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1. Indigenous self-help and survival
2. The failure of the welfare system
3. The natural authority of families
4. Sustaining parents and carers
5. Small is beautiful
6. Bureaucracy and devolution of power
7. Reclaiming the health system for consumers
8. Small business and the break up of corporate power
9. Realism and transformation in industrial relations
10. Preserving the idea of a university
11. Immigration and cultural inclusion
12. Making everyone visible, allowing everyone to be heard

Social relationships - not the market, or the state - should be the prism through which we assess policy. This is common sense. This is the Australian tradition. Neither Left nor Right. We warmly invite you to join us.

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1. Indigenous self-help and survival

The old politics of Left and Right have presided over the destruction of indigenous communities from one end of Australia to the other. The managerialism of the Left has eroded personal and social responsibility amongst black communities, while the Right has been unable to throw off its paternalism to support the development of indigenous capacity and a self-help culture. Both have been captive to a dehumanising 'noble savage' stereotype which destines current and future indigenous generations to poverty and powerlessness. Both have failed to understand the destructive power of alcohol, gambling and welfare dependence on fragile cultures. A revolution in indigenous affairs based on conserving and strengthening social relationships is needed as a national imperative.

Australia needs a party that can articulate a social relationships and personal responsibility agenda - not solely rights or employment - to ensure the survival of indigenous communities. .

2. The failure of the welfare system

Both Left and Right believe an efficient welfare system can adequately address the challenges facing people with mental illnesses, addictions, disabilities, long-term unemployability and repeated encounters with the criminal justice system. It cannot. The welfare system has been able to deliver only short-term, fragmented, silo-driven interventions which shuffle the system's 'clients' from pillar to post. More spending from the Left simply creates bigger silos in the system, while the Right's attempts to introduce market-driven reforms have only succeeded in re-badging 'clients' as 'customers'. Welfare bureaucracies cannot generate the social relationships, personal stability and emotional attachments that alone can rebuild damaged and disadvantaged persons and communities.

Australia needs a party that can challenge the systemic failure of the welfare system and address the restoration of deep civil society relationships.

3. The natural authority of families

Left and Right have been locked together in blindness to the natural authority of families and their primacy as the bedrock social unit. Child care, schools and vocational education funding have by-passed families and been channelled by both Left and Right to institutional and corporate providers. Disability, aged care and mental health funding have been directed to industry providers rather than individuals and families. The uniqueness of each child and adult and the quality of their relationships has not been the starting point for policy in these areas: the Left's major interest has been the employment conditions of staff, while the Right's approach to social policy is determined largely by the labour needs of industry.

Australia needs a party that can uphold the natural authority of families in the face of powerful provider and corporate interests.

4. Sustaining parents and carers

Parents caring for young children, parents and carers of people with a disability or a mental or chronic illness, and carers of frail elderly family members, know that their role in society is not valued as much as that of people in the paid workforce. To both Right and Left, parents and carers who are not in paid employment are simply invisible, and do not warrant the financial and social entitlements that flow to participants in the market economy, such as superannuation, professional development, sickness and long service leave. Both Left and Right are ideologically blind to the financial hardship and social costs incurred in voluntarily caring for another, and are unable to address the unsustainable stresses incurred by growing numbers of households in juggling work and family obligations.

Australia needs a party that can value the unpaid contributions of parents and carers and support a living allowance to sustain their roles.

5. Small is beautiful

Aggregation of suburbs, businesses and community organisations has been a steady organisational and management trend for the past half century. Small community associations begun by parents and residents in disability, health and social support have been corporatised and merged beyond recognition by managers and regulators from both Right and Left. Co-operatives, credit unions and mutuals have been transformed into corporate entities by inappropriate regulatory frameworks set up by Left and Right. Small towns have struggled to maintain viability as cities sprawl ever outwards with diminishing social connections. Neither Left nor Right have been able to combine a 'small is beautiful' social ethic with contemporary mechanisms of economies of scale to produce liveable communities and local organisations that are amenable to the cultivation of social relationships and civil society.

Australia needs a party that can understand and value the social ethic of 'small is beautiful' in a globalised world.

6. Bureaucracy and devolution of power

Left and Right have presided over the uninterrupted growth of bureaucracy for more than a century. Neither has sought to devolve power and authority to local communities, non-government associations, families or consumers. The result has been a major centralisation of power in bureaucracy across three overlapping tiers of government. The managerial experiments in the 1980s and 1990s in 'contracting out' service delivery in health, welfare, employment and community services resulted only in a transfer of bureaucratic functions from government to contracted non-government agencies. The raft of failed 'community building' programs in the last 20 years have demonstrated only that bureaucracies cannot create communities.

Australia needs a party that can focus policy and service delivery on civil society and its relationships, and devolve power to the people.

7. Reclaiming the health system for consumers

Both Left and Right are ignorant of Australian innovation in the 19th century in developing consumer-driven health plans for the protection and service of consumers. Not-for-profit consumer-driven entities known as 'friendly societies' developed universal capitation-based health care plans with mechanisms of  local control in every town and suburb in the country. They were destroyed by the British (then Australian) Medical Association on the Right, and advocates of state-run health insurance systems on the Left. For the past 30 years, the stand-off between practitioner lobbies on the Right and public sector lobbies on the Left has choked debate about health reform and rendered our fragmented system unable to deliver preventative care, effective management of chronic illness, or acceptable continuity of care for people with complex and chronic conditions.

Australia needs a party that can cut through the stalemate in health reform and build on our history in developing a consumer-centred health system.

8. Small business and the break up of corporate power

Both Left and Right favour big business and have facilitated the concentration of corporate power. Australia's corporate sector lacks genuine entrepreneurs and fears global markets, and has tended to rely on domestic mergers and the restriction of competition for growth. Both Left and Right have acquiesced in big business demands for curbs on competition, subsidies, handouts and protection in the name of industry policy, at the dual expense of consumers and an entrepreneurial domestic business culture. Both Left and Right lack the will to break up Telstra and oligarchies in retailing, banking, insurance, transport, energy and media.

Australia needs a party that can challenge concentrations of corporate power from a pro-business standpoint.

9. Realism and transformation in industrial relations

The ritualised century-old stand-off between Left and Right in industrial relations has benefited only labour lawyers, union officials and neo-liberal think tanks. Together Left and Right have a common stake in antagonistic industrial relations: the Right's 'Work Choices' option serves only to unite organised labour against a common threat; while the fear of centralised wage-fixing systems unites employer bodies. Neither position has an interest in the development of workers as owners of capital and participants in the development of industry. Neither position acknowledges that the interests and needs of high-wage workers can be vastly different from those of low-wage workers with little bargaining power. The latter require social protection, the former value autonomy more than rigidity.

Australia needs a party that can break the ritualised practice of belligerence in industrial relations that stymies co-operation in the workplace and shuns the development of capital ownership by workers.

10. Preserving the idea of a university

The Dawkins revolution in higher education has turned Australia's universities into factories producing technical skills for Asian and domestic markets. A rounded liberal education geared to the cultivation of intellectual capacity and moral character has become an anachronism to the technocrats of both Left and Right. The Left has made an idol of meritocratic hierarchy and believes a university degree is a right of all, regardless of its content or standard. The Right has succumbed to a Fordist mentality, viewing education as a resource for industrial ends. Neither have the will or the strategic vision to restrict public funds for higher education to open access generalist liberal arts and sciences programs, and impose full or partial HECS or fees for vocational and professional training courses.

Australia needs a party that can break the bi-partisanship of Left and Right that has turned universities into factories of technocracy.

11. Immigration and cultural inclusion

Australia is a hybrid of indigenous and immigrant peoples, but this hybrid identity has been put at risk by the imposition by both Left and Right of a cumbersome 'multiculturalism' upon a reluctant host community. Its emphasis upon cultural separateness rather than cultural inclusion continues to threaten social cohesion. Both Left and Right have failed to encourage cross-cultural social interaction and discourage ethnic 'ghetto-isation'. The Left is uninterested in the concept of social interaction between citizens because it cannot be managed by state officials. The Right's approach to immigration is market-driven - it cannot grasp notions of social interaction that lie outside the framework of market exchange.

Australia needs a party that can challenge racism and ethnic ghettos by articulating the goal of a culturally inclusive hybrid Australian identity that is grounded and mediated - not through quangos or cuisine - but through the social relationships of civil society.

12. Making everyone visible, allowing everyone to be heard

People with disabilities, ageing Australians, and people with mental illnesses are invisible to Left and Right and excluded from public decision-making. For the Left, these people are 'clients' to be managed by government departments and service providers - inside or outside institutions. To the Right, these people matter only if they participate in the labour market. Volunteers - workers outside the paid workforce - are similarly irrelevant to the Right, and merely resources for efficient management by the Left. The voices of these large sections of society are silenced and hidden, consigned by both sidest to a permanent status of marginalisation and dependence.

Australia needs a party that can provide a platform for everyone to be seen and heard and contribute.

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In the last 30 years, the only areas of public life untouched by movements of reform have been Parliament and the rusty political machines that select and place citizens in parliamentary seats. As public participation in these machines has plummeted, an increasingly small, professional caste of machine operatives now maintain the machines, and select their own kind for its parliamentary rewards. The result is a crisis in representative democracy that neither Left nor Right can comprehend. Both Left and Right believe the political system works well if their caste of operatives can occupy Cabinet seats and manage the economy and service provision to the satisfaction of the disengaged punter. The relationships and social interactions of the disengaged punter - in civil society or in public life - are of no concern to the officials of Right or Left. To our party, these relationships and social interactions are the primary indicator of well-being and therefore of success or failure.

Australia needs a party that can repair public life and governance by bringing a focus on social relationships into the public arena.

We invite you to come to the Party.

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