Your ideas for Australia.

Australia is really run by a few hundred people, more people read this forum each day and I would say around the same average intelligence maybe higher.

I want your ideas on how we may be able to improve our country, for all of us. Not based on ideology, not ... let's stop all government payments and involvement in business etc for example. If this is what you want explain the mechanism, it's one thing to say what you would like, it is also nice if that is possible and beneficial in reality.

Here is one, make Australia a centre of excellence for climate research, alternative energy research, alternative agriculture research, environmental recovery research (our river and many eco systems are at the end of their tether).

So how, here is the part where we put our money where our mouth is.

My idea is to build a large university and research centre into those areas. Climate research, alternative or renewable energy research, alternative sustainable agriculture research, and environmental recovery research.

The Darling river system is an absolute disgrace and I know the perfect place to build our new University. Wilcannia about 100 ks west of Broken Hill and the Darling River Crossing for the Barrier Highway. One of the major routes to Adelaide and Perth from Sydney and Brisbane.

The location is perfect as it is on the most fragile and important river system in Australia. It is perfect for solar and wind energy research. There is plenty of arable land around they used to produce milk there for shipment by river to the Adelaide market. There is also a nearby lake system but at the present time, misuse and abuse of the river system combined with droughts has caused these to fall in levels. As these lakes provided the water fro Broken Hill the NSW Government is going to build a pipeline from the Victorian border back to Broken Hill.

This gives us the opportunity to research alternative food production techniques and harsher conditions.

With the University people will come, to work, to learn, to do research, to do new and innovative things. It will shine and grow drawing people, academics, students, researchers and new technology and environmental investors from all over the Globe. And they will bring their money and expertise with them.

It will grow into a city, an academic city, one devoted to the future of the planet. "Build it and they will come", I stole that and too lazy to reference it. The baseball movie I think, what's it's name?

 

A couple of things frighten me the most.

One, the Americanisation of the Australian healthcare system. Two, foreign nationals buying huge tracts of Australian agricultural land.

 

An American style Health care system, and Foreign companies being allowed to buy massive quantities of prime Australian farmland is scary and dangerous.

The primary question is; “who controls the outcome of these events”?

The answer is; “politicians” the Australia people elect.

Before the last election, the majority of Australian voters would have realised the massive quantities of Australian land being purchased by foreign companies, and who controls these outcomes.

80% of the Australian people voted for the same two major political parties, who are allowing the sell-off, either at Federal or State levels of Government.

Unless the majority of the people are willing to cut the head off the snake (politicians), and try something different. Then nothing will ever change. That has been the majority of my points made on this forum. Unless individuals are willing to look beyond the square, then nothing ever changes.

I think you might find that the aggressive move by China to control the South Pacific corridor has been a long term agenda to control the worlds water supply from Antarctica. This would give them unimpeded access from Antarctica (water supply) to their new food bowl of Australia; all the way to their own homeland.

With a planet that is undergoing massive climate change, and is becoming warmer and more barren with each passing decade. Water will become the new world currency, and whoever controls the water supply, controls the populations.

 

You would hope that for the very reasons just outlined, that countries would start to put more value and focus on their natural water ways. The rivers. Its been a nasty exercise to pollute them so that evil bastard companies can make a profit out of something that freely falls from the sky. Its beyond belief really. Oh and also that the water you buy is 90% of the time of very poor quality. Yes the resource wars are coming.

 

To use massive amounts of water out of Australia's river systems to grow cotton on the driest continent on the planet, just demonstrates how incompetent politicians are by allowing this to occur. But people keep voting for them

 

Make university free but make prerequisites harder. What a nice enticement for young people to work harder. We are dumbing down by lowering our expectations but unfortunately it is our nation who suffers as a consequence. The greatest investment we can have is having a smarter and innovative foundation. To ensure we don't lose our young people to overseas attractive pay packets they will at least need to fulfil 10 years of service in Australia or pay back tuition fees.

 

Dissolve the states and territories. Redraw regions. Give regions regional administrations and not parliaments and governments.

 

I agree totally, Australia is slightly smaller then Texas and about 60% the size of California. We do not need a large complex government. We also don't need one as far removed as our present one.

I lived as most of you know in Redfern, approx pop. 12,034. I now am living in a small town in the Hunter with a population of 12,723. Even though the differences are astronomical.

Australia is a very big country and yet half the people live in Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane. We need to make more use of land inland from the coast. We need infrastructure to open it up. We need incentives to entice people to create new cities out in regional centres.

We need to carefully define regions. We need to clearly define the boundaries between these new regional administrations and the federal ones.

In no particular order ....
There should be 8 departments controlled directly by the government.
The Department of Defense.
The Department of Foreign Relationships.
The Department of Internal Affairs.
The Department of External Affairs.
The Department of Finance and Treasury.
The Department of Justice.
The Department of Government Affairs.
The Department of Regional Affairs
There should be 7 commissions
The Commission for Education, Research and Development.
The Commission for Health.
The Commission for Human Affairs and Services.
The Commission for Law and Order.
The Commission for Transport and Infrastructure.
The Commission for Fire, Ambulance and Rescue.
The Commission for Indigenous Affairs.

This is all I think should be headed by the Federal Government.
I picked those for commissions that I believe should be run independently of government.
The commissions would be run by commissioners who would be appointed by a selection committee from within the commission and one government representative. The commissioner would have a 10 year tenure reviewed at 3 and 6 years. All commissioners will have a review committee to whom they must report. This hopefully will give them a continuity. Funding for these commissions will be a block 10 year allocation, paid incrementally each year indexed. The will also be project funding for long term or large projects.

All commissions will nationalise their commissions, no long the NSW Department of Health, no longer NSW as a government entity anyway.

Things like water, agriculture, employment etc would be managed at a regional level as each region has peculiar needs.

Each region would be governed by the minister for that region, these would replace electorates.

Every area of regional governance is covered by a federal department or commission. There will be a structured hierarchy with a clear delineation of federal and regional authority. Education for example would be at a national examination standard, curriculum and teacher number, qualification standards etc would all fall under federal governance while the general running is under regional.

The two things that really need to be looked at are the regions and the distribution of government.

All voting in parliament should be secrete ballot, the Australian ballot.

All parties will nominate a leader, the party with the lost votes forms government and the nominated leader must stay as leader as long as that party is in government or the next election, unless they resign from government.

Every region is Lead by their elected Minister. The elected party selects it's government from the elected ministers. When a regional minister is promoted to the cabinet, his role as regional minister is allocated to the second placed candidate for the region.

This would make the decision of becoming a minister one with which more care should be taken and this, along with the secrete ballot should give us a fairer government.

The country should be lead by a diplomat, he should have the most power. I propose we still have a senate, an insurance policy. The elected president of the senate will be the elected President of Australia, the elected Prime Minister would become the Vice President and Prime Minister of Australia.

The President would head a defense command consisting of the himself, the Prime Minister, the Commander of the Army, Air force, Navy and Commissioner for Civil Defense and Rescue Services.

This is a rough sketch of my ideas

 

Oh and a Commission for Environment, Energy and Agriculture. Strange mix? .... NO, they are all related.

 

The Murray darling system gets hammered before it gets to the mouth due to cotton fields, rice paddies and viticulture it has to service on its trip downstream. Maybe there are some resources we have to rely on from imports. The other side of the coin is that these communitities along the basin would suffer catastrophically economically if water provisions weren't available.

 

I disagree.

We believe we should abolish the Federal Government and not the State/Territory Governments. We should have one united Australia with one law system, not individuals laws in individual states.

We need a commission for Australian affairs, that incorporates all Australian citizens.

No citizen in Australia should be able to obtain any benefit that another Australian citizen is not able to obtain, regardless of race, religion or sexuality.

 

A total contradiction.

 

How so?

You don't have the intellect to see Australia could have independent States/Territories, but one united law system?

 

Quite possible but that's not the main issue here Einstein.

Without a Federal Government, who's going to fund things like defence, national security, welfare etc since the states would be stand alone entities? Do you think each state would have the resources by way of a large enough tax base to fund these along with education, health, roads and infrastructure and other state funded programmes? How do you propose states raise the revenue to fund these?

 

Where do you think the Federal Government gets its money? Taxes from individuals living in States & Territories, and from resource taxes and business taxes operating within those States & Territories.

You have proven my grandmother adage: "even a stupid monkey can reach the top of a tree".

Never consider what might be accomplished if the States & Territories were able to keep all the income tax and revenue that the Federal Government gets?

 

Even more ridiculous.

If there is no Federal Government, who's going to make and pass those 'united Australian' laws you fervently want to follow?

 

Forget it!! Use what's left of that feeble brain to decided what food you eat, that's about the extent of your intellect.

You have proven my grandmother adage: "even a stupid monkey can reach the top of a tree".

 

And you proved her right. Do you have an answer, it's quite a reasonable question,this OP is about solutions. We are all quick at pointing out the problems,not so with the answers though.

Can you answer the question?

 

If people don't have the intellect to see what's before their own eyes; then that is their problem.

Intellectual property is a valuable commodity, and I would prefer to share mine with Pauline Hanson's One Nation rather than some of the dummies on here.

 

First, the moment something is put here you own it. It is your copyright and your intellectual property.

Second, I dont think you know.

 

OK Nobody else seems to have any suggestions so I will elaborate.

As we all know the worlds population is increasing and bar any unthinkable event such as a major plague, disaster or war it will increase significantly in the near future. Any reasonable way to stem the rising population will not be in the near future.

Even without an increased population our mineral resources are finite as is our capacity to feed and house the population.

Will it affect us? Most definitely, even if our population remained relatively steady, if the rest of the world continues to grow unfettered, especially the poorer third world countries, it will definitely affect us.

So we need to grow at a sensible rate. If we don't, we will become an object of desire by an over crowded world.

We also need to be active participants in a world wide movement to a more sustainable future for all the inhabitants of the planet.

So it's a two pronged attack on the problem.

1. An internal solution. We can put into place, contingency plans for future generations, if we do better then we predict, great, at least we were prepared. We have control over what we do in Australia, we can only influence others.
2. An external solution. Australia needs to be proactive in finding a world wide solution that is empathetic to cultural, religious and economic differences. It can be done, yes it's the hardest solution, but the rewards are the greatest, and as Aussies we haven't always taken the easiest way out, we have always been "fair dinkum", and always looked after our "mates".

I am quite aware that there are many other problems closer to home and I have not forgotten them. I am by profession a biochemist and have spent most of my career as a biochemist doing pathology.

As a biochemist we learn that some times small changes in one thing can cause dramatic changes in another. There is a joke about several organs arguing over who was the most important, I won't however go into details of the joke. While not every organ is essential for a human to live, most are needed to operate essentially normally for a person to have a reasonably normal, healthy, active, happy and contented life.

Some times small changes can have a small affect, but other small changes can cause death.

We need to look upon ourselves as an organ and the world as our body, like it or not we ARE a part of it. If it gets sick, we could too or at least suffer, and if it dies, we die too.

So what does an organ do. Well firstly it has a well defined role to play within the body, one organ can have several functions, sometimes totally unrelated except they are all for the good of the whole.

Secondly it looks after itself, or has a defined mechanism to take care of itself or some aspect of itself. Some organs rely totally on other organs to function, are reliant on other organs for control, or their proper maintenance and health.

I think two things are fairly self evident to all of us.

1. If some catastrophic event, natural or man made occurs overseas it could have catastrophic affects on us here in Australia.
2. We alone cannot make all the difference but we can surely play a part in the solution.

With careful thought and planing, free of any bigotry, racism, leftism, rightism agendas, we can find a solution, we are an intelligent life form, so we say.

 

Following on from my previous post, I am going to link my original proposal of the university in central Australia to how it will help our country to improve it's own internal health as an organ but to increase it's function in the body as a whole.

Build a university in the desert, yeah right. When are the guys with the straight jackets coming to get me, right?

Wrong. I bet they said the same thing about the "Snowy Mountains Scheme" or the "Hoover Dam".

So how will it work, let's get practical. We are always talking about needing more education facilities and their is a world wide push towards solar, wind and other renewable, better more sustainable agriculture. Some of the international players have quite a large pool of capital and resources.

We set out to develop an international centre of excellence with a diverse coverage of topics that have one common thread. A humanely and ecologically sustainable planet for all it's inhabitants. Research could be done on different natural energy sources, water and soil recovery and sustainability, food production in adverse climates, natural ecological engineering, water resources, urbanisation in adverse conditions.

There is billions of dollars out there looking for somewhere to be spent on this sort of research and development. It would be in our interest if we can corner the market on it, but in a way that it grows from here out into the international arena, not taken away and developed somewhere else.

We need to be quite open about the different areas and allow it the academic freedom to explore within reason. Not many things were deliberately discovered in science, many great discoveries such as Madame Curie's discovery of nuclear radiation. She never set out to find it and I think that most significant thing to her that she discovered was that exposure to it was fatal.

Building the university, houses for the staff, students, support staff, people and business to support them, will create a large town, the attraction of research companies and facilitates will attract more people, more money, more industry and more business. I see it growing to a small city in 10 years or so.

 

I don't mind the idea LRL. I would imagine water infrastructure for such a large development would be a massive hurdle. It would need to be near a population centre such as Alice in order for support both governmental and health services.

I was ask to speak at a local conference about sustainable business in small local communities, and ideas for moving into the next fifty year phase. Unfortunately, and I do hate to say this, but it became distinctly apparent five minutes into my talk that I was on another wave length completely and not one person in the room had any concept of what was being proposed. We as a nation of people have become so entrenched in single mindedness and selfishness that it has become very difficult for us to think of future generations outside of our own.

I did a lot of ground work on this talk and proposed a food production university. The area in question is one of Australias leading beef producing areas and infrastructure was already in place for first stage development. I had also talked to the nearby university in regards to relocating a portion of their vetinary services department, which they said they would consider. Everything was in place, BUT it was going to take about two to three years to come to fruition.

They just couldn't get their heads around it, and they didn't want the work involved to chase it. I told them that although not distinctly my area of expertise I could help them put together a proposal for the government. Too hard basket and no instant gratification.

It was disappointing as it was a great initiative and most of the initial infrastructure was at hand. All that was needed was effort.

My point is, a rather long winded one at that, is that it is not just government and business that have become hurdles, it is we the people that are the biggest hurdle. Change never comes easy, because it requires sacrifice. These days it seems sacrifice is great as long as it is not ME.

 

Cover the outback in solar panels and sell the power to SEAsia

 

Oh my God. I stopped reading at climate research.

We become communist and exploit our resources and divide the profits up equally. We will all be millionaires because we are resource rich with low population. We have $16 trillion in oil in SA apparently and god knows what else yet we give our resources away to US companies like Chevron. It is a joke. We could all retire and have low paid Chinese guest workers do all of our work for us.

At the very least we should exploit our own resources and make sure that we are resources independent. Australia could easily go full autarky if we wanted to. We do not need the rest of the world.