I would very much like for the government to invest our tax-payer money into things which better the situation for Australia’s people, environment, and standing, including, especially, all of the above (LOCK THE GATE), and other nation-wide things that a welfare state would do.
For some aspects, I would like Australia to be able to produce enough food to do the following: feed everyone in Australia; direct significant volumes to eliminating hunger globally; and invigorate the economy for small, local farmers and businesses; whilst halving resource/water-use and more than doubling output.
An example is The Netherlands, who became the world’s 2nd largest agricultural exporter by its principles of innovation (such as to do with greenhouses). However, like New Zealand, it still suffers from pollution problems which would need to be fixed through regulation and standardisation in Australia.
I would like for the government to incentivise farmers to invest in Dutch-style agriculture to double quality production and halve water/resource-use, and increase organic farming. Give benefits, finances, and resources to low and middle farmers, encourage higher-income farmers of the benefits in investing themselves, and penalise large-scale operators for inaction. Often, innovation comes from restrictions.
And also, for some Australian innovations such as seaweed feed. Eventually, more livestock farming will have to be replaced with “fake”-meat alternatives made with things such as fungi.
Another two things, which are mainly to do with cities, but actually have significant impacts for Australia’s natural and agricultural land:
For the government to:
…increase the budget for active travel infrastructure, etc.
Not only do we need to transition from ICE vehicles to EVs, we also need to rethink car-dependence in Australia. The benefits of this is multi-fold. Firstly, car infrastructure is loss-making and subsidised, and does not provide the social benefit that public transport does (it is also far less efficient compared to public transport); businesses worry, but cars are actually worse for business than walkers or cyclists; a majority of Australians don’t actually need to drive cars, and so reducing them reduces traffic and opens roads up for essential drivers; since cycling and walking are more efficient and effective modes than cars, their infrastructural quality should be at least or more good/complete compared to car infrastructure.
Coincidentally, The Netherlands is actually the chief example for this good infrastructure, and it has numerous benefits. One of these benefits is for children, where they are the happiest in the world (around 90% compared to Australia’s approximately 70%) because they have freedom. The main barrier for people walking and cycling is safety, and that is put at jeopardy by cars.
Another aspect to consider is education, and Australia should emulate Finland for its high scores and happiness with low work required. It should also be used to exemplify ethics, and true-blue Australian values which are important for life.
…transition to medium-density and infill for urban settings, and eliminating suburban sprawl.
Australian cities are officially the least-dense in the world. This may sound good, but it’s actually horrific!
The majority of this land consumed by cities is suburban sprawl, which is very bad for many reasons, including the fact that they consume predominantly productive land and make them unproductive in the most inefficient, land-consumptive manners possible.
This spreading out of cities, like Sydney and Melbourne to Tokyo-sized conurbations, results in a lot of inequality, with poorer people pushed out further from services and into more climate-dangerous areas of poorer-quality housing and isolation, and wealthier people wielding a lot of power to disrupt beneficial changes which wouldn’t actually affect them as much as they fear.
And this is not even discussing the soulless, cookie-cutter wasteland greyness that comes with this poor design, including streets which are way too wide (which encourages speeding and car-dependence, which encourages massive unusable setbacks). The circuitous and wide streets are also a lot more resource-intensive, and this produces a lot of CO2 per dwelling — and that’s a very limited number of people housed. In the end, suburbs exemplify selfishness, which is not a very ‘Australian’ value.
Australia should again take a bit of inspiration from Finland, where over 40% of housing there is public housing, and homelessness is tackled due to housing being considered a human right. There should also be a lot more urban-forest-canopy street trees.
And, Australia’s identity!
With so many things to be proud of in Australia, including our incredibly unique biodiversity, opportunity, and identity, why do we choose to superimpose an island (Britain) on the opposite side of the planet (which is influential enough on its own) which played a role in one fragment of our 60,000 and 4 billion-year histories? That’s why we need to change our flag, to be wholly representative of Australia, and, preferably adorned with our national Green & Gold (like one proposition, which is best to ‘get exposed’ to, the Golden Wattle Flag).
And then there are far more things than just this, including institutional things such as a federal ICAC, and perhaps even a radical change of the way democracy functions to both increase participation and people-power, and the ability of these people to work with wide-ranging experts to consider possibilities to pull together a better country into the future.
