Official Party Document The veracity of this document is ensured by the National Council and editing of this page is limited to members of the National Council.

The Party also adopted several Position Statements that cut across and combine several aspects of this platform, or apply Pirate principles to a specific issue.

Declaration of platform and principles

Pirate Parties have been founded all over the world with a shared purpose: to protect civil and digital liberties and create a more inclusive and creative culture. We seek to build a vibrant digital society in Australia, underpinned by freedom of culture and speech, personal privacy, institutional transparency, creativity and enterprise.

The following platform presents a detailed blueprint of reforms which implement these principles. The reforms include:

Greater protection for speech, privacy, and personal sovereignty;

An end to the encroachment of stifling intellectual and state monopolies and creation of a freer and more participatory culture;

Educational reforms with a focus on developing creativity and life skills;

State systems which embody principles of secularism and non-discrimination;

Improved government transparency and a re-casting of state institutions: we seek a state which supports and enables, rather than one which controls and constrains;

A simpler tax code and basic income guarantee which removes disincentives from the poor and increases the rewards for work, enterprise and efficiency;

Greater transparency and respect for human rights in our international engagement;

Investment in digital connectivity, community-based clean energy generation, and a strong national science plan - the critical components of an innovative 21st century economy.

Our policies focus on opening up space for creative civil society rather than expanding the state: consequently, the financial cost of our reforms is minimal and wholly offset by savings encompassed within the policies themselves.

As part of an international movement, we seek not only to reform national laws, but to reform perceptions and effect worldwide change. We seek to bring about change democratically, through activism, lobbying and parliamentary elections.

Civil and digital liberties

Freedom of speech

The greatest reformers, scientists and philosophers in history started out as heretics. Challenges to dogma and consensus built the enlightenment and created a world in which ideas could be attacked in place of people. Speech is the cornerstone of the enlightenment and the safeguard for all other liberties, protecting not just the right to speak, but the right to hear and judge the ideas of others. Free speech underpins our ability to think, create, innovate and progress.

Pirate Party Australia does not believe that regulating opinions is a legitimate function of the state. Advocates of censorship make a fundamental error in assuming that hateful speech is a force which only censorship can defeat. History shows the reverse to be true: racism has lost power and become socially unacceptable in the freest societies, where ideas can be most easily expressed—and refuted. Racism and other forms of hate face certain defeat the battle of ideas, but only if this battle is allowed to happen.

Anything which prevents the expression of bad ideas prevents the process by which we educate ourselves out of them. Banning words or arguments that offend particular groups does not improve social harmony; rather, it encourages everyone to take offence and pursue adversarial responses. Censorship systems invariably spread once they have been introduced: in Australia, governments have sought to expand existing censorship laws to restrict criticism of religion and political opinion[1][2][3][4][5][6], and successfully extended counter-terrorism speech laws to gag whistleblowers reporting in the public interest. Once the right of governments to regulate speech is accepted, any and all minorities may be targeted merely as a result of shifts in public opinion or political whim. In this way, censorship endangers the crucial minority rights and protections on which a healthy democracy depends.

The implications of censorship also spread beyond Western countries. When bans on offensive dialogue are imposed in the West, it helps oppressive regimes elsewhere to justify much harsher crackdowns on activism and dissent. The mere existence of censorship laws thus serves the interests of abusive power all around the world. We do not believe that oppression can be reduced by the use of a blunt instrument which has played a part in every form of state oppression throughout history. The failure of states such as the Wiemar Republic—which operated under a morass of hate speech laws—illustrate the deep risks of pushing hateful speech underground instead of airing and exposing it in debate.

Pirate Party opposes digital censorship for the same reasons it opposes traditional censorship. We will seek to repeal all existing architecture for internet censorship—including the patchwork “Refused Classification” content designation,[7] as well as Section 313 of the Telecommunications Act, which has been used by officials to block access to around 250,000 legitimate websites to date.[8][9][10] The internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. A far simpler option is to avoid inflicting damage in the first place.

Pirate Party Australia supports laws against direct threats and attempts to incite physical harm. However, we seek to bring an end to state censorship of opinions.

Pirate Party Australia advocates the following reforms:

Enhance protections for freedom of speech

Legislate the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights into law.

Reform classification and classification review boards. Implement a co-regulatory classification model where industry classifies their own content and Government works with industry to determine classification ratings. This system would be akin to European PEGI model or American ESRB model of voluntary classification for media. Restrict unclassified content for sale to adults only. Ensure classification guidelines are published, in accordance with the principle that a classification scheme should be used for consumer awareness and not censorship. Abolish the Refused Classification (RC) rating from the classification system. Content that is illegal under the law would continue to be disallowed for sale, distribution or presentation. Change the role of the Classification Board to be an advisory and review role.

Ensure the government and its representatives provide vigorous defence of free speech in international forums and negotiations.

Offer a referendum for a bill of rights focused on individual liberties including speech and assembly (see Bill of Rights policy).

Remove counter-productive restrictions on freedom of speech

Repeal sections of the Border Force Act which allow for prosecution of whistleblowers who report abuses in detention centres.

Repeal the anti-sedition clauses in schedule 7 of the Anti-Terrorism Act 2005 (Cth).

(Cth). Abolish residual blasphemy laws.

Repeal state laws which grant governments the unilateral power to restrict freedom of assembly for specific organisations.

Repeal section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975 (Cth), ensuring that pre-existing common law protections are sufficient to manage all cases of intimidation and harassment.

(Cth), ensuring that pre-existing common law protections are sufficient to manage all cases of intimidation and harassment. Repeal the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Amendment (Terrorist Material) Act 2007 (Cth).

(Cth). Repeal the Classification (Publications, Films and Computer Games) Amendment Act (No 1) 2001 (Cth).

(Cth). Repeal censorship and web-blocking clauses from the National Security Legislation Amendment Act (No 1) 2014 (Cth).

(Cth). Repeal internet censorship clauses from the Broadcasting Services Amendment (Online Services) Act 1999 (Cth).

(Cth). Repeal content prohibition clauses from the Communications Legislation Amendment (Content Services) Act 2007 (Cth).

(Cth). Repeal section 313 of the Telecommunications Act 1997 (Cth).

(Cth). Ensure no criminal offence applies for linking on the Internet.

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Privacy

Privacy is an essential underpinning of human dignity. It encompasses not just physical privacy, but the freedom to control your cultural presence, and manage the information and identity that surrounds you. The fundamental balance of power between citizens and their government is altered when states or their representatives have the power to abolish privacy. We need to resist a world in which every action, everything said, and every act of creativity and exploration is recorded. A free and trusting society cannot exist without the protection of a person's private life.[11][12]

Those arguing against a right to privacy because they have "nothing to hide" don't understand the fundamental nature of rights. Nobody needs to justify why they need a right; the burden of proof falls solely on those seeking to infringe it. An individual can forfeit their own rights, but they cannot forfeit the rights of others.

The snooper's honeypot

Metadata retention laws force ISPs to collect a vast database of information on their customers. This includes records of all emails sent and received, websites visited, locational information from phones, and much more. Data is stored for two years, allowing immense amounts of detail on the private lives of individuals to be perused by the state without any judicial oversight. This is a honeypot not just for officials, but for hackers and criminals. Mass surveillance does not prevent terrorism or aid in combating it.[13][14] But it does create a terrible precedent for state intrusion into every corner of private life and civil society. EU courts have thrown out similar schemes due to their gross incompatibility with basic rights; that this hasn't happened here is testimony to the inadequacy of Australian privacy laws.

Threats to privacy are not merely domestic. Australians are also subject to an array of secret, warrantless monitoring conducted from overseas, and the results are routinely shared with Australian authorities. Overseas monitoring gathers data on emails, chats, photographs, documents and website addresses visited by Australian citizens.[15][16][17] The use of overseas channels to gather data allows even the small domestic protections Australians have to be bypassed.

Nor are threats to privacy merely digital. In the last few years body scanners have been rolled out at airports, changes to the Census have allowed data to be matched to individuals, and the Government has rolled out new capability to link together CCTV cameras to track Australians wherever they go. The future direction of attacks on privacy can only be guessed at. Given the scale and variety of attacks on privacy, ad-hoc overturning of laws is not a complete answer.

Australia needs a comprehensively higher standard of legal protection for privacy. Such a standard should include tougher legislative requirements on organisations which retain data, and improved options for individuals seeking to protect their personal privacy. Pirate Party Australia also proposes a new privacy tort to curb future averse changes to the law and prevent misuse of private information.

Pirate Party Australia advocates the following reforms:

Remove immediate threats to privacy

End warrantless monitoring of internet use among the general public. Oppose and repeal legal mechanisms enacted to create records of Internet use among the general public. Records obtained through such schemes to be securely deleted. Repeal the Cybercrime Act 2001 (Cth). Conduct an independent review of the Telecommunications Interception and Access Act 1979 (Cth) to ensure digital liberties are properly protected. Ban any future collection of phone or internet metadata without a warrant. Cease information sharing with overseas agencies who collect private data on Australians without meeting Australian protections and laws. Re-focus anti-terrorism practice on alternative methods including informants and targeted infiltration.

Ensure individuals have a legally protected right to control data collection on devices they own. Control should cover duration data is retained for, encryption and sending of data, and when data is deleted.

Ensure no penalties apply to individuals who refuse to provide passwords or assist in decrypting information (in line with existing legal practices regarding self-incrimination).

Repeal the National Security Legislation Amendment Act (No 1) 2014 (Cth).

(Cth). Repeal the Intelligence Services Legislation Amendment Act 2011 (Cth).

Raise the floor for privacy protection in Australia

Enact higher privacy standards for entities holding private data. Ensure entities complete Privacy Impact Assessments (PIAs) encompassing binding data security safeguards. Require government agencies and private organisations to report data breaches. Subject substance testing in the workplace to mandatory PIAs with requirement for consultation with affected persons and assessment of whatever risks the testing is intended to address. Provide affected persons with explicit information on purpose of the tests, procedures to be employed, and use of information.

Enact additional protection for individual privacy in the public sphere. Institute recommendations from the Australian Privacy Foundation on providing a right to recourse following an invasion of privacy. [18] Subject publication of private data in the media to a public interest threshold, ensuring no restrictions apply where reporting is consensual or relevant to performance of public office, corporate or civil society, credibility of public statements, illegal, corrupt or anti-social behaviour, or a significant event. Apply complaints mechanisms and legal sanctions where the public interest threshold is not met. Ensure the office of the Privacy Commissioner is subject to periodic performance and function reviews by a member of the judiciary. Provide a legal right for members of the public to appeal Privacy Commissioner decisions. Institute tighter controls and accountability covering use of visual surveillance. Require organisations conducting surveillance to state the purpose of surveillance and identify recipients of surveillance information, with mandatory periodic destruction of surveillance material. Require judicial oversight of undisclosed surveillance in public or private places. Establish expert panel to review the adequacy of laws and legal protections applying to the collection, use and storage of biometric data. Remove body scanners from Australian airports.

Implement the Australian Privacy Foundation recommendations [19] to create a single tort covering both intrusion into seclusion and misuse of private information. [20] Ensure tort is subject to a public interest test and is actionable only by natural persons. [21] Ensure the tort is prescriptive in defining high- and low-water marks for examples or classes of acts that are or aren't covered, in order to reduce potential conflict between freedom of speech and privacy. [22] Discretion in interpreting objectives of the tort would otherwise be left to courts. Allow action by aggrieved parties, their family or estate, or by relevant commissions for up to a year from the point of discovery, with remedies to include damages, apologies and injunctions.

to create a single tort covering both intrusion into seclusion and misuse of private information.

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Justice

As a general rule, legal systems should always err on the side of civil liberty and the presumption of innocence. Legal systems represent an important check on state power and a means to protect the rights of citizens, but their effectiveness depends heavily on having the right underlying laws and safeguards.

Unfortunately, recent changes to a range of laws are falling short of this ideal. The latest wave of rushed and ill-written counter-terror laws (which weaken the burden of proof and loosen thresholds for detention, search or seizure) are only the latest example of an increasingly punitive trend, [23] which the Pirate Party would seek to reverse.

Journalist shield laws are also need of an upgrade: the present lack of protections is commonly regarded as one of the leading threats to accountability and freedom of the press.[24][25] In future, shield laws need to cover not just sources, but the informational content which sources pass on, which is all too easily used to identify them. Sources also need to be protected from public exposure by official inquiries—the ability for inquiries to do this threatens the very forms of journalistic investigation which have so often been essential to inquiries launching in the first place.

We support a legal system which protects freedom and which embodies the secular principle of one law for all, applied to all persons equally. The Pirate Party will always oppose punitive laws and parallel systems which impose differential standards on different groups.

Gun Control

To clarify a frequently asked question of policy, Pirate Party Australia supports the National Agreement on Firearms (1996). The agreement does not unreasonably restrict personal liberty in the use or ownership of firearms for legitimate purposes, while insisting on standards to ensure basic community safety and to limit proliferation into criminal enterprise.

Pirate Party Australia advocates the following reforms:

Improve equality and transparency in the legal system

Strengthen shield laws for journalists in the court system. Remove any compulsion for journalists to reveal sources in court, with narrow exceptions where courts determine that a public interest of greater importance than journalistic freedom is served. Extend protections to cover confidentiality of communications and information received from sources. Extend court-related shield laws to also cover public inquiries. Narrow the scope of subpoenas public inquiries can impose to ensure a high standard of relevance applies.

Restrict use of suppression orders in criminal trials. Limit suppression orders to protecting national security and the identity of victims, witnesses, or persons under physical threat. Ban any use of suppression orders to prevent discussion of other suppression orders.

Ensure no legal standing is extended to alternative arbitration systems, dispute resolution mechanism and other ‘parallel’ legal practices.

Pirate Party Australia supports the 1996 National Agreement on Firearms[26].

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Control over the body

The right of self-ownership and the right to live free from pain and physical torment are absolutely fundamental. We believe that all persons have the right to live by their own convictions, but none have the right to force their convictions on others.

Voluntary euthanasia is an important aspect of this principle. Support for voluntary euthanasia is not a statement of any kind on the value of life. It is merely respect for the right of persons to make decisions on these matters for themselves in the light of their individual circumstances. While safeguards are necessary, adults of sound mind and facing terminal illness should have the right to end their lives with dignity and peace. Bans on voluntary euthanasia create a legacy of suffering and a shattering loss of dignity and autonomy.

Pirate Party Australia supports reproductive rights. A pro-choice position is also not a commentary on the value of life: rather, it is recognition that individuals are better placed than governments to weigh up complex questions in light of their own circumstances and values.

Pirate Party Australia advocates the following reforms:

Enshrine freedom over the body in law

Enact a law legalising euthanasia and decriminalising assisted suicide subject to: An application process and seven day cooling-off period. A requirement that patients be: Over 18 and mentally competent, and Supported by three doctors, including: A consultant/senior physician in a relevant field of expertise to confirm terminal illness, and A psychiatrist to certify that the patient is not affected by treatable depression.

Ensure all persons have full and free access to their personal medical records.

Ensure all persons have the right to issue binding health directives to apply in the event of any future mental disability.

Extend protections within the Victorian Abortion Law Reform Act 2008 nationwide, to provide baseline legal abortion services nationwide.

Decriminalise sex work and limit police intervention to cases of exploitation and coercion.

Adopt the current conventions used in New Zealand for gender identify change, under which a non-binary gender option is available for passports and can be changed with a simple application.[27]

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Marriage

The institution of marriage pre-dates all religions, nations, and political parties by tens of thousands of years. As marriage is a collective, shared inheritance and part of the social commons, there is no justification for it to be co-opted by any modern religious or political agenda. Control of marriage by political parties or religious groups is an appropriation from history and from the public, and those claiming a right to control and define marriage have no such right in truth.

The Marriage Act in its previous form denied many people a human right which is taken for granted in mainstream, heterosexual society. The Marriage Amendment Act 2004 imposed a declaration, compulsorily recited at all weddings, that marriage in Australia is an exclusionary institution available only to certain types of relationships.[28] In effect, this turned marriage law into a way to force religious principles into state ceremonies, undermining the separation of Church and State.[29] In 2017 a plebiscite effectively secured changes to the Marriage Act which resulted in expanding the definition of relationships to "2 people", but failed to address the underlying principle. Politicisation of the Marriage Act[30] does not just attack civil liberties.[31] It also reinforces stigmas around minority groups at a time when anxiety is already widespread and suicide attempts among LGBT persons far outstrip the general population.[32]

The only effective way to secure civil rights and liberties is to abolish the Marriage Act. Marriage should be protected not by excluding particular individuals, but by excluding the state. This would return marriage to the community, to be interpreted by all in line with their own traditions and values. A Civil Unions Act could then be established in place of the Marriage Act, which would offer equal treatments, rights, and recognition to all.

Pirate Party Australia advocates the following reforms:

Replace the Marriage Act 1961 with a Civil Unions Act

People in a union under the Civil Unions Act will be afforded the same rights available under the current Marriage Act.

will be afforded the same rights available under the current Civil unions will be available to all consenting adults.

The Civil Unions Act will provide a state recognised union with equivalent legal and monetary benefits to those provided currently within the Marriage Act.

will provide a state recognised union with equivalent legal and monetary benefits to those provided currently within the Adults in legally recognised unions from overseas will be recognised under this Act.

The institution of marriage will be removed from the purview of state authority. The right of secular and religious organisations to offer ceremonies in adherence with their own beliefs would not be infringed. No legal basis will be provided for any attempt to force any organisation to provide marriage services where such an act would be at odds with organisational values.

Unions not involving consenting arrangements between adults will remain banned.

Digital access

The internet has always been grassroots, participatory, and open. For that reason alone, it has proven to be a huge thorn in the side of traditional hierarchical power structures.[33][34][35][36] Unsurprisingly, this is leading to push-back: corporate and government entities have been trying for years to increase control over the Internet through a range of measures including censorship, reduction of access, treaties to reduce the rights of Internet users, and ever-broader surveillance and monitoring powers.[37]

Net neutrality is the best defence against much of this. Established by the founders and developers of the internet, net neutrality is the rule which obliges gatekeepers—whether corporate or governmental—to treat all online traffic equally. Net neutrality prevents gatekeepers from blocking, speeding up, or slowing down content based on the source, destination or the owner. It guarantees that even the smallest entrepreneurs have the same access standards as established firms, and it keeps the internet open, innovative, uncontrolled, and free.[38] Net neutrality is not merely a safeguard for the digital economy and culture, but a shield protecting the basic rights of internet users.

Pirate Party Australia will work against inappropriate attempts by gatekeepers to impose censorship, data blocking, and prioritisation. We support the preservation of a fast, open internet underpinned by clear net neutrality principles.

Pirate Party Australia advocates the following reforms:

Provide universal access to a fast, neutral Internet

Institute a common carriage agreement and legal protection for Net Neutrality, and ban the practice of screening, or prioritising traffic based on packet sources or destinations, unless The default package offered to the user of an ISP contains no such screening or prioritising; and The user can opt-in to a package that will prioritise certain types of traffic by protocol or destination.

Allow exceptions in the case of a court order.

Allow generic prioritisation of traffic based on protocol types defined by the IETF.

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An Australian Bill of Rights

The Pirate Party will sponsor a referendum to introduce a Bill of Rights as a way to protect basic liberties.

Australia is one of the few remaining western democracies whose citizens and residents lack any significant, constitutionally declared rights. This lack of protection creates an imbalance of power between individuals and the state, and exposes privacy, free speech and other basic rights to perpetual whittling. A bill of rights can restore balance and provide unambiguous checks on the creeping intrusion of the state into private life.

We propose a referendum to alter the Australian Constitution and include a bill of rights, codifying a basic set of human rights and freedoms.[39] The Pirate Party proposal incorporates the most fundamental and essential elements of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights,[40] the United Nations International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights[41] and the United Nations International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights.[42]

Protecting rights and freedoms

The following rights and freedoms should only be construed as applying to natural persons as opposed to corporations or other non-natural entities. None of the following rights and freedoms should be construed as enabling the violation of other rights or freedoms. Where conflicting rights or freedoms are found to occur, the resolution should be based on the greater overall good.

The individual is the ultimate minority, and these rights are designed to protect the private lives and rights of individuals. Broader rights (which are often assigned on the basis of belonging to an identity group) are less prominent, as these potentially impose subjectivity, conflict with other rights, and drive burdensome litigation. Rights and freedoms not mentioned here may be granted through other laws and, where not covered by law, are left to the people.

Rights and freedoms should be considered to apply collectively (thus, various combinations of rights exclude practices such as slavery).

There would be no means to sell, trade or otherwise contractually sign away these rights.

Life and Death

The right not to have your life taken from you. Any application of the death penalty would become unconstitutional.

The right to end your own life should you explicitly, in right-mind and without coercion, choose to do so. This would allow euthanasia, provided that the conditions listed above are legally confirmed.

The right to control your body and health, including the right to terminate a pregnancy.

Thought and Belief

Freedom of thought, conscience and belief. Includes freedom from compulsion to adhere to another's beliefs, and protection against imposition of such beliefs through law.



Communication and Expression

Freedom of speech, communication and the right to express your thoughts or beliefs. This applies to all mediums of communication but does not guarantee that the medium will be provided, merely that access may not be removed by the state. This specifically stops laws such as blocking of internet access for copyright infringement. This right does not include a right to be heard, or impose a duty on anyone to listen. This applies regardless of the purpose of communication. The right to express an opinion will be protected without exception. There is no right to not be offended by the free expression of the thoughts or beliefs of others. Exclusions: Direct attempts to bring about the use of force against another person. Intentional, false statements of fact (slander, libel, false advertising). Direct threats.



Fair Legal Process

Habeas corpus - the right for a person under arrest to be brought before a judge or into court.

Right to trial by a jury of peers for criminal proceedings.

Right to legal representation. Provision of lawyer for defence. Self-defence.

Right to not incriminate yourself.

Freedom from retroactive legislation. Protection will apply to anyone found guilty of acts that were not crimes when committed.

Right to freely access and copy all laws and public judicial proceedings.

No prison for breach of contract.

Privacy

Privacy for homes, property and effects No illegal search & seizure. Covers any invasion of privacy not authorized by warrant issued on probable cause.

Privacy of Communication. Excludes communication in open spaces with general public access or public forums. Exceptions from exclusion: Targeted recording of communications without warrant issued on probable cause Dragnet, state-sponsored recording of communication, which allows after-the-fact targeting of any individual Public officials, in performance of official, or purportedly official, duties, may be recorded without constraint. This protection will apply independently of communications medium.



Liberty, Movement, Assembly and Association

The right to personal liberty.

Protection against arrest or detainment without cause or due process. On detention, the right to be given written evidence of detention, including officers involved and reasons for detention.

Freedom of movement.

Protection against forcible constraint of movement without cause or due process.

Freedom to peacefully assemble in public or private.

Freedom to associate with others.

Political Participation

Right to participate in civil and political life. Includes right of any adult citizen to run for any government office. Includes right of any adult citizen to join political parties or activist groups. Includes right of any adult citizen to vote. Is not nullified by civil or criminal status. This should not be construed as taking away any existing right to civil or political participation.

The government shall not pass laws intended to limit participation.[43][44]

Property

The right to own property and not have it unlawfully taken from you.

This right only extends to physical property where acquisition removes it from possession of another person.

Intellectual and other property rights schemes would remain an issue for the legislature.

Non-Discrimination

The right for all permanent residents and adult citizens to be treated equally by the state. Guarantees freedom from discrimination by government, based on any arbitrary or generalised condition, including gender, age, sex, sexual orientation, race, religion (or lack thereof), social sub-cultural and political affiliation.



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Culture and creative works

Copyright

Copyright laws are designed to encourage creative output by providing creators with a limited monopoly over the use and distribution of their work. Once these rights expire, works enter the public domain to be used and built upon by others. Copyright is granted to creators in return for the eventual benefit society receives by having these works created and released into the public domain.

However, 'copyright' is now a term that has many negative connotations. Although introduced over three hundred years ago to protect authors from unscrupulous publishers,[45] it has come to be associated with control over creators and consumers, stifling their rights and freedoms. Australia's Copyright Act is lengthy and unwieldy as a result of many amendments since its introduction in 1968, and includes rights such as moral rights and broadcasting rights that are not best described as copyrights.

The need for replacement legislation was discussed in the 1990s in response to rapid technological developments. In 1995 the Copyright Law Review Committee made recommendations to simplify the Copyright Act, but these were never implemented.[46] Instead, amendments since 1995 have continued to increase the complexity of Australian copyright law, making it increasingly inaccessible and unintelligible to creators, consumers, investors and distributors.[47]

The recommendations of the 2013 Parliamentary Inquiry into IT Pricing[48] and Australian Law Reform Commission's 2014 report on Copyright and the Digital Economy[49] have not been implemented. Implementing these recommendations would significantly improve the rights of consumers in regard to local and overseas content, and give creators greater flexibility to build on previous works.

Extensions to the duration are the result of extensive lobbying and have not been based on sound economic evidence.[50] As Australia imports more copyright materials than it exports, extensions to our copyright term inevitably impose net costs on our economy. Over the past three hundred years the duration of copyright has been extended from 14 years to the life of author plus a further 70 years — an increase of nearly one thousand percent based on Australia's current life expectancy. However, different types of works are currently given different protection measures and durations, making the legislation all the more difficult to comprehend by those it aims to protect. Evidence indicates a term of 15 years provides the best economic results.[51]

It is time to repeal the Copyright Act and replace it with brand new legislation designed from the ground up to be accessible to creators and consumers, to be relevant and robust in the digital environment, and to provide economic benefits to Australia as a whole. This can be achieved by simplifying the legislation, improving the rights of creators and consumers, and making sure that the law reflects the economic nature of creative rights.

Pirate Party Australia advocates the following reforms:

Repeal the Copyright Act 1968 (Cth) and replace it with a new Creative Works Act

Institute a creative right that lasts 15 years from date of publication. This will provide adequate economic protection while ensuring the growth of a vibrant public domain.

Provide that rights in unpublished works will terminate 15 years after the death of the creator, to allow sufficient time and incentive for the works to be published.

Abolish the distinction between 'works' and 'subject matter other than works'.

Institute a uniform duration for creative rights regardless of the type of work, and all existing types of work will continue to be protected.

Restrict creative rights to commercial uses of a work. This will maximise the dissemination of culture and encourage derivative works, as well as protect privacy and freedom of speech.

Allow creative rights held by individuals to be transferable upon their death, but the duration of the rights will not exceed 15 years from publication.

Allow creative rights held by corporate entities to be bought and sold, or transferred on liquidation, but the duration of the rights will not exceed 15 years from publication.

Provide that creative rights will always remain with the creator except where the work has been created under a contract that specifies alternative arrangements.

Permit exclusive licences for a maximum duration of five years to allow creators to periodically renegotiate the terms to be more favourable to them.

Afford no protection for materials produced by or as a function of government, as they belong to the public.

Protect software under separate legislation, similar to the way circuit layouts are currently protected.

Provide that programming made available online by radio stations will be considered a broadcast for licensing purposes.

Define commercial use

Provide that a use will be commercial if it is primarily intended for or directed towards commercial advantage or monetary compensation.

Provide that use by companies, businesses and individuals in the course of trade or commerce will always be commercial use.

Provide that use for private entertainment will always be non-commercial.

Improve the rights of the public

Explicitly protect the right of panorama so that rights in works on public display are not infringed by capturing them in another work (such as a photograph, drawing or audio recording).

Replace the current limited free-use fair dealing exceptions with an open-ended fair use exception, including a non-exclusive list of illustrative uses such as research or study, criticism or review, parody or satire, reporting news, professional advice, quotation, format and time shifting, and incidental or technical use.

Replace statutory licences with exemptions for libraries, archives, public education and access for people with disabilities.

Require Open Access provisions for all publicly-financed scientific and academic research, including the resulting works and raw data which must be stored in an open and searchable format.

Abolish the current parallel importation restrictions.

Prevent the abuse of creative rights and improve consumer rights

Introduce criminal penalties for abusing 'takedown' procedures.

Require potential applicants in proceedings under the Creative Rights Act to demonstrate a prima facie case and seek leave of the Court to initiate proceedings.

to demonstrate a prima facie case and seek leave of the Court to initiate proceedings. Make distributors liable for technological protection measures that interfere with the exercise of free-use exceptions and exemptions.

Require products sold with technological protection measures to be accompanied by information on the nature of the restrictions and any tracking or data collection imposed.

Give consumers a statutory right to return for refund any products that include technological protection measures within 30 days of their receipt.

Exclude penalties for circumventing technological protection measures and geoblocking.

Provide educational materials to Australian consumers and businesses as to how to circumvent geoblocking.

Amend the Australian Consumer Law so that contracts or terms of service that attempt to enforce geoblocking are considered void.

so that contracts or terms of service that attempt to enforce geoblocking are considered void. Introduce an explicit first sale doctrine (right of resale) which will apply to both physical and digital sales.

Investigate options to restrict vendors' abilities to lock digital content into particular ecosystems.

Reform moral rights

Protect the moral right of integrity by licensing arrangements rather than legislation. This will also protect freedom of speech.

Prohibit users of creative works from implying any form of endorsement by the creator without specific and explicit consent.

Continue to protect the moral rights to have a work correctly attributed and to not be falsely attributed as the creator of a work.

Provide that moral rights will last indefinitely, and grant open standing to allow the public to enforce them after the author's death.

Provide that moral rights will apply to both commercial and non-commercial uses.

Create an Orphan Works Office

Create an Orphan Works Office with the power to declare whether a work has been abandoned by its creator ('orphaned').

Provide that individuals, groups and corporations will be able to apply to the Orphan Works Office to have a work declared as orphaned.

Require creators or rights holders to demonstrate that the work continues to be published in a manner accessible in Australia.

Allow the Orphan Works Office to declare a work as being orphaned if it can be demonstrated that the work is no longer published in a manner accessible in Australia.

Provide that a work enters the public domain if the Orphan Works Office declares it has been orphaned.

Provide that the Administrative Appeals Tribunal will hear appeals relating to decisions of the Orphan Works Office.

Require the Orphan Works Office keep a public register of orphan works.

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Culture and media

Culture is at the heart of human identity. From the cave paintings to the poetry that was once copied and sent to soldiers in the trenches, culture has always been something shared - a social glue and a bond between individuals and their societies. Cultural sharing is innate to human nature and learning. It is an important driver of human creativity and progress.

In modern times, technology has changed the way in which culture was produced and experienced [52]. The rise of mass-production in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries opened the way for new forms of distribution, but also created a means for the owners of industrial mass production to control and restrict access. Intellectual property laws emerged which treated culture as something to be restricted, monetised and made artificially scarce. As technology progressed, however, the ability to mass produce in the digital realm has shifted cultural modes back to their historical norms [53], opening the way to a new era of grass roots cultural production.

Attempts to re-impose the forms of control and artificial scarcity which governed culture in the 20th century will fail[54], simply because the technological “moment in time” which enabled such a model to exist has now passed. We believe the time has come to undo the harm done to our cultural commons[55][56] as a result of 20th century copyright policy. However, this does create a serious question: where culture is freely available, how will artists and creators be paid and supported?

Pirate Party Australia has several answers to this. We will support a basic income guarantee which provides universal support to artists. We also propose a new wave of investment to create new cultural hubs for the community. These new hubs will expand the role currently played by libraries [57] and provide free facilities for creation of music and art [58]. They will also be places where legal obstacles such as obsolete Digital Rights Management (which hampers archivists who seek to engage in digital archiving)[59] can be overturned. Additionally, we will seek to establish a new fund to sponsor artists and invest in the creation of films, literature and visual art. And finally, Pirate Party Australia will seek to provide smaller live music and performance venues with tax breaks to protect and enshrine them.

Pirate Party Australia is also a firm supporter of public broadcasting. We oppose all attempts to sabotage the independence and broadcasting standards of the ABC. The ABC is one of Australia's few highly trusted institutions [60] and its capacity to reach a diverse national audience with cultural programming make it especially important to Australia's artistic and cultural communities. A complete subordination of Australia's media landscape to commercial interests and the political agendas of their owners should be resisted by anyone who supports independent media and the growth of Australian culture.

We believe open, participatory culture and investment in our artists is the future for Australia.

Pirate Party Australia advocates the following reforms:

Develop a network of facilities to support development of art and culture

Provide $500 million from existing Federal investment funding to support expanded library facilities. Funding will be allocated by an independent board charged with assessing grant applications and ensuring all proposals are openly accessible to the public. Applications will be assessed on local area population, community need and outcomes of consultation, and quality and innovativeness of proposals. Proposals will be required to maintain and respect traditional library functions. Projects may include development of maker spaces, sound booths, expanded premises, content digitisation and online availability and other cultural and community benefits.

Provide additional legal protections to libraries to enhance their cultural value. Allow free use of patented material and full availability of copyrighted material under a Creative Commons Attribution license within physical and digital library spaces. Allow library users to utilise these freedoms subject to a mandate to make materials thus created available under a creative commons license within the library's physical and digital spaces. Maximise public library efficiency by ensuring that digital works become instantly available in any branch (e.g. using filesharing technologies) [61]

Ensure libraries maintain, store and make available public records in a standardised format. Ensure libraries provide storage and computation resources to process open data public records. This might include cloud resources, hosting services, and other services to ensure useful access to such content, by any library user.

Mandate that any DRM protected product for sale in Australia has an obligation to hand over keys or other mechanisms required to access it in its totality, after either termination of copyright or termination of sale. The disclosure will be to the National Archives until termination of copyright, and held in confidence until it enters the public domain.



Expand funding and venues for artists

Repeal 'lockout laws' and allow venues and pubs more freedom to determine their own opening hours.

Provide $1 billion from existing infrastructure funding to sponsor Creative Commons licensed artistic endeavour. Funds will be separated into streams to invest in independent films, games, visual art, and literature.

Expand current tax exemptions applying to “cultural organisations”. Extend the “Music” category to cover facilities essential to live music, including small-capacity live music and performance venues. Extend the “Literature” category to cover book and cultural exchanges which provide low-cost literary and cultural material to the general public.

Provide a central online location for artists containing information for exhibiting, performing, and displaying art, as well as free hosting for exhibiting and displaying digital and digitised art.

Secure Australia's public broadcasting

Protect public broadcasters and their boards from political interference.

Maintain base funding to domestic public broadcasters at 2012 levels (with adjustment for inflation).

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Education and innovation

Schools and early education

Education is a powerful determinant of well-being. It is a source of wealth, a provider of life skills, an enabler of participation, and a core component of civil society. The 2000 Dakar World Education Conference noted that all young people have the right to an education that includes “learning to know, to do, to live together and to be".[62]

Early childhood education

Pirate Party Australia supports trials in Australia of the childcare cooperative system used successfully overseas. [63] A co-op system will provide a means for willing parents to combine resources and provide low-cost or free childcare by taking turns as carers and volunteers. It also provides social opportunities to new families and their children, and reduces demand pressure on the existing childcare system.

School education

Global comparisons suggest that the world's best educational system is in Finland.[64][65] Unlike Australia, where funding is shredded between public and private systems, Finland focuses on a single system of locally controlled public schools. Teachers have great autonomy, and educators have freedom to mix and combine classes, test when and how they wish, teach in different ways to accommodate different learning styles, and bring in additional support and resources as needed. Unsurprisingly, this kind of autonomy encourages many more highly qualified and bright people into the teaching profession, and solves many issues of teacher quality experienced in other countries.

Australia is one of the few countries to divide its funding between public and private systems. This is the wrong path in the long term. The diversion of public funding to private and religious schools does not promote equity; it merely leads to scarce resources being allocated where they aren't needed. It doesn't promote diversity: diversity is actually reduced when children are segregated along religious and socio-economic lines. It doesn't promote choice: the shift in funding towards private schools has left entire leaving entire postcodes lacking any comprehensive public schooling.[66] It doesn't improve value for money: a huge increase in private funding has seen relatively small shifts in student numbers,[67] and where students have shifted, the largest impact has been to concentrate poorer students into the increasingly under-funded public system.[68][69] And it clearly hasn't improved educational standards: basic science teaching is regularly undermined in religious schools[70][71] and overall educational outcomes for Australian children have been falling relentlessly in recent years, especially among the most disadvantaged[72][73] .

A shift towards global best practice need not cost any more money. However, we believe a future education system should have the following features:

Funding should be reserved for schools which are secular and free, and available to every child.

Schools should be locally controlled. Standardised testing should be optional, teachers should be more empowered, and curriculums should be leaner, with more time available for school-determined content.

Additional funding should be available to address disadvantage and improve educational diversity. Schools in poor areas should receive additional resources, and all schools should be able to 'bulk bill' activities in which qualified experts are engaged to teach in areas of interest chosen by students and parents.

Pirate Party Australia advocates the following reforms:

Improve provision of community based childcare

Provide certification processes and a one-stop information service for the setup of childcare cooperatives.

Foster well-funded, dynamic and secular public schools

Reallocate federal education funding: Progressively reallocate funding towards free and secular schools, with allowance for other schools to transfer or sell land and assets into the public system. Abolish the school chaplains program. Ensure sufficient funding is available to implement Gonski recommendations on additional support for poor and disadvantaged schools.

Change school accountability frameworks: Abolish existing paperwork accountability systems and provide schools with control over finances including management of bank accounts and purchases. Support the establishment of principal networks to encourage the spread of effective systems. Allow students 16 and over to transfer to TAFE and have per-student funding follow them. Trial a bulk billing scheme for extracurricular activities including tutoring from outside experts in areas determined by students and parents.

Provide more support to teachers: Ensure trainee teachers receive a minimum of 12 weeks supported classroom time. Allow ongoing salary progression for teachers with more than 10 years of experience.

Include a solid foundation of life skills and personal development within the National Curriculum: Grades 1-4 to cover behaviour towards others, people skills, and exploration of science and critical thinking; Grades 5-6 to develop earlier material and additionally cover sex education, conflict resolution, and ethics; Grades 7-8 to develop earlier material and additionally cover accidents and emergency response, civics and voting, budgeting, basic IT skills, careers and starting a business. Limit compulsory subjects to life skills, maths, science and English. Abolish Special Religious Instruction in public schools and limit religious study to comparative religion in the context of history, culture and literature.

Endorse the right of schools to access Safe Schools education programmes. [74] Extend the Safe Schools programme by bringing in Safe Schools representatives to engage with recurring bullying problems and the individual students involved.



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Universities

Tertiary education is crucial for our shift towards a more knowledge-based economy. While student numbers continue to rise, growing evidence exists of a troubling deterioration in standards and academic morale in universities. Approximately half of academics have been assessed to be at risk of psychological illness due to insecurity and overwork,[75] while two thirds believe academic freedom is being curtailed.[76] Higher education has suffered from efforts by successive governments to force it into a top-down, corporatist structure. This is an inappropriate form for an education system and a driver of stultification and surveillance. The drive towards pseudo-measurement of educational outcomes has also imposed unprecedented administrative costs, with administrators and managers now outnumbering academics.

Much of this change is demonstrably counter-productive. The narrow emphasis on vocational education is creating graduates unfit for many jobs - employers have raised issues with serious deficits in team work, creative thought and communication.[77] Administrative burdens imposed in the name of quality assurance are driving down quality by drawing resources out of teaching and research. Attempts to quantify educational outputs obscure more than they reveal. And the lowering of standards to accommodate overseas students is reducing Australia’s attractiveness as an international student destination.[78]

Genuine transparency means accountability to the general public, not to a corporate structure. We believe that publicly funded academic research should be made freely available to the public and no longer locked up behind publisher paywalls. We also believe in enhancing the quality of academic work by following the advice of academics themselves, who urgently seek higher per-student funding and greater autonomy. We will also encourage the current shift towards digital education, which is proving to be a crucial aid for the poor, for people in remote locations, and for carers and people with disabilities.

Education should be seen as a pillar of civil society rather than a money making commodity, and campuses should be encouraged to play a greater role in the community. Passion, curiosity and freedom to speak and question are key curbs to unhindered power, and a successful university system should embody those traits.

Pirate Party Australia advocates the following reforms:

Support academic autonomy in tertiary institutions

Impose benchmarks to guarantee the use of public funds for academic salaries, teaching material and research.

Expand full-time academic positions targeting a maximum student-teacher ratio of 20:1. Guarantee study leave, research time, and fieldwork in academic contracts.

Restore academic control over course and research funding, course design & outcomes, unit guides, marking, workload allocation, hiring, and teaching choices.

Defund administrative functions and organisations associated with monitoring, surveillance, government reviews and data collection. Abolish standardising and rigid templates. Abolish code of conduct restrictions on academic speech. Limit the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency to an advisory role.



Increase educational resourcing and outputs

Provide $4 billion per year to properly resource higher education research and increase grant acceptance (see Science plan policy for details) $500 million per year should be set aside to support a 25 per cent increase in base per-student funding. Ensure a portion of this funding is directed to restoring access and equity measures for poorer students, as well as provision of counselling and childcare services. Replace the lifetime FEE-HELP limit with a maximum loan cap, offset by repayments.

Institute Open Access provisions for publicly funded academic, peer-reviewed, journal articles produced within universities. Make all articles freely available to the public without paywalls or publisher restrictions.

Promote increased use of campuses for community seminars, live events and public debates.

Increase provision of free online courses, and encourage greater use of online infrastructure to reduce course costs and improve budget sustainability.

Encourage greater course-driven interaction between students and businesses or community groups.

Apply full whistle-blower protections to users of Unileaks and similar outlets.

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A streamlined patent system

Patents grant an individual or a business a temporary monopoly over the expression of an idea. Patents are a powerful legal instrument which grant their holder a right to stop others from using a product or an idea for up to 20 years.

Patents are meant to encourage innovation. However, as time passes they are increasingly doing the opposite, becoming a means for old, legacy businesses to prevent competition and stifle innovative rivals through endless legal action. With uncountable millions of patents now lodged, real inventors face a minefield of potential obstacles in bringing any new product to market. Serious reform is needed to being the patent system back to its core purpose.

General reforms

The original twenty-year patent duration was set down at a time when ideas and products took years to spread,[79] and most research suggests a significantly briefer term is better in a world where products can be built and marketed to millions in a space of weeks.[80] As patents are an intervention by the state in the free market, their existence can only be justified where there is a clear benefit to the public interest. Accordingly, no avenues should exist for the use patents to block publicly funded research. Additionally, since patents were introduced to support development of products, any legal defence of a patent should require proof on the part of the litigant that the patent in question is being actively used.

Pirate Party Australia also believes the patent system needs to include accommodations to allow independent development of the same invention.

Software patents

The software industry is uniquely dynamic, and patent durations on software should be shorter than those applying to other patent types. Pirate Party Australia would abolish functional claiming (which patents the end result of software) as it removes the ability of the free market to create newer and better approaches.[81][82][83][84] We also believe a larger fee should apply for software patents in order to fund additional scrutiny and a raising of the threshold for obviousness and prior art.

Genes and organisms

“Products of nature” were not patentable under the original terms of patent law. However, the scope of patent law has crept, and patents on human genes are now granted on the grounds that extraction of material from its natural environment is akin to having “invented” it.[85][86]This is a nonsensical legal artifice which, if applied in other fields, would lead to patents on coal, cotton, and wood.

It is also a particularly harmful form of corporate welfare. Gene patents are effectively a state-granted right to lock away fundamental information about our bodies. Gene patents hinder research by forcing scientists to negotiate among dozens of gene patent holders, who bear no obligation to contribute to research themselves.[87][88] Gene patents also lead to huge costs being imposed on sick and dying patients for simple tests and treatments.[89]

Patents on living and genetic material represent a net loss for society, and should no longer be recognised.

Pharmaceutical patents

Patents on drugs are justified as a necessary incentive for medical research. In practice, however, patents are an incredibly poor mechanism for this. Most of the money extracted by patent rents does not fund research at all: instead, it is directed towards marketing and corporate expenses. To the extent that patents do fund research, the incentive is to develop temporary fixes which can be sold over and over rather than real cures, which can be sold only once.[90][91] Only around two per cent of new active ingredients and applications devised by drug companies are considered to make real medical progress.[92][93]

For these dubious benefits, drug patents impose a massive cost. Monopoly power allows firms to charge huge prices for drugs whose actual production cost is minuscule. More than $10 billion is spent each year on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS),[94] most of which goes into meeting patent rents so that drugs are affordable. High drug prices also deny lifesaving medicines to the world's poor.[95][96][97]

If drug patents were no longer recognised, monopolies on drugs would cease and domestic drug prices would fall to cents in the dollar. Market competition would force domestic firms to compete on quality, and future aid could include exports of critical drugs to poor countries. Our public health system would be freed from a huge cost burden, and current spending on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme could be redirected to sponsor genuine drug research and bring about a renaissance for science in Australia.

Private drug research should still be encouraged, but not through a patent system. Instead, funding should be made available to trial a ‘bounty’ system, under which rewards are offered for the creation of drugs which serve an identified public good. Bounties would be paid out on cures, not temporary fixes, and drugs on which a bounty has been paid would immediately enter the public domain. Ultimately, the best path forward would be for willing countries to sign a new global biomedical treaty to enact a global bounty system, which could direct hundreds of billions of dollars a year into critical medical research.[98]

Declared Value System

The patent system should reflect the potential public benefit of ending a patent monopoly, and provide that option via a market system. A balanced approach is to use a Declared Value System[99], whereby the patent holder must declare a liberation value for their patent. If another party (including the government) were willing to pay to permanently abolish the patent, the patent holder would receive the liberation value as compensation. The patent registration fees would be set as a percentage of the liberation value (e.g. 0.2% p.a) and could be escalated over time. Patent holders could adjust their liberation value in response to buy-out offers, provided they pay the difference in fees from the previous value. This system would make it unprofitable to sit idly on patents, or to buy up large amounts of patents to stifle competition. Consequently, the allocation efficiency[100] of patent monopolies would be improved. This ensures that the public receives a fair proportion of the monopoly rents created by the patent, innovators are rewarded, useful patents are more successfully commercialised, and monopolies reflect a true cost to the market. To offset the potential cost escalation on small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) of higher patent fees, additional revenue could be hypothecated into SME legal aid to reduce legal costs of defending against patent challenges and breach of patent.



Pirate Party Australia advocates the following reforms:

Reduce patent quantity, and increase quality

Reduce patent duration to 10 years.

Require patent holders to demonstrate active use of a patent as a pre-condition for any legal enforcement of exclusivity.

Apply legal protection to all non-commercial use of patented material (any subsequent commercial use would remain actionable).

Apply legal protection to open source products.

Apply legal protection for infringing items which are developed independently and without knowledge of existing patents.

Reform software patents

Apply a higher patent continuity fee. Fees will fund impartial, professional reviewers and consultants (experienced in the relevant areas) to review software patents, with the goal of blocking patents that are obvious to someone experienced in area, not novel or having prior-art.

Set the length of patents for inventions primarily embodied in software to 5 years.

Ensure only specific implementations are protected, with functional claiming and outcomes disallowed.

Require software patents to contain sufficient information for someone experienced in software development to be able to implement the invention.

Abolish patents on genes and living organisms

Retain patents on inventions based on a gene (which neither require nor confer rights to the gene itself).

Abolish patents on pharmaceutical drugs

Techniques for creating pharmaceutical drugs will remain patentable.

All patents on chemicals will be placed in the public domain, and manufacturers will be encouraged to produce generics.

Redirect $5 billion from current spending on Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme: $1 billion to ensure drug prices are low across the board, and no drug is made more expensive under new arrangements. $2 billion each year to directly fund drug research through the CSIRO and tertiary institutions. $2 billion each year to trial a "bounty system" to reward firms who create drugs which serve an identified public benefit. The bounty would be paid annually, over a ten-year period of time. Incentives would be offered to both first- and second-movers: where a new invention is based upon an earlier invention, rewards would be split even if the initial drug is superseded. The amount of the reward for a particular drug would be determined by an expert panel and based on public health outcomes such as number of beneficiaries, level of therapeutic benefit, and capacity to address priority healthcare needs. Drugs subject to a bounty will be placed in the public domain.

Begin negotiations on a global medical R&D treaty, open to any nation willing to commit appropriate funds to support R&D.

Improve reporting requirements Improve reporting requirements around public funding spent on pharmaceutical development Improve pharmaceutical sector reporting to the ACCC to prevent anticompetitive behaviour



Restructure patent fees

Reduce the initial threshold for claim fees, and increase claim fees for applications with a large number of claims.

Initiate a review into patent fee structure - including the feasibility of adopting a Declared Value System to replace the existing cost-recovery based patent fee system.

Implement the Productivity Commission's recommendations[101] to improve the patent legal system

Introduce a specialist IP list in the Federal Circuit Court, encompassing features similar to those of the United Kingdom Intellectual Property Enterprise Court: Limit trials to two days Caps on costs and damages Small claims procedure

Expand the jurisdiction of the Federal Circuit Court to hear all IP matters, and provide the resources necessary to maintain existing resolution times.

Assess the costs and benefits of these reforms five years after implementation

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A national Science Plan

Science created modern society. Through the scientific method, humanity has harnessed the power of natural forces, revolutionised our social order, and gained incredible knowledge of the universe in which we live. Economic growth is largely the result of improvements in science and technology, and research has long shown that public investment in science pays off many times over.[102]

It's time Australia put real muscle behind it's scientific endeavour and adopted a serious National Science Plan[103][104]. Australia is the only OECD nation to lack one, and researchers in this country are constrained by under-funding, poor collaboration among research bodies, and erratic grant periods. A Science Plan will address these issues systemically and provide a pathway for a broadening of our research profile into areas such as space research, which offer potentially enormous benefits.[105]

A Science Plan would help to address poor collaboration between business and higher education.[106] Overseas experience suggests voucher programs represent one way to achieve this. Voucher programs allow small businesses purchase services from education and research bodies, which generates a dual benefit of raising overall research funding and encouraging long-term relationship building between sectors.[107] Collaboration can also be supported by allowing researchers at government bodies to personally own patents on their research. In places such as Germany, this has enabled entrepreneurial researchers to spin out and start new businesses, adding vibrancy to the private sector and breaking down barriers between private and public spheres. [108] [109]

A science plan would also provide a pathway to addressing chronic underfunding. As noted in the patents policy, a huge amount of money is currently wasted on paying the cost of drug patents. Freeing up this funding will provide billions each year—properly used, this could revolutionise science teaching and research in Australia.

Pirate Party Australia advocates the following reforms:

Develop an Australian Science Plan

Improve co-ordination among science bodies. Establish an Innovation Board comprising researchers, government and industry representatives to draw together existing programs, develop research and innovation priorities and monitor Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) progress.

Improve public understanding of science. Provide an online portal for use by schools and the general public, with permanent streaming and free download of publicly owned science and science education programs. Require every primary school to employ at least one teacher with specialised STEM skills.

Improve conditions for researchers. Align disparate grant processes and link grant periods to requirements of the research. Recommence the International Science Linkages program. [110] Provide an online portal to facilitate researcher access to alternative funding sources, including crowdfunding. Allow researchers working within government bodies to own patents on their research.

Re-purpose existing funding to directly support scientific research. Provide $4 billion in additional annual funding to the Australian Research Council and other research bodies to support academic work in science and social science. Provide $1 billion in additional annual funding to the CSIRO to support fundamental research. Provide $4 billion in additional annual funding to support pharmaceutical research (see patent policy). Engage Australian Academy of Science to develop a long-term plan for funding and operation of Australian research infrastructure facilities. Establish a National Institute for Space Science to co-ordinate infrastructure and projects and seek global capital. Provide $100 million for one-off development of space infrastructure recommended in the NCSS Decadal Plan.



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Democracy

Government transparency

A transparent government is one which is open, communicative, and accountable. Sunlight has always been the best disinfectant and the greatest counter to corruption and rent-seeking. Openness about decisions taken on the public's behalf is also the best way to build public trust. The failure to embody these principles is a large part of the reason public trust has broken down so spectacularly in recent years.

Principles around transparency find practical application in legislative requirements such as Freedom of Information (FoI) laws[111][112] and whistleblower protections. To ensure openness, we believe FOI legislation should be enshrined and enhanced. Exemptions from FOI, which are currently wide and arbitrary, need to be narrower, time limited, and justified by a higher threshold of due cause. A similar strengthening should also apply to whistleblower protections given repeated instances of harsh and inappropriate punishment and deterrence targeted at whistleblowers over the past 10 years.[113]

More transparency also needs to apply with regard to the movement of money in our public institutions. It should no longer be acceptable to shut down public scrutiny of public spending by invoking commercial-in-confidence clauses.[114] Public oversight should never be blocked where spending of public money is concerned. Political donations should also be subject to greater scrutiny so that the public can see who is funding and lobbying their elected representatives.

The state should also be subject to a stronger principle of universality. The state is funded by all citizens, and consequently any services provided by the state and its authorised service providers need to be subject to a firm principle of non-discrimination.

Institutional transparency is one of the easiest ways Australia can improve government function and recover public trust. Pirate Party Australia will push hard for positive change that improves Australia's governance.

Pirate Party Australia advocates the following reforms:

Improve transparency and credibility in systems of governance

Codify all federal legislation into an administrative code, civil code, commercial code, criminal code and revenue code, and any specialist codes as necessary.

Make all legislation accessible and searchable online with the ability to compare selected revisions side-by-side to see the differences.

Make all bills accessible and searchable online with the ability to view proposed amendments in the context of the legislation being amended.

Establish a Federal anti-corruption authority with powers modeled on the NSW ICAC.

Strengthen the operation and transparency protections afforded by FoI laws. Remove blanket organisational exemptions and evaluate each request on a case-by-case basis. Remove relevance as a criteria for exemption. Exemptions to be subject to time limits, with extensions to be justified. Documents to be unclassified by default. Additional resources to be provided to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner to ensure a robust and speedy FoI review and appeals process. Maintain and expand data availability though data.gov.au and support an Open Data Act mandating that data released under an FoI request is comprehensive and provided in a re-usable format.

Provide new protections for whistleblowers. Ensure provisions of the Public Interest Disclosure (Whistleblower Protection) Bill 2012 operate in full. Adopt additional measures to build in further protection to all parties: Indemnity provision to third parties involved in the disclosure of information. An intermediary system for anonymous disclosures, including a mechanism allowing whistleblowers to remain in regular, anonymous contact with investigative authorities. Allowances for expedited data preservation orders, including a provision allowing such orders to take effect before a disclosure is made in cases where evidence is at risk of being destroyed. Provisions to allow for disclosure of irrelevant information, where such information forms part of a larger document whose disclosure in complete form is necessary to preserve the quality of evidence.

All contracts and deals with suppliers and other businesses to be placed in the public domain.

Insert a non-discrimination clause applying to all publically funded bodies, universities, and bodies paid to act on behalf of the state. Providers will have no right to discriminate on the basis of sex, age, race or sexual alignment in the delivery of service provision, access to resources, or any use of public or educational premises and facilities.

Provide an official method for Australians to directly petition the federal government for a change in law or other government policy. All levels of government should recognise and facilitate e-petitions. Petitions reaching a predetermined quota to carry attendant obligations upon governments including mandated parliamentary discussion, meetings with petitioners and formal recognition of issues raised.



Improve transparency and conduct in Australian politics

Increase oversight of processes around political donations. Mandatory disclosure of all political gifts and donations provided to elected representatives which have a value over $1000. Donations to be capped at $50 per person for public events. Foreign donations to be banned. Electoral Commissions to collate information into a single searchable database available online and at Electoral Commission offices for ready access to the general public. The database will be updated at three-month intervals, with requirements for donors to report donations within 6 weeks. Prohibit donation splitting between branches of parties to prevent concealment of donations through division into smaller amounts. Create a lobbyists register with mandatory coverage of all lobbyists and full records of all meetings between lobbyists and legislators or government officials.



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Citizens' initiatives

Australians lack any direct way to enact, amend, repeal or vote for or against legislation which affects their lives. A solution to this is to allow citizens to directly petition the Commonwealth Parliament for referendums.

Citizens' initiatives allow citizens to directly participate in legislative decisions. Mechanisms of this kind have been implemented in various forms and to varying degrees in Austria,[115] at the supranational level in the European Union,[116] Finland,[117] all German states,[118] Hungary,[119] Italy,[120] Latvia,[121], Lichtenstein,[122] Lithuania,[123] New Zealand,[124] Poland,[125] Portugal,[126] Spain,[127] Switzerland,[128] several states of the United States[129] and Uruguay.[130]

The Pirate Party supports the right of Australians to exercise legislative power in certain circumstances using citizens' initiatives. However, the Pirate Party also recognises that setting a threshold is necessary to prevent abuse of the system by special interest groups.

The Pirate Party therefore supports two levels of initiatives modelled closely on the systems in Latvia, Hungary, Brandenburg and Hamburg,[131] but with adjustments made to accommodate Australia's significant geographic size and low population density. The first level, an agenda initiative, would have a lower threshold and be a binding petition to place an issue on the parliamentary agenda. If Parliament fails to take action, a full-scale initiative with a higher threshold would compel Parliament to hold a binding referendum. This allows legislative development to be guided by parliamentary institutions and procedures and to arrive at considered and enlightened decisions, as well as helping to avoid populism and the disregarding of minority interests.[132] Combining agenda and full-scale initiatives allows Australian citizens to encourage their representatives to take action, while providing a mechanism to challenge parliamentary decisions.

The Pirate Party supports legislation allowing citizens' initiatives as a temporary measure, but ultimately this right should be enshrined in the Australian Constitution.

Pirate Party Australia advocates the following reforms:

Support for citizens' initiatives

Enact a referendum to insert provisions allowing citizens' initiatives in the Australian Constitution. Initiatives would be divided into two tiers: "agenda initiatives" and "full-scale initiatives." Agenda initiatives would be non-binding mechanisms modelled on the systems in Latvia, Hungary, Brandenburg and Hamburg, which would compel Parliament to consider a particular proposal. [133] Agenda initiatives would have a petition threshold set at 0.2% of the number of enrolled electors at the Federal Election prior to the submission of the petition. Full-scale intitiatives are binding mechanisms to compel the holding of a referendum on a particular proposal. Full-scale intitiatives would have a petition threshold set at 1% of the number of enrolled electors at the Federal Election prior to the submission of the petition. Citizens' initiatives should be permitted for enacting, amending, repealing or otherwise challenging legislation.

Specifics relating to citizens' initiatives would be dealt with by legislation. Citizens' initiatives will be obliged to provide reasons for the petition and identify objectionable aims or provisions of the legislation if supporting a repeal. Legislation repealed or rejected as a result of a citizens' initiative (or legislation that is similar) could not be re-enacted without the approval of a referendum unless the objectionable provisions or their effect have been removed. [134] The High Court of Australia will have power to determine whether legislation is the same or similar and whether or not the objectionable aspects remain. To avoid excessive polling, referendums should be held at fixed intervals. [135] Unless there are three or greater successful full-scale initiatives, referendums should be held at the same time as Federal Elections.



Certain decisions to be reserved for Parliament

The decision to go to war should be vested exclusively in the Australian Parliament, not the Executive.

Executive power should be removed with regard to international legal instruments such as treaties and trade agreements. The accession to and ratification of such instruments will be decided by Parliament.



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Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and prohibition of racial discrimination

Although European colonisation of our country began in 1788, the Australian continent has been the home of indigenous societies and cultures for at least 40,000 years.[136] However, numerous indigenous societies have faced virtual destruction as a consequence of discrimination,[137] paternalism,[138] genocide,[139] as well as the introduction of diseases,[140] substance abuse,[141] slavery[142] and dependency on the state.[143] Families have been broken up,[144] and discrimination in the criminal justice system[145] has inflicted further harm on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples and their societies. Moves to amend the travesties of the past have been positive. The High Court's decision in the Mabo v Queensland (No 2)[146] overturned the doctrine of terra nullius that was used to dispossess Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.[147] The Native Title Act 1993 (Cth) restored some land rights to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples. The 2008 apology to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples was symbolic of a nation willing to make amends for the horrors of the past.[148] However, more needs to be done before we can truly have reconciliation in Australia.

Efforts have been made to recognise the rights of indigenous peoples (particularly in relation to land) in places such as the United States, New Zealand, Canada, Malaysia and South Africa.[149] The Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples draws attention to the recognition of indigenous inhabitants in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Greenland (Denmark), Russia, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico and the Philippines, in addition to Canada, New Zealand, South Africa and the United States.[150] These efforts range from recognition by the courts to treaties and constitutional recognition.

The Australian Constitution does not recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples as the original inhabitants of our country. It was drafted in an era of racial discrimination and the shadow on our constitution is undeniable.[151] In particular Section 25 permits states to discriminate on the basis of race by disqualifying persons of that race from voting, and Section 51(xxvi) permits the Commonwealth Parliament to create laws for "the people of any race for whom it is deemed necessary to make special laws."[152]

It is against that backdrop that the Pirate Party supports some of the recommendations of the Expert Panel on Constitutional Recognition of Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Peoples for a referendum to repeal the 'race provisions' in the Australian Constitution (Sections 25 and 51(xxvi)), and to include an explicit prohibition of racial discrimination.[153]

It is clear from the Uluru Statement from the Heart[154] that Indigenous Australians do not want constitutional recognition as proposed by the Expert Panel. It is also clear that many indigenous activists oppose the Uluru Statement from the Heart because it does not include the possibility of a sovereign Treaty. With this in mind, Pirate Party Australia supports Indigenous efforts to resolve the injustices of Australia’s colonial history. We recognise that sovereignty has never been ceded and support efforts to negotiate in good faith a Treaty, Treaties or other formal agreements between the Commonwealth of Australia and the First Nations as decided by representative indigenous bodies.

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Electoral System Reform

In a well functioning democracy, the outcome of an election should reflect the will of the people who voted. Interest groups, both big and small, should be able to look at the results and agree that the process was carried out with integrity and everyone is fairly represented. Further, the resulting government should have support from the majority of the population. Judged by that standard, Australian electoral systems are thoroughly broken.

Current systems fail voters

The number of seats a political party obtains in the Lower Houses of State and Federal Parliaments usually has little relation to the number of voters who support that party. Governments are regularly formed with nowhere near a majority of first-choice support. Sometimes 20% or more of the voting population goes without having their votes represented at all. In one particularly spectacular case in Queensland in 2012, an election produced a result where only a single party had any significant presence in Parliament.[155] This disconnect becomes even worse when it is remembered that MPs almost always vote according to party lines.

The root cause of this problem is the use of many single-member electoral divisions. Voters who form a minority in many divisions fail to elect their preferred party's candidates and can easily go without any representation, even though they may be a large portion of the population overall. Conversely, voters who form small majorities in many divisions can easily become overrepresented. When this geographic bias is intentionally exploited it is called gerrymandering. But even when intentional gerrymandering isn't an issue, the problem remains unless the voting system is designed to consider the big picture as well as individual divisions.

Follow-on effects from this are numerous. Landslides happen whenever a party obtains many small majorities, producing overrepresentation. Safe seats become commonplace and become neglected in favour of swing seats. Minor parties face extreme difficulty obtaining seats, as they nearly always have thinly spread support. The system encourages excessive focus on local issues even in State and Federal parliaments, because concentrated regionalism is the only path to success. Focus for minor parties shifts towards where their chances are greater, which is usually the Upper Houses, and helps to produce overcrowded "tablecloth" ballot papers. The political landscape stagnates with a mere few adversarial parties playing tug-of-war, switching back and forth every few terms.

Details differ among the different levels of government in Australia, but this problem is nearly always present. Even in the ACT's Legislative Assembly and Tasmania's House of Assembly, where multi-seat divisions are used, some disconnect between voter preferences and party results can be observed. The only places where the problem and flow on effects are unobserved are the Tasmanian Legislative Council and a number of rural Local Councils, where independent candidates dominate.

Partly as a consequence of of the 'tablecloth' ballot papers, substantial nomination deposits are required to stand in many elections around the country. For all but a handful of candidates, these deposits are effectively fees, taking up limited financial resources that would be better spent on campaigning. Further, the continued size of the Federal Senate and NSW Legislative Council ballots indicate that such fees are insufficient as a barrier to entry anyway. Finally, it is common for parties to stand candidates in areas those candidates have no connection to - because for parties, the nomination deposit is the only external restriction.

Other more minor issues also plague Australia's electoral systems. Federal division, State district, and Local ward boundaries differ wildly. Optional vs full preferencing differs depending on State, as does the methods of filling unexpected mid-term vacancies. Term lengths differ, both in length and fixed vs varying, between different levels of government. Single Transferable Vote is counted by software processing of scanned ballots, yet the software used is not made available for scrutiny.[156]

Solutions and non-solutions

Fixing the big problem and most of the follow-on effects requires a voting system that is designed to ensure that overall party support matches overall seats won. Voting systems that are designed to ensure this are called "proportional representation" systems. There are three well-tested voting systems that can provide this, or close enough to it.

Open Party List[157] is a system where voters cast a vote for a party and a candidate within that party. Seats are then allocated to each party according to the proportion of votes that party received, and those seats are filled by the most popular candidates within each party. Implementations often involve several separate multi-seat divisions, but overall proportionality can still be maintained by reserving some seats to allocate according to the overall vote. Of the three systems mentioned here, this has the highest number of other countries already using it. However it is the most different to all systems currently in use in Australia, and it has been previously tried and rejected by voters in the ACT. It also does not handle independent candidates well, nor does it do a good job providing localised representatives.

Single Transferable Vote[158] is currently in use for Local elections in some States, most Upper Houses, and the ACT Legislative Assembly and Tasmanian House of Assembly. Because political party is not taken into account, this system does not guarantee proportionality. It often gets close in practice but only when a single multi-seat division is used. This places practical limits on the overall number of seats and means no localised representation at all. The system does, however, handle independent candidates extremely well, and minimises potentially wasted votes when the available number of seats is small. These characteristics make it ideal for Local Council elections and the Upper Houses of Parliament, but not the larger Lower Houses that are generally intended to represent the population of the State/Territory/Country as a whole.

Mixed Member Proportional[159] is a system where approximately half of the available seats are filled with candidates elected from single seat divisions. Then the remaining seats are allocated to each party to ensure that the overall proportion of votes each party received corresponds to the number of seats each party obtains. If preferences are used for the single seat divisions, the required ballots closely resemble current Instant Runoff ballots. Independent candidates and localised representation are both handled about as well as with current single seat divisions. This system works best when the overall number of seats to be allocated is not too small, and most candidates are affiliated with a party. These characteristics make it ideal for the Lower Houses of Parliament. This system was chosen by New Zealand in the early 1990's when conducting reform to their electoral system.

Electronic voting, as in where votes are cast and counted entirely electronically, is not a solution. The most it could offer is an easier time handling excessively large ballot papers. But, as pointed out, that is only a minor symptom of the real problem, and in return for convenience electronic voting introduces a laundry list[160][161] of issues that compromise trust in any election. Electronically assisted voting, as in where votes are selected on a computer, printed out, then handled the same as other paper ballots, does not address the underlying problems. It too will only offer an easier time handling large ballot papers, and currently would add significant unnecessary expense to elections.

While it is distasteful to impose barriers to democratic participation, it is acceptable to require prospective candidates to demonstrate some level of community support. This support should not be measured in dollars (as it currently is), but rather in people: nomination signatures from electors of that district, region or state.

The importance of a Royal Commission

Any political party pushing directly to change the electoral system is subject to a conflict of interest. Political rivals will rightly have suspicions, and the entire issue will likely fail to gain traction. The only way to build a consensus and ensure a fair outcome is to empower an independent body to investigate the issue and come up with solutions. For that reason, the goal of this policy is to have a Royal Commission appointed which will determine a fair course of action.

Proposed Reforms

Pirate Party Australia advocates for a Royal Commission on the electoral systems used in all levels of government in Australia, to decide on how to best make our elections fairer, more democratic, and more accessible to the voting population.

To that Royal Commission, Pirate Party Australia will make the following recommendations:

Voting Systems

Mixed Member Proportional is the best option for use in all State and Federal Lower Houses This would ensure both accurate overall representation of the votes, and that all areas have an MP tasked with representing their concerns Optional preferential is the best option for electing the division seats, to allow voters full control and for consistency with Single Transferable Vote No thresholds should be used, as they distort the results away from how people voted The Largest Remainder Method with Droop quota [162] is the best option for allocating top-up seats to parties, for consistency with Single Transferable Vote Best Near Winner [163] should be used for filling top-up seats to ensure all MPs are directly elected by the people

Single Transferable Vote is the best option for use in all Local Councils and State and Federal Upper Houses This works well with both the large number of Independent Local Councillors and the small number of seats available in most State and Federal Upper House elections Above The Line voting should be abolished, as reform to the Lower Houses should ease the candidate crowding that originally necessitated Above The Line The number of Wards for Local Councils should be minimised, ideally using only one whenever practical to avoid geographic bias

Robson Rotation[164] should be adopted for all elections in order to eliminate the effects of donkey voting

Nominations

Abolish nomination deposits entirely, or else reduce them to a nominal level

Instead, require nomination signatures, from residents of the relevant electorate

The number of signatures should be set at a level reflecting the minimum number of campaigners required to interact with a majority of the electorate For the House of Representatives, 10 nominators per candidate, as the top 10 polling places in each Division serve about half the population there For the Senate, 10 nominators for every House of Representatives Division in the State or Territory, per candidate

To ease the volume of election-time paperwork: Prospective candidates would be permitted to lodge nominations throughout the year prior to the election Parties undergoing membership audits in the year prior to the election, who demonstrate membership numbers in any electorate equal to or exceeding the nomination requirements, would be pre-approved to stand candidate(s) in those electorates Members of Parliament who are re-contesting their seat would be exempt from these requirements



Consistency

State and Federal geographic division boundaries should be aligned, but Local Council areas should be left to reflect natural community boundaries This would be made practical through the flexible number of single division vs topup seats involved in Mixed-Member Proportional

All government elections should be standardised to fixed four year term lengths

Integrity

Paper ballots should remain the only method used for casting votes at all elections, with voters encouraged to cast votes in person at dedicated polling places

Any and all software used in the scanning and counting of paper ballots should have its source code made available to the public for scrutiny





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Economic reform

Merger of tax and welfare systems, and establishment of a basic income

Australia's tax and welfare systems have grown so complicated that they are almost impossible to understand.[165] The tax system now comprises more than 120 different taxes[166], and includes a range of bad incentives which favour property speculation and penalise work and saving.[167] The complexity nullifies any chance at real government transparency; it also forces more than two thirds of taxpayers to file returns through tax agents.[168]

The welfare system also faces problems with complexity. It has grown in ad-hoc fashion to encompass more than 20 separate payments, each with different means tests, sub-payments, administrative arrangements and compliance regimes.[169] Administrative costs for tax and welfare run to over $5 billion annually, and over $80 billion is "churned" (collected as tax and then returned to the sa