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.