What is the Point of Labor? Noel Turnbull reviews Barry Jones’ new book What Is To Be Done, and provides some answers, citing Jones’ policy list: [External link to article]
Barry Jones’ policy list
- Renovate the Constitution.
- Have an Australian head of state.
- Adopt a Bill of Rights.
- Create an Independent Commission against Corruption.
- Practise open government and rejecting all the prevailing secrecy.
- Provide appropriate funding for the ABC, CSIRO, Bureau of Meteorology and ABS.
- Invest in soft diplomacy in our region.
- Recognise the value of the humanities and the arts and providing adequate funding for them.
- Give high priority to science.
- Re-establish the moral basis of progressive taxation and recognise the increase in social inequality and the role of taxation and school funding as contributing factors.
- Be open-minded and sceptical about involvement in foreign policy and wars and supercharged spending on submarines and defence big boy toys.
- Take creative approaches to multiculturalism and rejecting the notion of education, health and the arts as ‘industries’.
- Adopt compassionate, rational and statistically based policies on refugees and asylum seekers arriving by sea.
So, what is the point of Labor?
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