I think there a lot more examples of the openness of our politics.

Just having IRC and now discourse for a start.

Where else can you chat to party representatives and/or election candidates any night of the week?

Then there is the way that all party meetings are open to public, including policy development.

AND, there was the way we did preferences in the federal election.

Another core principle that stands out for me, is that “Government matters should default to being public and transparent, while individual matters should default to being private and protected.”

We’re not left or right.

Some policies are at their core, incredibly pro-business (just not in favour of supporting vested interests in maintaining dead go-to-market strategies) and others look quite social justice oriented, but with more of a libertarian bent.

We’re also curiously different than any strict libertarian where they’d just say there should be less government. More like, to whatever extent there currently need for government, it should be transparent and it’s duty is to the citizens, who, as a default starting point should retain their privacy, dignity and rights to do as they will without interference.

We’re also kinda green, but not in some fanatical way, more like just look for evidence and do the sensible thing.

Nobody wants their drinking water polluted and nobody wants the planet overheating. Duh!

The other thing is time scales.

With every party playing their cards so close to their chests that it’s hard to even tell if they’re cards, it’s impossible to do anything with any vision or strategy in this country any more, So heh, politicians need to get a spine and commit to some longer term strategic vision based on actual evidence, but it only works if the majority know the plan, the reasons, and get involved or at least committed.

If I had to point to the ONE BIG THING that most of the population could get on-board about, it’s that THE WAY POLITICS IS DONE IN AUSTRALIA REALLY SUCKS and has done so for quite a while.

People vote for the party they dislike the least. How wrong is that?

Most people won’t join a party to change anything because “it’s politics” and that’s a dirty word for most Australians.

To me, the technology related issues we champion are not fundamental to the principles of this party. They are just where the front line is located.

The change we offer people, is open participatory politics, where we insist on transparency and evidence above all else. No more secrets.