After the last Small Gods entry I thought we might brighten the mood a bit by having a look at a party with a world outlook that doesn’t include creating a fascist state and hunting down foreigners like some sort of diseased sport.
Party Information
Name: The Future Party
Website: http://futureparty.org.au
Founder: James Jansson
Number of Candidates – HoR: 2
Number of Candidates – Senate: 2
Description:
One of the biggest complaints I’ve had about the major parties in this election has been the lack of vision. Neither the Coalition nor the Labor party seem to have any real solid vision for the future apart from beat the other guy.
The Future Party on the other hand has enough vision for all the parties in the election. Their vision is a shiny one of mega-cities, high speed trains, driverless cars and a utopian society built upon notions of equality and justice for all and powered by clean nuclear power.
Basically the Future Party is what happens when you mix the science club and the student council.
Policies
Education
As a party of futurists and technophiles education is something close to the heart of the Future Party.
Aside from the usual policies like reducing waste and such the standouts of the Future Party educational policy include:
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Extension School: The idea behind the Extension School is to create an extra educational resource outside of school hours for students who are either struggling or require extra challenges.
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Teaching computer programming to all students: The Future Party believes that the students of the future are not just going to need decent numeracy and literacy skills, they’re also going to need to know how to programme the technology that supports them.
Science and Research
Science and Research could probably best describe the Future Party’s entire reason for being. However aside from wanting the government to invest heavily in research in a number of areas (including Transport, Agriculture, Communication, etc), they have highlighted two specific areas that they feel have been neglected more than any other.
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Nuclear Energy: The Future Party is a pro nuclear power party. They believe that while the current models of uranium powered stations present too much of an environmental and safety hazard, more research should be done into the possibilities presented by molten salt or pebble bed thorium reactors.
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Space: According to the Future Party, Australia is a natural location for space research, and not just the terrestrial work being done at the moment. They want to see the creation of a true Space Agency and a viable space technologies industry.
Australian Charter City
The idea of a charter city isn’t new, especially as envisioned by the Future Party. The older amongst you may remember the Multi-Function Polis proposed back in the mid 80’s. It was going to be a city of 100,000 planned and built with the express purpose of being a home to high end research and development programmes.
The Future Party wants to put this Charter City halfway between Canberra and Sydney, serviced by a high speed train (perhaps the Bullet Train Party are natural partners), it would be a high density development (suggested density per square mile is 50,000), taking advantage of the latest in building and civil engineering techniques and technologies. All major transport links would be underground to increase park land and public space and it would form a special region for immigration purposes (so as to allow the maximum number of people to turn up).
Personal Thoughts
Look, I have to say that in many ways, the Future Party are my people. Oh I’m not a member or anything, but as anyone who knows me can attest, I am a massive geek. The idea of an Australia that actually takes the lead in the sciences, builds a viable space industry and builds a city of the future hits me right in the feels.
On the other hand, the realist in me looks at what they’re proposing and says “Okay that’s great, now how are you going to pay for it?”.
On the other other hand, if any party is going to finally deliver flying cars and hoverboards, it’s going to be the Future Party.
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