Policy Platform

1. Affordable Essentials & Abundance (Universal Public Services)
2. 0% Mortgages & Rent Caps (One Public Bank)
3. Wages & Wealth Tax Equity (Universal Tax Dividends)
4. 30 hour, 4 day work week & Job Guarantee (Cooperatives, not Corporations)
5. Strengthen Democracy & Integrity (People’s Senate, Issues-based voting)

1. Affordability & Abundance

Universal services through public ownership of essential industries, ending the cost of living

• Guaranteed right to food, energy, housing and child, disabled & aged care
• Expand Medicare to eliminate health insurance; free NBN and education (HECS debt jubilee)
• Universal superannuation with 10% pa guaranteed growth
• Free public transport, nationalise Qantas and build high-speed railways

2. Finance as a Public Utility

Replace RBA and all commercial banks with a single fee-free Public Bank

• 0% owner-occupied mortgages; 5% pa interest on basic account
• No loans for speculative, non-industrial investments
• New progressive property levy on additional house(s)
• De-privatise essential industries and rent caps to control inflation

3. Taxation Reform

Fairer taxing of productive wage labour versus passive wealth accumulation

• Less than 1% income tax for majority of wage earners
• Wealth redistribution (universal tax dividends); scrap GST, negative gearing and CGT concession
• Progressive corporate tax up to 10% of revenue (cooperatives tax exempt); 30% royalty on resources
• All taxes charged immediately; digital-only cash will end tax avoidance

4. Jobs & Work-Life Balance

A Green New Deal transitioning to 21st-century low-emissions industries

• 4 day, 30 hour workweek; ending casual employment and junior rates
• A dignified, living-wage Job Guarantee (funded nationally, managed locally)
• Worker-lead democratic management (cooperatives, ahead of corporations)
• Minimum wage pension at 60; publicly-owned timeshared tourist accommodation

5. Democracy & Integrity

End bribery and strengthen consensus decision making

• Ban lobbying and political donations
• Equitable campaign budget for all candidates
• Ministerial teams of experts with referendums between elections
• People’s Senate with bills passed into law via sortition (civic duty)

MMT & Finding the Money

Modern monetary theory (MMT) may seem complex at first, but in fact it is remarkably simple. As MMT economists have long pointed out, governments are not like households. They do not have to ‘earn money’ (through, say, taxing or borrowing) in order to spend. They can create money for public spending, simply by issuing currency and expanding the deficit. This is not a hypothetical scenario. It is how governments actually work. They fund public services and public employment by creating money. And they do not have to worry about ‘balancing the budget’, because they cannot become insolvent in their own currency.

Of course, there are limits to money creation. If you spend too much money into the economy, demand may overwhelm the country’s productive capacity, which risks driving excess inflation. But if this happens there’s a simple solution: you can use industrial policy to expand capacity where necessary, and you can tax excess money back out of the economy, starting with the richest in society. According to MMT, the purpose of taxation is not to fund government spending – as governments can fund spending simply by issuing currency – but rather to reduce excess demand, and, as an important side effect, to reduce corrosive inequality.

MMT opens exciting possibilities for an alternative economic model, where the national currency is used to mobilize domestic resources and labour to accomplish human development. To do this, governments can simply issue money and spend it on achieving [social] goals.

Jason Hickel, How to achieve full decolonization

Ray Maxwell, RadioMMT #064 Austerity Is Murder & Other MMT Revelations

Any comments or queries are welcome via johnkempen@me.com