I’m standing for Prime Minister

Now that Tony Abbott has made it clear that the Australian people elect the Prime Minister, I’ve decided to stand.

In thinking of a name for my new political party, I used the conventional wisdom for naming.

First, you need to include the word Australia in your title.

Second, you need to include some powerful verb: Stand Up,  Fight, Rejoice,  etc.

Third, you need some qualifier for the powerful verb.

So the new party will be called Advance Australia Fairly.

I’m hoping this will not be covered by some petty copyright restriction. This is based on the idea made popular by Karl Marx ” From each according to their ability, to each according to their need.”

My campaign slogan will be Tim for PM.  I decided to keep it brief so that I could get it on Twitter. With the 140 character limit, I can post my slogan 17 times and still have a little bit to spare.

I toyed with the idea of It’s Time for Tim  but thought this concept had already been given a bit of a run.  I even thought of Tim Time  but this could very easily be turned into Tim Tam.

Well enough of this frivolity, here are the policies.

•  Free tertiary education
•  Free childcare
•  Increased spending on  public schools
•  Greatly reduced subsidies to wealthy private schools
•  Legislation to allow euthanasia
•  Legislation to legalise gay marriage
•  Increased funding for public hospitals
•  No new submarines
•  No F-35  Joint Strike Fighter
•  Close detention centres
•  Withdraw troops from the Middle East
•  Introduce subsidies for installation of solar systems
•  Introduce renewable energy targets
•  Set carbon emission targets at 40% by 2025.
•  Regulate the use of marijuana, heroin, cocaine in the same way as alcohol.

OK, I  I hear you ask to how to pay for this

• Extend and increase personal taxation scales
•  Reduce negative gearing concessions to the level of corporate tax.
•  Differential increases to GST
• Limit deductibility of superannuation
•  Insure multinationals pay company tax
•  Introduce a tax on carbon emissions
• Abolish diesel  fuel concessions for mining companies

I will be stressing to the Australian public that this is not a list of  cast-iron promises, it is a policy agenda and may take some time to implement.

I will need to be able to implement the revenue measures to fund the social programs. Although the decrease in defence spending will generate something like $70 – $80 billion, this is not a revenue raising programme.

The fundamental idea behind this program is that if we are to have a safe and prosperous Australia, then it needs to be an equitable Australia.

Divisions between rich and poor need to be reduced so that we do not have a growing number of disenfranchised and increasingly violent people in our society.

We also need to ensure that we increase of Australia’s contribution to the war on climate change.

I haven’t worked out the details of the party structure. This is a work in progress and I am anticipating a small tsunami of support at the next federal election.