“They can still override that and say no – that’s democracy.”
Electronic voting is a “natural transition” for the nation and Mr Walker said it would be widespread within five years.
“Eventually it will all be electronic voting – it should be in now, the only reason it’s not is because the current system suits the incumbents,” he said.
“It’s what the people want, they can talk to the member and lay down the law. It’s true democracy and I don’t apologise for that.”
Jobs and infrastructure
“HOUSING is the glue of society – you get everyone owning their own home, they’ve got a stake, they’re content, they’re secure.”
Robert Walker said the housing crisis had to be addressed in order for the nation to move forward.
“I was brought up in an era where housing was available to all – now it’s not, and I apologise to the current generation for that. We’ve let them down in the worst sort of way,” he said.
Mr Walker said Australia needed to create a federal government body that constructed more houses in areas suffering a housing shortage.
“Housing is so important to every level of society that it has to be done by one entity that is charged entirely with that and with that alone,” he said.
“It needs to be government-funded but autonomous. It could take five or 10 years, but we need to do it.
“We could cancel a couple of those billion-dollar submarines and use that money to generate housing.”
Mr Walker said the government had to invest in rail, particularly with all the road infrastructure “rotting away”.
“The rest of the world is going for rail. Why are we widening roads for more trucks?” he said.
“Cross another couple of submarines off and you could afford a decent rail system to interconnect all our towns.”
The nation has to value-add in every industry it possibly can.
“Live cattle exports – why wouldn’t you value-add?” Mr Walker said.
“Instead of value-adding to our exports, our mining, our iron, we’ve just sold it and imported back the value-added product. We’ve got to get away from that.
“We’ve got to change that stupid farce that a quick quid’s a good quid.”
Education
DAVID Gonski is the prime mover in getting the nation’s education back on track, Robert Walker says.
“He was hired by the government to decide what we should do to get our people prepared for a global market,” he said.
“He came back with the answers and these morons are thinking about not even implementing it. I don’t know why they would reject a decision that was made by somebody they paid.”
Mr Walker wants to see the government commit to the full Gonski reforms, supporting the needs-based education funding until 2019.
He said many of Australia’s Asian neighbours had a higher standard of education and were ranked better than Australia on the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) education index.
“Our education system is leaving us vulnerable,” he said.
Coal mines and renewable energy
MR WALKER said it was hypocritical of Australia to sell fossil fuels to other nations, while trying to reduce its own emissions.
“I don’t like the idea – we hand it over to these countries that are going to burn it, but we say it’s not our fault because we are not the ones polluting with it,” he said.
The world only has a finite amount of resources and should be moving away from fossil fuels, he says.
Mr Walker said Australia should take a two-pronged approach to renewable energy – start investing in the sector and create renewable technology, such as solar panels and windmills, to export to other nations.
“We’ve got more sunlight in this country than most places in the world,” he said.
“We should have a solar panel-generating scheme in the middle of Australia, the size of Tasmania.
“That would supply the whole of Australia for free, once you take out the cost of building it.”