Liberty Party Policies
These Policies are a natural outgrowth of the Objectives and the Principles of the Liberty Party.
For 50 years the Liberal and Labor parties have been taking you backwards.
Sounds insane, doesn’t it? And yet it is true.
Certainly there have been some advances, welcome and overdue. Women are less unequal than they were. Indigenous Australians are less unrecognised than they were. Pollution is less bad than it was. These and other projects are unfinished and a Liberty Party government will continue this good work and make further gains.
But in many of the areas that impact you or your future/present children or grandchildren or your small or large business most directly, things have long been deteriorating, as you know.
For yourself and your children,
• it’s harder now than ever to get a decent job at all.
• And a job is now more likely than ever to be insecure, with too few hours and too little say over when those hours are.
• Disposable income is less than ever and
• job security is less than ever.
• A home loan is harder to get.
• Meanwhile, property prices are soaring,
• making rents higher than ever and
• making it harder than ever for your children to buy a home.
For your business,
• insurance is out of control,
• compliance costs are spiralling,
• there are regulations for everything, must do this, must not do that,
• endless paperwork,
• it is so much more difficult now to simply run your company without interference, let alone expand it and make more profit and employ more people.
Why is it so?! Because the Liberal and Labor parties actually do not care—if they did care, things would be nowhere near as bad as they are now. The only reason those parties do any good at all ever is to protect some votes they fear they might lose.
And it’s not just incomes and homes and doing business that are worse than ever.
• You have less privacy than ever,
• less medical choice and confidentiality than ever,
• less freedom of movement than ever.
• Some of you were denied the last months and days with your loved ones(!)
• And you can’t even hold an opinion without the Victorian Police slamming your head into the concrete floor, which Mr Morrison and Mr Albanese are fine with because they did not denounce it. These people have no soul.
The Liberty Party is not fine with violence and does denounce it. For the sake of yourself, your future/present children and grandchildren, your business and your estate, Mr Morrison and Mr Albanese and the Liberal and Labor parties should be swept out of the federal parliament. Both parties mostly comprise merely careerists with no interest in anyone other than themselves. Faith in politicians has sunk to an all-time low, and the many betrayals above are just part of the reason why.
But everything has now changed.
A Liberty Party government will work for you. See the Liberty Party Principles and Objectives for why. See here for how.
Policies
Jobs
Being unemployed is no good for the individual—their physical and mental health—and no good for taxpayers. A Liberty Party government will in consultation with business improve and increase training from the points of view of both employer and employee, and get unemployed people into jobs.
Manufacturing and value-adding
Australia’s manufacturing has plummeted from 29 per cent of Gross Domestic Product in 1960 to under 6 per cent today. The Liberals and Labor allowed it to happen and plainly do not care that it has. A Liberty Party government will in consultation with business restore manufacturing and value-adding and remove the obstacles to opening and expanding factories and operations. It will expand businesses’ profit centres and contract cost centres that are under the influence of a government. These measures will increase jobs and wages.
A Liberty Party government will treat as very high priority the opening of new markets overseas, the expansion of existing overseas markets, and the opening and expansion of domestic markets.
Compliance costs
Businesses are burdened with countless compliance costs. The more money that a business spends on compliance, the less money it has available to spend on owners and employees. This means fewer jobs for workers and lower-paying jobs. A Liberty Party government will reduce or eliminate rules that do not actually benefit the taxpayer, increasing jobs and wages.
Infrastructure
A Liberty Party government will invest taxpayer money in building and repairing infrastructure assets throughout the country. This will create jobs and stimulate the economy.
Vocational education
What on Earth has happened to Australia’s vocational education sector these last couple of decades?! It is a disaster and is in no way adequate either to employers, school leavers or the skill set that Australia needs. The Liberals and Labor have permitted this to happen—plainly they do not care. A Liberty Party government will restore in the national psyche the importance of trade and other vocational education, refocus university education to its natural strengths, and greatly expand the number of apprenticeship opportunities for high school students and recent school leavers and older workers.
Job security
In 1982, casual employees accounted for 13 per cent of all Australian employees but by 1997 that had leaped to 24 per cent and today is double at 26 per cent. Insecure employment as a whole—including casual work, fixed-term contracts, seasonal work, contracting, labour hire and the gig economy / on-demand workforce—is on the rise, about 40 per cent of all employees today. In addition, a number of Australians in part-time work feel they are under-employed. A Liberty Party government will in consultation with business reduce these numbers to fair levels by reducing or eliminating the factors which discourage businesses from preferring secure forms of employment over insecure forms.
Wages
Average annual growth in real wages in the five years to November 2018 was merely 0.5 per cent per year. Compare that to the 1.8 per cent per year for the five years to November 2013. This is caused largely by a slowing in productivity growth and by persistently high underemployment. A Liberty Party government will in consultation with business and workers increase productivity and reduce underemployment, increasing wages.
Health care
For years, private health insurance premiums have been skyrocketing. In the past decade, premiums increased 57 per cent! This is triple that of inflation which was 20 per cent for the same period. Plainly, Liberals and Labor do not care because if they did, they would’ve fixed it. A Liberty Party government will put a stop to it, in consultation with the industry.
Prevention is better than cure, as you know. Under a Liberty Party government, General Practitioners will focus more than they do currently on helping you to prevent ill-health. Keeping all people healthier will reduce the federal health budget and reduce the total tax you actually have to pay.
Medicare
Medicare is an integral part of Australia’s health care system. A Liberty Party government will support it wholeheartedly and continue to fine-tune it as the circumstances of Australians change including the increasing use of medical devices.
Feedback forms in pharmacies near bulk-billing medical practices will enable you to give to the Health Department anonymous constructive feedback on your experience with the medical consultation so that the Department can further improve the day-to-day Medicare experience for everyone.
Aged care
Our seniors are a beloved part of our society and a Liberty Party government will ensure they receive the care that they have earned and that all Australians want them to have.
Mental health support
There has been a continuous rise in the number of child and youth mental health related presentations over the last decade, and a surge during the pandemic. A Liberty Party government will ensure that Australia’s Mental Health system is fully resourced for our children and youth and for people of all ages.
Housing
Fifty years ago, the sale price of an average house was 4 years’ average income, now it is 7 to 12 years’ average income depending on where you live (12 in Sydney, 10 in Canberra, 9 in Melbourne, 7 in the other capital cities). High house and flat prices drive up incomes which in turn firstly drives down the number of employees that employers can employ and secondly drives up the prices of goods and services.
A key to making houses and flats more affordable for both renters and buyers is to reduce buyers’ demand somewhat without spooking existing owners. Recent owners, in particular, might be nervous about the prospect of the market falling below the amount of money that they borrowed for their own purchase. A Liberty Party government will in consultation with recent buyers put downward pressure on home prices.
Prospective homeowners regard a home as a home rather than as an asset and a Liberty Party government will entice some property investors and speculators out of the property market with asset classes more attractive than property. Owners of unoccupied properties will be encouraged to make their properties available to the open rental or purchase markets, putting downward pressure on rental and purchase prices.
To reduce the pressure on public housing tenants, a Liberty Party government will make available more privately-built public housing.
Indigenous Australian peoples
The skills and experience of our indigenous peoples are undervalued woefully. Land management and sustainability are just two of the things that our indigenous peoples have been practising for tens of thousands of years. A Liberty Party government will incorporate indigenous expertise into government policy and practice.
Rural and Regional Australia
Services in rural and regional Australia are generally poor compared to equivalent services in urban Australia. That and the lack of jobs makes it difficult to attract or even retain people. A Liberty Party government will listen properly to regional residents in formulating solutions which will suit their local area. It will boost regional industry.
Regional residents who participate in local solutions may apply for reimbursement under the Liberty Party’s Reimbursement Program. Some applications may be eligible for 2-For-1 reimbursement depending on the value of the solutions to the community. That would make for a nice injection into the local economy.
Drought, flood and bushfire are perennial threats. A Liberty Party government will ensure that appropriate preventative measures are in place at all times and that appropriate relief is available should the worst happen.
Transparency
The taxpayer pays for every decision that the government makes, so why is so much information withheld from taxpayers? A Liberty Party government will ensure that, apart from reasonable exceptions including military intelligence and draft documents and so on, taxpayer-funded information is made available to the public in a timely fashion. Taxpayers should not have to rely on Freedom of Information requests to get basic information.
Trust
Who do you trust to stay out of your way? The answer is the only political party which directly says so in its Party Constitution: that a person has the right “to be free from interference” and that “Freedoms are inherent in the people, not gifts of the state to the people. Powers are granted to the state by the people, not inherent in the state.” A Liberty Party government will create the conditions that will make you wealthy, happy and safe, and get out of your way so that you can enjoy your life in the way that you choose to enjoy it.
Taxes
Money that the government collects does not belong to the government, it is not “government money”, it is taxpayers’ money and it still belongs to you after the government takes it from you. The only reason you might grudgingly accept having it taken from you is your expectation that it will be spent frugally and for your benefit. A Liberty Party government will collect the least amount of tax required to supply the services you demand, and it will replace inefficient taxes with efficient ones to further reduce the total amount of tax that you actually have to pay.
Debt
By June 2022, Australia’s debt will have escalated to $960 billion of gross debt (from just fifty-nine billion dollars in June 2008) and $720 billion of net debt. Even with today’s low interest rates, interest on the loan repayments is already a sizeable 6 per cent of the total tax collections but as interest rates rise, Australia’s interest payments will increase further still. A Liberty Party government will restrict new borrowings to those that pay for themselves in some way, such as infrastructure, and will reduce total debt and the resulting interest payments, and the total tax you actually have to pay.
Making your second income optional
When it comes to couples, the decision as to whether the second person works should be entirely up to the couple according to their circumstances and desires. Sadly, some couples are forced to have both people working even though they want only one of them to be working. A Liberty Party government will create the conditions enabling these couples to achieve their single income goal and have the second earner working less or not at all.
Broadband
Australia’s broadband capacity lags the world. A Liberty Party government will increase the percentage of the fixed-line network currently capable of Gigabit speeds to beyond 75%, and increase the percentage of homes and businesses currently on plans 50 Mbps or higher to beyond 75%, and ensure that virtually all of the rest of Australians can have a plan of at least 25 Mbps.
Education
Many topics in the school curriculum are important but the net effect of adding so many additional important topics has been to squeeze out some essential topics. A Liberty Party government will restore basic money education, basic civics education, basic science education and basic history education to the curriculum.
Currently there are very capable experienced professionals who want to teach but are prevented by the regulatory requirements. That does not make sense. A Liberty Party government will enable these professionals to realise their dream and teach.
Defence
The role of a nation’s defence forces is to protect the territory and citizens against threats originating outside the territory. Traditionally, threats included invasion and infiltration but now include wide-ranging vectors such as cyberspace and psychological operations. A Liberty Party government will increase the capability of Australia’s defence forces to repel all of these threats. It will increase the capability of the Navy, Special Operations, Intelligence Operations and others, both by overhauling the current procurement and recruitment programs and by increasing the defence budget to 2.1 per cent of Gross Domestic Product.
To further secure Australians both militarily and industrially, a Liberty Party government will increase local manufacture of defence equipment and encourage local industrialists to enter or expand local manufacturing.
Justice
Police and the courts are crucial if citizens are to be defended from other citizens whether physically or in legal disputes. As the population grows, the criminal and civil justice systems must be funded to keep pace. A Liberty Party government will ensure that resources are sufficient.
——
Nominate as a 2022 federal election candidate