Policy - Emigration Policy

Every party has an Immigration Policy. And there is lots of debate on the topic - most of it skewed. A lot of fuss is made over a handful of refugees entering Australian waters on rickety vessels while a considerably larger number of tourists stay well beyond Visa expiry dates and generally nobody is the wiser as to how much or little impact all this truly has on them. Well Me First! find it boring! We want to do something different and with that in mind are introducing a unique Emigration policy.

Me First! believe that we in Australia should have a say in who leaves Australia. We think to make Australia a happy place it is necessary to allow those who want to live in it to live in it and those who evidently do not want to live in it to live elsewhere. Consider the following case study...

Mildred Brown is a nth generation anglo-celtic Australian in her mid-50s. She is nominally Anglican and attends church for funerals, Christmas, Easter, weddings and baptisms (in that order of frequency). She keeps three cats. Her income comes from a mix of government benefits and from selling knitted products at craft markets. She enjoys reading Mills & Boon novels but that is pretty much the only thing she enjoys.

There are however plenty of things she detests. A short sampling of things that "cheese her off" includes:

- How much money the local council have spent on a skate park recently
- How the corner store now smells of curry powder while in her youth it had smelt of licorice
- How she cannot now eavesdrop on many conversations on the train because they are spoken in languages other than English
- How hot summer gets (which is ironic as it is the best time for selling products at markets)
- How the neighbours play loud rock and roll music on Saturday nights after 8pm

Now Me First! want Mildred to be happy and we think the simplest way to do this is to change her rather than the Australia she now lives in. The best way we can do that is by changing her living circumstances - radically.

Under Me First! Emigration Policy someone like Mildred would be offered a one-way plane ticket to Iceland (which we identify as having the demographics and climate most likely to satisfy). She would also be allowed to continue drawing on her Australian government income support from Iceland. In fact she would only be allowed to draw that income from within Iceland! A one-off payment would be made to the Icelandic Government to take on Mildred as a permanent resident - a payment they are likely to accept under current economic conditions.

Mildred will find a small cottage in an outer suburb of Reykjavík with retirees for neighbours - she will be helped in this process by the British Consulate (since Australia lacks one in Iceland). In this setting Midred will be much more happy than she is in Australia. English is a popular language there so she will be okay even if she never learns Icelandic. And an on-line directory lists the number of Icelandic skate-parks as "zero".

This case study is just one of the many personalized ways in which Me First! will make Australia a more happy place by facilitating the emigration of unhappy Australians to the world.

Media Release - Feet First!

Today Me First! announced the formation of a new representative group associated with the party that will advocate for the needs and aspirations of that most marginalized of persons - the long-suffering Australian pedestrian. This new activist and lobbying group will be called Feet First! and its slogan will be "We were here first so put our Feet First!"

In seeking a constituency Me First! have identified pedestrians as an under-represented demographic that we can hopefully take advantage of help. Humans were walking for hundreds of generations before the invention of the wheel. And yet everyone but pedestrians get represented by non-government organizations. Such is the power of wheel privilege! In Victoria for instance motorists have the RACV while public transport users have the PTUA and cyclists have Bicycle Victoria. Me First! will address this lack with its promotion of Feet First!.

Feet First! will lobby governments to promote pro-pedestrian policy demands. However novel forms of direct action will also be employed. Consider for instance a sequence of four zebra crossings around a cross-road in a shopping area - Feet First! activists will gather in sufficient numbers to form a walking loop that covers all four crossings and constantly moves in a clockwise direction thus preventing any non-pedestrian movement through the intersection till such time as the local government meets our demands.

Some of the Feet First! demands will include...

- Ensuring that all streets have a footpath on at least one side of the street even in new "but I only drive my car" estates.

- Having pedestrian crossings added to all points were surveys prove pedestrians regularly cross in numbers (even if this is a few meters away from an existing crossing).

- Converting all pedestrian crossings into zebra crossings thereby ensuring pedestrian right of way.

- Putting pedestrian crossings at particularly busy roads under or over the road (yes that is a concession to wheel-users - see how reasonable we can be).

- Dividing all footpaths on major walkways into fast and slow lanes. All users of prams, pushers, shopping trollies, and couples holding hands and walking side-by-side will have to use the slow lane.

- The Jetsons promised us a future of moving walkways and we want them! All busy footpaths along shopping streets will have travelators installed as the pedestrian slow lane.

- Introducing a new Pedestrian Discount Card which allows all registered pedestrians to access discounts of walking-related products such as joggers, casual street wear, back-packs, sun-screen, sunglasses, hats, umbrellas, refreshing drinks and personal music-playing devices.

With this attractive set of demands Feet First! are sure to grow quickly and make a huge impact on the forward march for pedestrian rights. If some of the demands of the group seem a bit much then Me First! can always remind commentators that the party and the group are distinct units that work together and that Me First! is limited by political reality from implementing all the demands of its constituents (while still getting votes from them). We are putting our best foot forward for pragmatic politics.