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Good questions, but I think the more salient question is: Why do Liberal and Labor not listen to what voters want? And I'd posit an answer. They don't listen to what voters want because it's not what their donors want. People keep voting for Liberal and Labor because they run heavily funded campaigns which have been successful in squeezing out other campaigns. That may be about to change. We should remember that first preferences have been dropping for Liberal and Labor for years now. In this election will "most of the country" vote for Liberal and Labor as their first preference? Blessed if I know. ACFP is not an organisation with skills enough to assess why voters vote the way they do. We leave that to the parties.

@@bronwynkelly1760 I'm no expert in voting patterns and I'm just guessing when I say people vote based on 'triggers' ie. turn-ons and turn-offs. eg. The coalition has just announced youngsters able to fund their house with part of their super. The coalition identified a major sore point for a key voting group and targetted that. It's good that ACFP have decided to traverse a range of policy areas as a counterweight to single issue politics.

I'm moving to New Zealand.

It may be that they can teach us how to simplify it. The language of the Strategies is challenging, although for >15 year olds it's quite easy to use in lessons. But younger kids can help us simplify the Vision. We can ask them about what they want for the future. As they get older we can ask them to choose between options and critique the Vision and Directions. This is nothing different to what they're asked to do in school essays and debates all the time. At secondary school they should also be given classes about how to get involved in the mechanics of their own democracy. That doesn't just mean contributing to national strategic planning (although that would be great). It means contributing in all sorts of ways like local councils, civil society and the arts. Kids are much smarter than we think. At least that's what the celebrated British political philosopher from Cambridge David Runciman thinks. He thinks we should lower the voting age to six (yes, 6!) as an experiment. I'm of a mind to give it a burl (knowing it won't happen of course). After all, the six year olds couldn't do a worse job than the current leaders.

@@bronwynkelly1760 Thanks for that. To clarify further, maybe it would be helpful to look at a specific example. The first item on the Vision list ("By 2050, we and our children and grandchildren will be living a fulfilling life in Australia where... ") 1. "We are safe" OK, so if an ACFP representative were standing in front of a classroom of 10-year-olds and wanted to discuss this first issue, what might the conversation look like?

On my walk I was thinking about what the words "safe" or "safety" might mean to 10-year-olds. When do they hear it? When do they say it? Honestly, I feel like it's an adult concept more than a child concept. A child who is being pushed too high on a swing might say, "Stop pushing" or "I'm scared" or "I hope I don't fall off." Children, I suspect, hear the words safe or safety mostly from adults warning them away from certain behaviours or towards controlled ones. Child: "Why can't I go near the water?" Adult: "Because it's not safe!" I suspect 10-year-olds generally see "safety" as a word they don't like much and feel they hear too often. Like "vegetables".

The next item listed in "Vision and Directions" is "We are reconciled with and celebrate our First Nations peoples and their cultures." (btw. Who are 'we'? ie. Is it non-aboriginal people who are reconciled with First Nations people? Is it them and us? Or are First Nations people part of our group and so are reconciled with themselves?) It may seem I am being petty and pedantic but I am just trying to follow through on this excellent idea of "Younger kids can help us simplify the vision." In doing so, they will talk in language and concepts arising out of their own experiences. So what are their experiences? There might be a fifth generation Australian white child in Victoria who hasn't had contact with a First Nations child ever. There might be a first generation Indian-born child with a similar lack of contact. There may be a white child in Perth or Darwin who goes to school with kids who are clearly First Nation. There may be a child in NSW who identifies as first nation but whose appearance is substantially European, and her best friend who does not identify as First Nation. And, of course, there is the experience of the child living in a remote Aboriginal community. Each of these children has experiences they will draw as they try to understand what the acfp lady is talking about when she says "We are reconciled with First Nations..." Then the kids will have to grapple with "culture". Asking them to feel reconciled with a culture they have never seen or experienced seems fake. So, presumably, they will need to learn what First Nations culture (historical and current) is all about. How will this happen? And how real will be the experiences be? And what to say to child who says he doesn't like some aspects of this other culture? What will children say when asked what they want for the future of First Nation people? All in all, I think "imagining the Vision and Direction through the eyes of children" is a valuable thought experiment.

Phil Bachman - Thanks for these excellent questions. We offer this Q&A sheet in response. 543a0e22-a7ba-40a3-aea3-cc0010263a7e.filesusr.com/ugd/2b062e_71647cea8b504fd9a86bd77e34365fd9.pdf

@@bronwynkelly1760 Thanks for the comprehensive replies. I could offer some niggling follow-up questions but don't know where to put them and, in any case, I feel like I've taken more than my fair share of your time.

(nb. "taken your time" is not code for "I'm bored and want to move on". I'm happy to engage further if/when it is suitable).

@@PhilBachmann Thanks Phil. It's great to have someone engaging with this.

@@bronwynkelly1760 acfp canvasses some important issues and a lot of work has been done. It would wrong to flit past and not to try to engage with this.

Hi Phil, great question. The non-wage earners who are currently not receiving a pension or payment of some kind from say Jobseeker (eg., some stay at home parents who currently claim no social security benefits) would be $15,000 better off. Pensioners would notice no difference because the social wage would be incorporated into their current payments (they already earn more than $15,000 and would not go backwards). As a guide, if anyone is interested in seeing how they would fare under, say, the Garnaut model, they simply need to ask themselves if they already get a taxpayer funded income (like a pension). - If so, then they don't get more than they're currently getting. - If not, and they are not working at all then they will be $15,000 better off. - If not, but they are working, then they will get the $15,000 but will pay more tax on whatever they earn. They will be net better off but not by $15,000. They're more likely to be better off by about $6,500. For self-funded retirees, as I read Garnaut, they would get the "AIS", as he calls it, if they earn less than $250,000 and have net assets of less than $2 million. Having said that, Garnaut is ambiguous on whether exclusions apply to people who earn above $250,000 AND have net assets of more than $2 million. The "AND" is missing (See Reset, Chapter 8). So I don't know if people who earn less than $250,000 but have assets of more than $2million would still be excluded in his model. It's the sort of thing that would have to be worked out in consultation. As to the unemployed, we would have to be very careful that they do not suffer. I addressed this in detail in the video. It's part of the reason why doubling Jobseeker is an interim strategy in Australia Together. Thanks for your other great questions too. I will answer them separately.

@@bronwynkelly1760 Thanks. I got the Reset book so I could follow your explanation. I do wonder whether excluding "rich" people is worth the effort. As you point out in the video, people living in Sydney in $2 million houses may not see themselves as rich. Garnaut's rationale for the limit is that such people have "wealth and incomes that remove any close connection between withdrawal of the basic payment and incentives to work" but that does not seem like a terribly strong argument to me.

@@PhilBachmann Good point. Maybe it's not worth the effort. But perhaps the equity issue associated with giving it to rich people could be levelled out with the option of an additional top marginal tax rate for those earning more than $250,000 (and skip the assets test). Maybe they could get the wage but pay tax of, say, 60 cents in the dollar for income above $250,000. Oddly though, I'm a bit uncomfortable with that for myself. With Garnaut's structure I wouldn't get the social wage but with this option I would. And that doesn't immediately seem like a good idea to me - I'm not sure it's the best for Australia. It will make the scheme cost a lot more and this would delay the necessary build up of funds needed for social service expansion. It would also make the young wait longer for benefits so that older more wealthy people could get even more benefits. Of course, if it came in with a system that taxed those older wealthy people more (eg., taxing capital gains in superannuation), then maybe it would work fairly and grow the budget too. Interesting to ponder.

@@bronwynkelly1760 Yes, discussion about what to do about "rich" people could be bracketed so as not to derail the main thrust of the proposal which is, as I see it, a way to encourage people to find stimulating and meaningful employment (and offer dignity to those who are unlikely to find work).

Citizens' assemblies are terrific. It would be great to see more of that sort of engagement in democracy. But they approach issues in piecemeal fashion, and generally start too late - once an issue has got so bad that it is almost too late to solve it. We need to add in some preventative approaches to the reactive ones. That's what National IP&R offers. It can make the lives of activists so much easier. Instead of being forced into "mitigation then new structures", the point is to obviate the need for the mitigation by installing the new structures. Of course with climate we may have left it too late - but perhaps not quite. Watch out for the video we will introduce in the next few days on a plan to fix climate change. We may just be able to fix it.

@@artfarrago Like your reply...

Yes it was at Neist Point on the Isle of Skye. Best wishes.

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