Serious question.
If you genuinely had the power to change how Australia is run — not just talk on TV or argue in Parliament — what would you *actually* change?
A few things I keep wondering about (feel free to disagree):
Do we talk way too much in politics and do way too little?
Should leadership be judged more by infrastructure, systems, and outcomes than by press conferences and slogans?
Does the monarchy still make sense in 2025, or should Australia finally become a republic with leadership that clearly answers to Australian citizens?
What should “Australia first” actually mean in practice — beyond being a slogan people argue about?
Should citizens be able to see how the country is performing through transparent systems and data, instead of relying on politicians telling us things are going well?
If Australia were being designed today from scratch, would we really choose the same constitutional and governance setup we have now?
This isn’t about defending or attacking any particular politician or party. I’m more interested in big structural ideas, uncomfortable opinions, and what people really think Australia should look like if change were actually possible.
So — if you had the power, what would you change?
And what would you keep?
Nationalise mining.
Absolutely. That has to be front and centre. If not nationalising, I’d at least charge a gross royalty on all commodities. Use that money to firstly pay down some national debt and then fund Medicare and ndis and better pay for teachers (more on that below).
Strategic gas reserves put aside for cheap domestic use.
Fix ndis fraud. It’s a good program but costs are too high.
A well articulated immigration plan - immigrants are absolutely welcome and important to our country but I would reduce it from where it currently is until infrastructure can catch up.
Massive reform of the ACCC and our competition policy. I’d arm them to the teeth and make them a real instrument to keep monopolies at bay. This contributes to our cost of living more than people realise. It’s a structural fault in our economy.
But above all, a HUGE emphasis on education. The next generations need to be better educated. I’d make science and maths compulsory all the way through to year 12, not just English. I’d also have a mandatory civics subject where everyone learns about taxes and the economy. The ignorance when it comes to tax policy in our country is off the charts.
NDIS needs to be means tested before anything else. It’s an easy win and simple to put in place.
Mining and natural resources are simple and we don’t need to reinvent the wheel, we just copy Norway.
NDIS is great help my child but talking to my parents Speech therapy use to be bulked billed when I was a kid.
Plus they use to go to the school.
A lot of NDIS should be covered by Medicare especially appointments. And providers need to be held accountable a lot jack up their prices once NDIS is mentioned.
Providers and support workers exploitation is beyond a joke
Once again, people treating the NDIS as a welfare scheme (which it isn't), not an insurance scheme (which it is). You do that, and you know what's next, guaranteed? Medicare becomes mean tested. Free schooling becomes mean tested. Is that what you want? Because that is 100% what you will get.
NDIS has its place, and as much as it needs to be reigned in, I am glad it exists.
But it's honestly a shame that we were able to allocate so damn much money to the NDIS, but were incapable of rolling non-elective dental into Medicare.
America replaced healthcare with insurance schemes; it's a terrible idea. A lot of the NDIS supports should be standard healthcare for all Australians (psychology, psychiatry, speech therapy etc), some aspects should be welfare (support workers, DSP etc), and some should be insurance (mobility, building modifications etc).
Funny how you bring up Medicare becoming means-tested as a "what if" but ignore that NDIS came in 2013 and bulk billing was frozen in 2014 - the money for NDIS comes from somewhere and we're all paying for it. Add in the massive waitlists for psychologists and psychiatrists in part because of the NDIS.
I very much support the NDIS in principle (equity for people with disabilities), but the answer is not mass privatisation of things that can both benefit all Australians and be administered a lot more affordably, while freezing or ignoring infrastructure spending. I'm against the absurd profiteering occurring, and am very interested in solutions for supporting people with disabilities without blowing budgets, creating massive waitlists and foregoing other infrastructure.
We're a small and wealthy population with a fuckload of natural resources, we absolutely can service the country quite comfortably with a little bit of forethought.
One reason I used Medicare as an example is that it too uses the insurance model. The fact that it is a universal scheme with the government underwriting it is what sets it apart from the American system. The Health Insurance Commission was the government agency that administered it (set up under the Whitlam Government) until Howard repackaged it as a part of Services Australia.
It appears from your post that you are placing "insurance schemes" on one side of the ledger, and "standard healthcare" on the other. Yet that's not a meaningful divide at all, because how you provide a standard form of healthcare is typically through one kind or another of insurance scheme (merely one that is universal and underwritten by the government, as I've said).
The reason I made the distinction between the insurance model and the welfare model is that the latter is almost always means-tested in one way or another, whereas the former isn't. Welfare is a "nice to have" delivery model, whereas insurance is an obligation, but with some administrative rules attached.
The idea that "we" can just "give healthcare" to everyone doesn't correspond to any functioning administrative scheme. It's a child's model of government. It doesn't know of resource constraints of any kind - rather, it waves them away with assurances that "we" have almost unlimited wealth. I'm sorry to get cranky about this but I've worked in government my entire life and I am sick of people who understand nothing about government telling me all about how they know better than anyone with experience about how it can all be "simplified" and made to work with airy promises and gauzy attention to detail.
The NDIS has made many mistakes, and is still learning from them. That's how big, sweeping changes roll out - there's a fallacy that perfect planning takes away all risks and challenges, with the corollary that any problems are just the fault of "bad planning". Yes, there has been some profiteering, and some problems with costs. I'm pretty annoyed at some of those, which can at least partly be sheeted home to the Coalition trying to make it easier for their backers to get rich. Yah booh them.
if it's an insurance scheme who pays the premium? the federal govt pays and the liability is open ended - and that's insane.
How is that any different from Medicare? It's also "open ended" - there are no caps on how many sick people get treated under it!
But the other side is not true either. The scope of NDIS coverage has been realigned, because it was being used to pay for many things that other services and funding was supposed to cover (mental health, primary care, housing and accommodation). I'm not saying it's been perfect or flawless. But it is better than what came before - little choice, no say in what you get.
Medicare spending is open ended and controlled and the rises are very predictable, no surprises, NDIS spending growth is off the charts, it's needs based welfare and that's fine as something needed to be done, 50+ billion in spending is absolutely bonkers.
I know working and able people making above average salaries in Sydney that are getting NDIS. Makes zero sense.
Because the logic is that you shouldn't be disadvantaged and have to spend large amounts of your income on medical/disability expenses when someone without a disability would not. If these weren't covered, many of them would not be able to hold these jobs.
Do you have any idea how expensive power wheelchairs and house modifications are? In an ideal world many of these things would not be necessary, but the reality is that much of the built environment is made for people operating within the mean height/speed/dexterity/mobility etc, meaning that $$$ have to be spent so a person can simply go to the toilet, make their breakfast or travel to the office.
Do you have a record of their doctors appointments and know every bit about them?
If only people were a bit more concerned with the job network agencies decades ago maybe just maybe the NDIS wouldn't be so much of an issue for so many now.
It’s like they want all the policing and then bitch about how much it costs, even funnier there is far more rorting now. Dumb fucks can’t appreciate we help those that need until too many cry and a government tries to “fix” it to keep their stupid asses happy.
imagine if our government got paid for our resources like Dubai and shit, we could be building cities in the middle of Australia.
I'd be more than happy to compromise on limiting the full gross royalty to 1st order exports.
If you refine/process/smelt it on-shore, then I don't actually mind if you avoid the bulk of any royalty payments.
If you're just shipping bulk ore or low-level intermediates off to be value added in Asia, then I'm sorry, but you gotta pay your dues to the country in full.
I’d vote for you 👏🏼
For your point about immigration, why don’t we just build the infrastructure instead. Use the moment from mining.
You have my sword
... and my tax
There is a well articulated immigration plan btw, it just came out in 2023 so nobody cared because it wasn’t the flavour of the month taking point at the time and people were whinging about inflation instead.
Agree with almost everything here. Taxing minining and mineral operations to pay off debt, lower taxes, and also fund the infrastructure project desperately needed to enable cities to grow in population.
Australia has a cash cow and allows it all to profit private industries.
Bonkers
You sound like someone I would vote for, throw your hat in the ring mate I like your policies
The front fell off
In 1972 Gough Whitlam was PM and looked to Norway as a template for doing just this act. It wasn’t such a novel idea as trains/buses/utilities/water/telecommunications were all nationally owned. Enter Murdoch. The same rags that lauded Labor to gain power were now opposing and ridiculing their every move. His rags attacked this and all ideas proposed by Whitlam until Kerr intervened. We would’ve otherwise had a Sovereign Wealth Fund to rival Norway and had the money to channel into public health/education/dental. We would’ve owned and built infrastructure/housing/railways, avoiding the current situation of non-existent public housing and exorbitant toll fees, also affording high-speed interstate rail as a travel option to see this great countryside leisurely and opening up rural tourism. It’s not too late. All future mines/renewables/high-speed rail could be irrevocably Govt owned embedded in law so neo Liberals couldn’t sell it to pay for their BS ‘better economic management lie’ perpetuation. To commence this, the Japanese gas contracts need to be torn up immediately and renegotiated to be fairer to Australia- they’re a joke foisted on us by Howard’s stupidity ( economic managers … phhhhtttt !!! ). To fast track this commitment, we could partner Atlassian owner Cannon-Brookes to renewables projects & this will attract others … Twiggy ? Gina ? As the $$ roll in to the Sovereign Fund, the Govt can then help the ppl of Australia without stating ‘there’s not enough money’. Currently we’re in the position that the Budget hasn’t enough $$ flowing into the coffers. THIS is the No.1 priority. The rest becomes affordable.
Murdock is still a cancer, abc is just a cheap copy. We are sadly in need of honest media
Been there done that Gough Whitlam tried and got removed by the CIA.
Australia is a US asset not ally.
Kuwait has nationalised oil which is why it’s the worlds strongest currency
Don't blame the CIA. That was plain old home grown bastardry on the part of Murdoch & the Coalition.
How? Pay the owners of mining assets market value?
Copy the Norway model
We create mining licences that are extremely expensive and if they aren't renewed it gets nationalised.
They're not expensive, they're dirt cheap.
Start exposing the rife corruption through our Governments over the years.
Little by little more corruption comes to light.
Powerful people will protect themselves. Exposing others.
The reality is this is likely a terrible idea outside of some very select operations or specific areas within the sector.
Everybody loves to look at all the positives, but none of the negatives. The benefit of dealing in hypotheticals.
If you look at the kind of capex involved in mining, the risk profiles, the level of complexity and specialisation that goes into the industry etc there is a reason we leave it up to the private sector.
That doesn’t mean it’s impossible to have a national mining company or something. We could literally just buy one out and operate it. But would it actually be a benefit?
Like we could buy say Santos for the ~40bn they are asking but.. why? It’s not that profitable. It’s risky and inconsistent. We already make money from their operations via many many different revenue sources and it costs us much much less than 40bn to do so.
If we spend that same 40bn on roads, hospitals, housing etc we will get a lot more out of it. Because we enable long term growth of every part of our society and economy by doing so, including helping to facilitate more mining and extraction which we profit off as a nation.
If it was as much of a no-brainer as people think it is we would have done it decades ago.
Like if we think the LNP being basically a giant mining lobby is bad now.. how much worse would it be when they are directly involved, like the mining minister is literally running the company or appointed an “expert” to do it who will literally just be.. one of the same people who is funding them now?
I think people need to think more than one step ahead. It not just “free money” if you nationalise industries they bring a whole host of issues along with those benefits. People should be realistic and think about what they’re advocating for a bit more imo.
Governments are inefficient by nature. For some things it matters less where the service is more important than the profit.
For mining we need the profit. We need to regulate it better with harsher (sometimes personal) consequences for noon compliance.
Bro it's 2025. We've lived through the age of privatisation, Reaganomics, Thatcherism, neo-liberlsism and globalism and you still roll out this cute little furphy. The main argument for universal healthcare is the significant efficiency of it all being administered under one roof.
Governments are not inefficient by nature. You just haven't adjusted your world view in a few decades.
Choice is a hard word for some. Should have encouraged my kids to be career politicians
Ahh, the old governments are inefficient meme. A businesses sole purpose is to make revenue, not to be efficient. Government services are focused on providing the services, not making a profit. Privatisation of any service or resource ultimately leads to worse outcomes for the general public.
Exactly! This is the biggest problem in Australia right now. If we did this mass immigration wouldn’t be such a burden cause it would cover the costs. Take the pressure off the population, they’re making us pay the tax deficit left by the companies that take all of our resources. They don’t pay their way so we have to pay the bill.
Big Australia policy is not sustainable.
Remove religious and corporate lobby groups from having any say in parliament or the formation of laws.
Remove special treatments that are based on religion for any and all groups.
Everyone gets freedom of religion and freedom FROM religion.
Tax all religions too
I would rather say "remove their blanket tax exemption". They can be tax free for their actual, audited charity work. Everything else that generates income or spends money is a business / corporate entity, just like the CWA or the Scouts.
Many, many churches are just barely hanging on.
They fund the workers via tithe. For most traditional churches there is no wealth gain except the mega churches which are just literal businesses.
The smaller ones pay people out of the tithe - well thats how Christianity works, idk the term for the other religions but I imagine it would be the same. Pastor takes the biggest cut and then everyone else takes some.
Those wages are taxed as it is income thst must be reported.
Alright, here comes the downvotes: Religions are taxed like any other not for profit, and since Australia taxes profit, not revenue, there's not a lot to tax. I mean, it's in the name, right? NOT for profit?
All NFPs, including ones like your local kid's football club or Scouts do get a few extra benefits, such as FBT exemptions. My wife works for a children's remedial literacy organisation, she gets something like 12k of her salary that can be used for anything that would normally be FBTed, without having to pay FBT on it.
Depending on the state, they may also get land tax exemptions. NSW does, Vic doesn't.
That's about it. That's pretty much all the tax breaks they get. Ministers and other employees pay income tax as normal, GST is complicated, but by and large, since they are not reselling anything, they are not entitled to GST credits, so they are paying that.
When people think that churches pay no tax, they may be thinking of deductible gift recipients. That is, registered charities. In this case, a church charity like the Salvos directly helping homeless people are treated the same as Guide Dogs helping blind people.
If the church building is dual use for a charitable purpose, such as some of the inner city churches serving hot meals to the homeless out of them, or it is used as a school, the church can apply for a partial deductible gift recipient status for a portion of the upkeep. This is generally not a large amount and it covers stuff like extra wear and tear and breakages from the charitable purposes.
There's definitely money to be "made" if you treated a church like a for profit business venture. But it's not the billions some people think it is.
Yup, go ahead and downvote me without bothering to check the ATO website. It happens every time I mention this... To quote the smartest man in the central finite curve: "Your boos mean nothing, I've seen what makes you cheer".
Religions do actually have privileged tax exemption status that is considerably more generous than not-for-profits.
I trust you can cite an example on the ATO website then?
https://www.acnc.gov.au/manage-my-charity-type/basic-religious-charities
That link describes the conditions for a religion to qualify to register a charity. Unless I missed it (and I'll be honest, I skimmed it because a lot of people on Reddit arguing in poor faith just throw volumes of irrelevant information in hopes of just overwhelming the other party and looking like they know what they're talking about), there's nothing there that says there is an entitlement to any special tax treatment equivalent non religious charities won't get?
“For a charitable purpose”. That’s the sticking point for me. I grew up in a non mainstream faith. It has millions of dollars worth of property but claims to have dual use of these, offering programs “to better society” so they’re tax exempt. All they do in those buildings is indoctrinate children and try to convert people. Nothing that benefits humanity.
How would that work? The legal entities that religions use don't pay dividends or have shareholders. How much tax do you think Australia would get?
The 7th day Adventist church owns and runs Sanitarium. Weetbix, up-n-go etc. a profit of $500M+ a year, tax free.
The Exclusive Brethren runs businesses in construction/mining (like Plyco/FSC) and controls significant market share. They also benefit from tax exempt status
The Catholic Church alone has property worth around $30 billion in Australia yet pays nothing in land tax. So there’s a few dollars right there
Well the Catholic Church contrary to what most seem to think (in my experience) doesn’t have that much money, and really the only ways they could get it, is real estate development, or selling off ancient religious artefacts which wouldn’t make them enough to sustain operations.
TIL that a business only pays tax if they have shareholders or pay dividends. Small business owners will rejoice at learning this.
Resources and energy are commonwealth and will be taxed accordingly. Energy resources will be used to reduce the cost of manufacturing and doing business in Australia. All the housing tax advantages are gone and only residents will be able to buy property. Immigration will be very strictly enforced to provide for actual market needs. No more dodgy language college bullshit. When infrastructure catches up then immigration can be expanded again. Australians standard of living had been decimated over the past decade and there needs to be accountability.
Invade New Zealand
The biggest easiest most pervasive thing to fix, the politico-corporate corruption.
Make it illegal for politicians to take any lobbying money (bribes) and that all of their choices must be actually in Australia's best interest.
The long history of all pervasive politicians doing corporate deals and getting rich by allowing companies foreign and otherwise to drop money on politicians to sway them to make decisions that don't serve broader Australia. It's the whole racist idea that "the Chinese are taking over" - no, corrupt selfish Australian politicians are selling all these things to "them" for their own money.
Having politicians use our tax money to do shitty business deals like AUKUS submarines just so the politician gets money and a cushy job when they leave parliament (as well as their lifelong pension) when actually our money should go into helping all of us with things like high speed rail, breaking the duopoly of supermarkets, investing in the arts/music so there's more fun lifestyle things to do than just purchase and tv, helping the environment and clearing the pollution of previous generations.
The fact we have politicians be vocal advocates about a cause then get into parliament and backflip completely because they're getting a couple mil under the table is disgusting when we voted for them because of shared views on an issue.
Australia is really corrupt but just PRs it's way out of any accountability.
Easy workaround. Companies will just hire former politicians, as a wink and nod to the current mob. Always hire someone outside of their old portfolio, so even restrictions can’t be enforced. All current MP’s will quickly learn to play ball, even across the political spectrum
Donations exist partly so politics doesn’t become an ultra-rich-only game. If only people who can self-fund can run, that’s literally a 1% club.
The real issue is weak caps, poor transparency, revolving doors after politics, and zero teeth in enforcement.
Fix those and you shrink corruption. Ban donations and you just push influence underground or hand power to the already rich.
I have a friend who'd bought into the anti union spiel a long time ago. He does YouTube videos about Australian historical sites these days. While researching one he found an example of a rail tunnel and connections to one of our early governments that gave farmers the right to not pay their workers when our wool economy was in trouble. I pointed out that unions were basically the means by which every country actually got politicians that represented the working classes. Prior to unions funding political parties only the rich had the leisure time to be in politics. The working classes were too busy trying to feed their families. It was very nice to see my friend finally understand what I was talking about. But the anti union spiel is very easy to sell. It's harder to inform.people if the value of unions and the political parties they fund because it takes some complex explanations that people get bored with.
Yeah people look at systems or things that work a certain way but then don't really think about how everything plugs together or what's actually going on a lot of the time.
Like democracies themselves are really just a truce between the most powerful (ie wealthy) factions in any particular nation, where they all decide to "share" the power and influence of being in the top spot.
Modern democracies have a lot of complicated ins and outs but they're really just the same thing still. People with power/money exerting control via their wealth and influence. Yeah we have universal voting and stuff now, but who do you vote for and how do you know who to vote for etc.? All of this is constructed by these same people still. You just have a little more input into which group should get to be in charge this time.
Unions are and evolution that allows the "workers" to have a faction/wealth/influence and therefore be represented too. Unlike wealthy landowners or rich capitalists or aristocrats etc. who can organise amongst a small circle, and have the means and connections to shape these political faction, workers can't do this in small numbers and alone because they aren't rich and well connected. Therefore, they need to pool their resources and organise into unions in order to both have the resources/power to influence politics and create a fair way of determining what the unions should actually use the power to do.
Unions/Labor are the only real reason our entire political landscape isn't just "rich guys team number 1" and "rich guys team number 2".
It's gotten much more complex in the modern economy a the worker/owner divide has broken down (largely thanks to unions and organised labour winning better pay and working conditions and all that stuff) and now it's not so clear to people exactly who's side they should be on. But people are short sighted with shorter memories.
And gaslights.
Make housing affordable for everyone - including say people on the dole being able to rent a decent place.
And I say this as a homeowner. Don't give a flying fuck if the on-paper value of my place drops to 1970s levels because I'm an owner-occupier and it means I can move or upsize more easily anyway and with less stamp duty.
The main people who would suffer would be investors but fuck them. Also unfortunately people who have more recently taken out a mortgage and would go into negative equity which wouldn't be good, so it would need to be done gradually over a number of years.
As a related issue: ban AirBnBs and all similar holiday rentals, with the only caveat being that maybe you could rent out a spare room in your home *while you are living there*, and not take homes off the market for renters or buyers.
You haven’t really said how you would achieve this, other than banning Airbnb’s, which obviously has other consequences for regional businesses that rely on tourism.
There was tourism before Air bnb.
Designate some areas as tourist zones. Only a small percentage of rentals in those zones can be airbnb.
Sounds alright. There are places like Kangaroo Valley, Mornington Peninsula, Jindabyne, the Barossa, Byron, the Blue Mountains around Katoomba etc that could do with B'n'B style accommodation instead of hotel development, then it's just a matter of setting the % and having a fair system for allocating who gets to be a host.
I'd say something like yearly lotteries every 1st of the month, so if there's enough demand, 1/12 of AirBnB "licences" could potentially be turned over on that day.
Allows owners to get tenants in for a 12 month lease, more or less, and avoids the problem of "moving day" where in places like NYC all leases ended on the same day causing mass chaos.
I'd never heard of that historic NYC leasing day before. That must've been absolute hell
Yeah, amongst other things the pantechnicons (moving businesses) would charge surge prices on steroids or simply not show up if someone offered more.
So people would dump bulky items in the streets, adding to the chaos.
"Moving day" is a good search term, I heard about it in this historical-comedy podcast:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/1fI6lqGUiU0PHavQPb7v1h
To be fair, the question didn't ask how, only what.
Some other suggestions would include:
Just a few ideas off the top of my head. Some might put upward pressure on the market so it's only a starting point for analysis and discussion.
3 main points though: 1. Incentivise building of more homes, especially more cheap ones, including by the govt 2. Make it more attractive for investors to go into stocks or other financial instruments 3. Give owner-occupiers an advantage compared with investors. Very much related to point 2.
I agree. The how is the multi billion dollar question.
Reduced regulation and planning laws to allow mass house building. Reduce net migration.
Essentially increase supply and reduce the acceleration of demand.
It should be illegal for politicians to have investment properties. It's a massive conflict-of-interest.
We're one of the most energy-rich countries in the world. Our gas and electricity bills should not be as high as they are.
Shift funding from private schools to public schools. Everyone deserves free education especially at the primary secondary levels. It'll pave the way to give cooked meals for breakfast and lunch for children to ensure they get nourished to perform at their best.
I think everyone deserves the same level of funding around education. The people who send their kids to private school also pay taxes. But some of those private schools currently receive more than public schools, which is disgusting.
Yep, all kids should receive the same level of funding and it can be paid to schools on a per student basis.
But there also needs to be exceptions for area schools and school of the air, such as floor funding and higher per student funding rate.
They choose to send their kids to private a school.
Let them shoulder the full financial burden of that.
There are many public services that I and probably you pay taxes for but don't use. Education shouldn't be any different .
Private school funding by taxes is like the community paying for private roads and medical care that only the wealthy are allowed to use.
One consequence is that there will be more people using the public system, so more tax payer money required. I agree with the school meals.
Put dental under Medicare.
At least double politicians' salaries but have robust anti corruption measures eg no working for lobbying industries for 10 years.
Copy Norwegian resource taxes and sovereign wealth fund.
Carbon tax that is just directly played to Aussies, not to government.
Aren’t our politicians already some of the highest paid world wide? I thought the idea of high pay was to reduce corruption and bribes but that’s basically what lobbyists are, ban lobbyists and increase anti corruption measures.
The price on carbon was a revenue neutral scheme, i.e. the government kept nothing and recycled it all back to taxpayers at tax time.
What Abbott did (creating a permanent structural hole in the budget) was to promise the same tax breaks but without actually capturing the revenue in the first place.
Remove all subsidies for private health and shift it into public health
Tax mining corps, break up the Murdochracy, cut all ABC positions currently held by former news Corp employees.
Increase centrelink payments and/or some form of UBI.
Implement some changes to the housing market to deter people from buying more than "X" amount of investment properties
Deter people from "investing" in existing residential properties (it's not investing, it's speculating) but facilitate investing in building new residential properties. Just like Labor proposed at the 2019 election.
I’d just give everyone a farm, some turnip seeds and a free pet. Problems solved
We could also give them a home among the gumtrees, maybe lots of plum trees as well. While your at it, a sheep or two, a kangaroo, a clothesline out the back, verandah out the front and an old rocking chair.
Is that your cunning plan, Baldrick?
Better urban planning.
Let people live fulfilling lives without needing a car.
Let parents feel comfortable with their children walking to school because they don't have to walk across car roads.
Have plentiful, accessible public spaces where people can socialise, exercise and be close to nature.
Prioritise dark skies so that even in the centre of Brisbane you can see the Milky Way.
Have bush stops on railway lines so people can go camping, bushwalking and simply enjoy nature without needing a car.
id just increase the parliamentary term. 3 years is just not enough, and its the reason neither of our major parties are actually doing anything. they are too focused on short term wins to lock in re-election than long term solutions.
If the intent of the change was to retain the current system of government this would be it. Possibly 5 years would be okay.
Remove tax exemptions for religious organisations and stop all funding of private school
It's always a popular wish but in practice it would do sfa. Religious entities may be wealthy but they don't make much if any profit.
Stopping funding for all private schools would cause a run from private to public and cost taxpayers. How about reducing funding to elite private schools.
Tax religion!
Pls explain how that would work on entities that have wealth but don't make profit. I'm no fan of organized religion but taxing them will do sfa.
Do somethings about states, its crazy that drivers license are different.
Forget taxing resources companies. Common drivers license regs top priority. Got it. /s
Actually value education.
Give public schools and universities funding so education is more effective and appreciated in our society.
Stop immigration until hospitals and housing can catch up.
Taxation reform is my first stop :
• Back to more tax brackets with higher incomes taxed higher and closing all the loop holes, simplify it.
• Close all the loop holes for multinational and large companies • introduce inheritance tax on massive inheritances based on starting at a fixed multiple of mean income; perhaps 30x.
• resource extraction should be taxed properly
• removal of GST
• removal of all negative gearing, CG discount, superannuation tax breaks on large sums.
• tax large vehicles over 3L engine size more Probably a few more I can’t think off
Dental in Medicare , increase rebates and abolish all private healthcare
Abolish and slowly close all private schooling
I seriously don’t understand why people go to private school, they are a massive scam so it’s good to see people want them gone!
It separates people from an early age into income brackets and different religions. Forces differences and wedges between Australian society.
There’s no good outcomes for us as a whole
And yes , partly a scam
Make it so only natural persons can own property and each natural person can only own one residential property
What about renters?
Hopefully this fixes prices so everyone who wants to buy one can
Not everyone wants to buy. I know plenty of people who are very happy to rent, and many elderly people who sold their homes so they could rent. What are they meant to do?
That's why I said "everyone who wants to". There will always be many more natural persons than homes
So where do they obtain these rentals from if everyone can only own one home?
There is a change to the law that would make this possible.
There could/should be a requirement to come to the deeds office and physically pick up the deed. Any actual person can do this. Corporations are a legal fiction and exist withouty form, so are literally not capable of any physical activity.
The limited liability corporation is humanity's second worse invention.
Change family court system - It’s broken the only ones that see it working are lawyers and those in the legal system milking it
Culture wars and anti-intellectualism would be stamped out.
We have a high level of promoting misinformation and bullshit.
So many things are divisional and fear-mongering.
I mean just something as basic as motoring culture where drivers are encouraged and backslapped for abusing cyclists.
More care for the environment. Visiting countries like NZ where the environment is preserved, enjoyed but respected is eye-opening compared to the bash through a forest in your 4WD and take videos of it smoking away culture we have here.
I think the easiest way to fix something is to either copy what worked previously, or to just copy from something almost identical.
This takes out a lot of the guesswork and hoping for miracles.
For option 1, we should just try to look at our own history and figure out how we went from a prison island to the economic powerhouse that we are today. CBA is in the top 5 most profitable banks in the world, and we only have around 28 million people, one of the lowest among other major countries. For reference, US has around 350 million and Germany 80 milllion.
The second option is to just copy the economic success of US, given that our land mass is almost identical to it.
The biggest point of difference I see are (1) empty barren land
What this means is that, we don’t have enough cities with businesses and people for the government to draw revenue from. This is also the same reason why we don’t have several things that are available in US, Europe and Asia but not here. Our population is so low, that we simply DO NOT have the demand needed to be even considered a potential market for some goods (maybe someday we can get a Nio or Rivian here 😢)
(2) no massive bodies of water WITHIN Australia, connecting different parts of it.
So we don’t have a cheap and easy way to transfer goods and services between different parts of the country, to make the above possible. Building roads is SUPER expensive (I think it’s multi-million to billions cost wise) whereas water is free and Aussies are great ship builders historically.
So just addressing these 2 points, should get us half of the way there.
We are already addressing option 1 by mass immigration, but doing it wrong so people are obviously pissed. The government should have a massive 30-50 year infrastructure project such as “building highways to connect Sydney to Perth” And then have all the new migrants work on and stay around these projects. This will ensure that we are building new cities without actually affecting Sydney (or other major cities here) Can do visa conditions or just good infrastructure so that people actually stick around these rural parts instead of trying to move back. Over time these parts will fill up with people and turn into its own bustling city. This structure is similar to what they have in US and Canada right now.
To address point 2, just need to use the miracle of modern engineering to redirect all the water from flood prone areas of QLD and NSW to the center of the country. This becomes a 2 birds with 1 stone thing, where u address the floods and also the water shortage in the middle. As a bonus, can combine this with point 1 to solve several issues in one go. 😁
We then need some iron clad policies, to really lock in the gains so that the money goes only to the people and not private corporations. Maybe a government owned company that is responsible for all this development, and the profits go to its shareholders, which would be the citizens of Australia.
Or a law similar to the one in Norway, where all private companies need to give royalty to its people for drilling for oil and gas and other resources. Even if we can’t pass that here now for our oil and gas, we can pass something similar for such infrastructure projects.
Ban all Murdoch media, both print and electronic. We don't need that far-right propaganda rotting the minds of otherwise rational Australians.
😂
Or just break it all up. our media is like 3 giant monopolies, this is the problem. If the Murdoch's owned 1 paper, their control would disappear overnight.
You dont want to start picking and choosing whose voices get heard. Murdoch is right in the same way The Guardian is left. Both should be able to be heard within reason. Besides, rational Australians need a variety of opinions to make up their own mind.
Ooh this is fun!
First thing would be one government of a big mix of regular people made up of all the people. Not a homogeneous group of wealthy elite brought up in a completely different world to the average citizen.
Decisions would rely more on data than emotion or mud-slinging. We decide as a country, compromise and reach solutions, not they decide what works best for them, then pay millions for propaganda and slander campaigns to convince us they’re right.
Voting would run totally differently. Prior to an election, they run a survey/census where we allllllll put our concerns and ideas into a giant list, there’s an unbiased analysis to group themes and categories, we can see the most frequent topics and they’re ranked in order of say the top 20. Then parties have to come up with ideas of how they’d get them done, actual tangible steps we can use to judge, any single politician that starts a campaign or debate with ‘vote for me because the other party is shit’ or brings in any unwarranted fear or divide is immediately disqualified from running.
Then we also have a simplified list to measure performance and that’s what determines whether they stay or go for the next round. But the data would be clear, not vague and twisted. We wanted electricity prices to drop by 10%, they achieved that. We wanted to solve crime by finding the root cause, they discovered the root cause and have started steps to address those, not bandaids or guess work eg they can’t just say because immigration is bad - nope I want the evidence for this BEFORE you make sweeping claims and target innocent groups, starting from unfounded guess work gets you booted out
Media would be accountable and transparent. Conflicts of interest would be obvious and actually stamped out. Politicians would have no say or ownership of media companies. Journalism would go back to being fact-checked and evidence based not opinion, and any misinformation is both publicly retracted and corrected across ALL platforms and anyone continuing the narrative is blocked from public posting until they learn basic skills in fact-checking.
No more ‘I hate xyz because I read the herald sun and they said xyz’. If it’s wrong, we ALL get that information no matter the platform we read or watch. Oh and while I’m at it, social media influencers will not be allowed to report ‘news’ - go away we don’t need your outrage being spread on topics you don’t understand and have no idea about!
Every single citizen would have to learn how to spot agendas, all the tactics would be exposed and people who prop themselves up by crushing the rest of us, twist truths to fuel divide, spread false information, would be laughed out of power
I could go on, but in summary I would change everything about how we consume information and place more decision-making power in the hands of the actual people those decisions affect.
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Who decides what makes a person “non compatible”? You? Poorline?
That makes no sense man, how would you define an ''incompatible culture''? I would argue Americans are far from compatible if they are like the types of Americans who believe their country can do no wrong. However I still dont think we shouldnt allow them here.
So I assume you mean all white, English speaking countries are banned then?
Heavily tax the ultra rich.
How?
How, stop them from hiding their income. Why, to stop the ridiculous levels of tax avoidance. What would we define the ultra rich as? Those earning over a million per year or more?
I've got absolute power, so it'd be kind of a vibe thing.
Why?
Extend federal terms to 5years
Convert Australia into a tech and high tech specialised manufacturing hub. 44% of population is blue collared and a further big chunk is just semi skilled working in housing sector like mortgage brokers, realtors and so on and so forth. We don’t want to keep losing our scientists, Phds and tech workers to US. We need good opportunities and conducive environment for them on this land, with native Australian grown giants spreading in the world.
I like your thinking. We are starting to get a wide collection of innovative high tech companies. Some are enabler miners in say the rare earths, etc but there are a few in medicine, automation, AI even quantum computers. We just need better investment in these companies while they are in R&D. Examples of recent successes 4DX.
Would love to have more of them. Can’t wait for the day when Aussie companies build the most innovative and best tech in the world.
The government should open a bank again
Universal Basic Income and Housing Security
-Nationalise everything required to live. Power, water, gas, communication infrastructure etc, basic affordable housing (blocks of flats, not detached housing)
-Nationalise mining, oil and gas and put it money from that into a national trust like what Norway did decades ago.
-Use that money for proper roads and infrastructure including mandating strict driver training, public transport is available for those that cant drive to an acceptable standard with affordable housing nearby as mentioned above.
Build up our naval and air capability.
Take our natural resources and environment into public ownership
Get rid of lobbying and political donations to parties
Citizen working groups, 6 month periods where 100 randomised citizens gather online or in person fortnightly to discuss a particular issue the government wants addressed. Public servants & experts can make presentations to the working groups on the relevant topic during the first 4 months of the 6 month period.
At the end of the period, the working group makes binding recommendations to parliament on the action to be taken. Recommended actions can only be voided if they are unconstitutional. Citizens cannot be part of more than one working group at any point in time, and are remunerated for their time at a reasonable rate.
Parliamentarians can only serve two terms in whatever level of government they choose.
Maybe at the higher levels, but not overall. It would take many a term just to get adjusted to their new career, especially if they came from outside government. It would be like firing everyone just as they get really good and elevated to a senior position. Constantly losing a lot of experience. Obviously the idea is to stop what happens in America, where political leaders are often around for decades. I don't think this is really an issue in Australia.
Implement economic policies to disincentive housing being the main investment strategy
Can't say it without being banned. I'd change things like that, for a start. People should say exactly what they think (aside from threats). To literally anyone who is listening.
Incentivise businesses and start ups instead of over-regulating and taxing them. Give tax breaks to small businesses employing more than 5 people. Create an economy that incentivises risk taking instead of penalising it. Play to our advantages - provide incentives for mining exploration, increase funding for DMIRS and to aboriginal corporations for heratige surveys to expedite timeframes to mining development. Reduce taxes following large capital investments in processing and manufacturing for a grace period. Etc etc.
Aus becomes a Republic.
Ministers are required to have education and/or job experience in their related department. If you're the education minister, you don't get to have a background in real estate investing and no knowledge of the education system.
Crash the economy, burn bridges with our allies, purge Victoria and invade New Zealand.
TheONLY good answer here.
Kick out any murdoch enterprise and make sure nothing like that can be repeated.
Everything else should sort itself out after that, right 😉
if I had a genie id wish to remove the ability for politicians to lie forcing them to be honest
Politicians get zero benefits and can only be paid at most, the average income of the general population.
No lobbying, no political donations, no free rides, no retirement, no benefits. Make it so unfinancially appealing that only people who have a genuine interest in politics and bettering their country would ever go into politics. Instead of what it is now where crooks now they can make generational wealth within politics.
Everything else snowballs from there and gets better.
I'd immediately hand in my badge and do nothing. The idea that the government has to solve every problem is the problem
Start making our own goods and stop relying on other countries.
i'd be looking at money and finances and trying to find ways Australians can earn more money and keeping australian companies paying australians . racist policies that punish companies hiring foreigners and using foreign workers & promote companies that hire australian citizens.
infrastructure we need more expansion outwards, we need to start expanding outwards instead of over crowding cities, provide cheap land , offer incentives to build away from the city and build infrastructure to support new towns & growth.
Looking at expenses again, politicians shouldn't have unlimited funds for food, travel and other expenses, they earn 6 or 7 figures a year if they are able to pay for something out of their own funds they should, they shouldn't get a high salary pension for life either after retirement.
government funded departments need an over haul, all of them.
too many issues to name but that's a few of them
Tax all resources sent overseas 7.5% no excuses, no tax write downs,
a flat tax going directly to general revenue, and make all extra resource tax must go to health, education, infrastructure and emergency services(fire/ambo/police/ses/rfs)
First; Absolute and irreversible seperation of church and state along the lines of the French Laïcité
Second; Break up the corrupt network of the parliament dominated by lawyers, the Law Society, the Bar association and the judiciary by revoking the privilege from litigation for negligence held by Barristers and Judges. (You'd need very strong rules about what constitutes negligence for a judge). By limiting the numbers of electable positions held by lawyers along the lines of current gender rules. And by founding a commision along the lines of the Health Care Complaints Commision to make judges accountable. The commission run by non lawyers but with appointed legal advisors.
Lawyers tell you that judges are accountable to parliament. There hasn't been a judge dismissed by Parliament in NSW in a VERY long time. Are their selection processes that good?
Properly impose the resource rent tax.
Remove all lobbying from government.
Remove negative gearing.
CGT exemption for ppr only.
Greater participatory democracy where the citizens decide on National strategic objectives through 10year referenda or ad hoc citizen introduced petitions like Switzerland, and politicians implement these.
Right now is the perfect time to address cost of living and housing crisis, and if the citizens felt strongly enough, immigration (I do not, but it is a hot topic right now) and it feels like majors are not really listening.
Have a referendum.
It is now a criminal offence to not pass people on the left of the footpath. Any right-passers go straight to jail. We drive on the left, we walk on the left.
I would create an island in the shape of an ice cream cone called ice cream island where you can get a free ice cream if you visit.
Progressive tax brackets that keep going into the millions.
By the time you're a CEO of a large supermarket or Australia Post your tax brackets should be like 90%. Includes salary and salary like income.
Also billionaires cap out at 1billion wealth and then they start donating 100% back to Australia.
Absolutely nobody needs to earn that much.
Nationalise mining.
Introduce inheritance tax for the ultra wealthy.
Better anti monopoly laws / anti competitive laws.
Get money out of politics.
Fix the housing crisis: cut out all the red tape, mass build public housing, reduce immigration, limit house ownership to two per person, incentivise renting out spare rooms.
Tax and back tax the churches, using the gained funds to nationalised everything from transport to private healthcare and internet providers.
Disallow political donations from lobby groups and corporations. Limit political donations strictly to individuals, with a maximum of $2K per voting adult. Disallow campaign advertising and outreach by anyone other than the registered parties, and require simple disclosure of who they're backing as part of the communication.
Reduce parliamentary and bureaucrat salaries to bring them into line with other modern nations.
If changing to a republic, make sure that the president can be removed by simple majority parliamentary vote, and that the president can't make laws. He just runs the organisation as it is, per stipulated resources and mandate from parliament.
Include assets into tax brackets, so people who own multiple assets are taxed higher. Remove the possibility of any monopolisation of businesses.
My head hurts thinking about this
Thoughtful ideas in this thread. Thanks. My contribution would be to eliminate private school funding and pour the savings, and more, into public schools education and teacher development. And use schools infrastructure out of hours for civic programs.
These are trick questions - no one should have "absolute power to change Australia". Every well-intentioned act turns bad - yes, every one.
Ban gambling ads. Full stop.
Ban advertising for non-electrified vehicles. We need to stop relying on imported fuel when we have our own coal and solar.
Ban or strictly limit political donations, or at the very least make them fully transparent and open to the public.
Make anti-advertising against political opponents illegal, with heavy fines or even prison sentences for organisers. Sometimes it genuinely feels like a third-world country when election cycles turn into billboards throwing shit at opponents instead of talking policy.
Make the kind of rubbish that the Murdoch press do be labelled as hate speech. They make money from conflict, division and untruths that lead to distrust and hate.
Make meetings between media moguls and politicians illegal, or publicly recorded.
Increase the power and speed of the ACCC, to protect consumers.
Continually remind the rest of the world that they’re not really democracies until the have mandatory, ranked choice voting with independent electoral commissions (and mandatory democracy sausages for charity/schools).
I think the main things important for Australia's future are housing, getting more out of the natural resources we have, focusing less on a information / service based economy and more on a advanced manufacturing / design economy (including funding education appropriately to support that goal). So I would:
Build houses more public and social housing, reduce the immigration to ~120,000 per year, have a national wealth fund from resource tax, wealth tax and measures to reduce inequality (that has dramatically increased post covid largely due to the housing crisis and pandemic stimulus that benefited the most wealthy), better environmental protection, stronger military, more economic diversity and better productivity and industries, ban all political donations, have citizens boards involved in political decisions, reduce over regulation, remove the political rules stopping new parties, reduce the media’s ability to distract and divide the population of trivial issues diverting away from the real important issues, 4 day working week, more help for unemployed and disabled people to find work, better wage growth, cap ceos salaries, reduce cars in cities/better public transport and more bikes and walking, better longer term planning including decentralisation, scrap NG and CGTD, increase unemployment benefits, focus on actual sustainable environmental management, have a productivity and efficiency overhaul, stop demand side housing policies, promote more self grown fruit and veg, etc etc.
Abolish GST and cover the gap by taxing people and business appropriately (to the needs of the country) while removing abilities for corporations and individuals to avoid said taxes. Increase funding for everything that benefits society (education, health) as well as government owned essential services to provide a minimum standard of service to any who can't afford it.
Do whatever it takes to make decent housing affordable for average income earners.
I am sweet, my place is paid off but my kids, nieces, nephews etc are very unlikely to ever be in the same position I am in.
Organise you know who to make beef Wellington for ol' Rupert.
You can actually see nearly all of the information that the Federal Government has access to, and makes policy about.
Anyway, make the most stringent environmental and efficiency standards for rental properties. If a property doesn't comply then the landlord must pay the full energy costs for the property.
Alright here we go.
Every child had gives you a 33% tax cut.
This would solve immigration and housing affordability.
However you would need to make that immigration tax money up somewhere else which would likely need to come from mining.
I’d legalise weed and tax it heavily.
Either an effective and well funded anti corruption commission which also applies to lobbying, or strict laws regarding media misinformation and manipulation.
End deforestation. Invest a shit tonne more in science and R&D, so we plug the brain drain
Make political donations illegal.
Make companies pay tax here on money earned here (no 'head office in ireland' loopholes).
Fund public schools, not private.
Tax the Churches
Make housing a human right instead of a commodity.
Fix the housing situation before brining any more immigrants in
Nationalise mining / gas, make everyone do media literacy and modern history lessons
All revenues from privatized companies should be taxed at 99%. The state can and must buy back these companies at the same price that was originally paid. Privatization is a scam.
Probably a bunch of other things I'm forgetting, and also a bunch of other things I'm not even aware of that I'd change, but that's probably enough for day of Empress u/Maybe_Factor's reign
Edit: 1 more
A bill of rights
Hold all current and former members of parliament accountable for their crimes
Ban the burqa
No foreign owned infrastructure.
Cut wages of politicians
Tax large companies and banks
Improve the public health system, by getting rid of some of the substances for private hospitals and shift them to public healthcare.
Electric vehicles and Chinese cars to be assembled/made in Australia.
Tax big mining corporations.
Make massive American pick up trucks illegal and Utes over a certain size, and start incentives to make people to go back to sedans, wagons, hatchbacks instead of SUVs.
Increase freeway speed limit limits.
Scrap private health because it's a fkn scam. Increase tax, likely by less than what those premiums cost us, and boost Medicare instead.
Carve out concessions for those who aren't already on private, so you don't unfairly burden them.
Health isn't something you "insure" against, it's a service that should be given to us in return for our taxes.