New Australia

See how easily a monorail can be rolled out over major congested roads to form a fast and effective transport system.

• NewAustralia applauds PM Julia Gillard's decision to push ahead with the proposed Carbon Tax.

  The Carbon Tax as currently proposed is far better than the so called 'Emission trading Scheme' proposed by the former prime minister, and far better than the "Direct (in)Action" proposed by the Liberals, fossil industry and climate change deniers.

5^th August 2011

• The Federal study into High Speed Rail excludes Maglev entirely without explanation preferring older, slower and more expensive technologies. A new submission sent in as 'Feedback' for what its worth, see Maglev Page.

19^th July 2011

• Navy in perilous state, report finds. more
• War To End War Drugs Gains Allies On Right Flank - Institute of Public Affairs calls for rethink on prohibition. more

10^th July 2011

• A new fast rail proposal proposed for Melbourne. This varies from the previous submission in that the Melbourne Airport maglev is fully independent of the Geelong maglev doubling the system capacity. more
• A new east-west monorail proposal proposed for Melbourne. more

19^th May 2011

• New images of the Tokyo-Haneda monorail showing how easily these high-capacity transit systems can blend into the urban landscape - and all for under 10% of the cost of a subway system. more

27^th Apr 2011

• New Australian Conservation Foundation analysis shows governments across Australia are spending at least four times more on building roads and bridges than on public transport infrastructure. more

3^rd Apr 2011

• Updates to cost, availability dates & range of sukhoi PAK-FA. Note that Sukhoi will work in collaboration with India's HAL to develop a two-seat version of the PAK-FA for India. (See Sukhoi News. See also our airforce page.
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• In Victoria the $5 Billion "Regional Rail Link" gets the green light meaning our Maglev Alternative Submission bites the dust. The completion date is now 2016.

19^th Mar 2011

• Tax Cuts & Bonuses submission prepared based on this spreadsheet.
  
• Added info about STATIM Storm, Tornado, And Tsunami (and bushfire?) shelters. more

7^th Mar 2011

• Amended submission sent to the Victorian Transport Minister.
  
• Australia should rent or buy INCAT fast catermarans to replace rust bucket Manoora, Kanimbl and Tobruk. more...

28^th Feb 2011

• Setting price will create '34,000 jobs' more...

18^th Feb 2011

• The British government's former chief scientific adviser, David King, found in a study that official world oil reserves had been overstated by up to a third - implying that we are on the verge of a major "tipping point" in oil production. By 2020, or even 2015, the middle east may be largely out of oil. more...

15^th Feb 2011

• More than $5.5 billion has been spent by federal governments during the past decade on climate change programs that are delivering only small reductions in greenhouse gas emissions. Top of the list: $400 a tonne or more for tax breaks and production subsidies for ethanol introduced by the Howard government. more...

9^th Feb 2011

• Wikileaks: The review by federal Labor to justify its commitment to the JSF was just a public relations exercise, according to comments by former defence minister Joel Fitzgibbon. more....
• Continued improvements to Maglev Alternative Submission. Distribution prepared to other interested parties such as Geelong City Council, Avalon Airport, etc.
• NBN costs taxpayers 24 times South Korea at one tenth the speed: report. more....

27^th Jan 2011

Proposal submitted to Victorian Premier & Cabinet as well as the Federal Transport Minister. Given the flood disaster it would be a good time to review spending $4.3 billion on a slow train to Werribee.


Maglev Alternative Submission.

17^th Jan 2011

A proposal to build a Maglev system from Southern Cross station to Geelong via Avalon Airport and from Southern Cross station to Melbourne Airport for the same price as the proposed Regional Rail Link.

Maglev Alternative Submission.

11^th Jan 2011

• Improvements to Maglev Fast Rail page. more...
  

4^th Jan 2011

• APA analysis on China's new F-111 sized stealth fighter. more...
  
• Traditional 'Queenslander' style houses survive the big wet while new low set houses get swamped. more....

31^st Dec 2010

• What China's New J-20 Stealth Fighter Means for the F-35 JSF and F/A-18E/F Super Hornet. more....

15^th Dec 2010

• Another study concludes a carbon tax is cheaper than the alternatives. more....
• Health credit card idea: Pay now with health credit card, pay later in instalments for any out-of-pocket expenses. (Jennifer Doggett ) more....

13^th Dec 2010

• Monorail pillars can be part of a pleasant urban landscape as shown on the Monorail Society page featuring the Tokyo-Haneda monorail.

6^th Dec 2010

• Updates to monorail pages including new video. more...

3^rd Oct 2010

• New Jaguar electric car uses gas turbines as generators. "The miniature turbines are more efficient than petrol engines and can spin up to 80,000rpm and are relatively light (35kg each) and compact, as well as producing decent power for their size (75kW each)." more...

30^th July 2010

• Added Victorian Royal Commission paper into Fire Bunkers to this site more...

17^th July 2010

• "Russian fighter aircraft specifically designed to defeat the F-22A Raptor, such as the in-production Sukhoi Su-35S Flanker and the in-flight-test Fifth Generation Fighter, the T-50 PAK-FA, already overmatch the JSF designs by a significant degree.; as do the latest anti-access and area denial weapon systems to emerge from Russia and China; as will the Chinese equivalent Fifth Generation Fighters being developed under the J-XX and J-12, et al, Programs." - Peter Goon, APA. more...

24^th June 2010

• With Julia Gillard taking over the Labor Party there is even less difference between the parties. Perhaps they should merge?
• More than $1 billion worth of Victorian rail projects were launched without proof of their benefits the Victorian Auditor-General has found.
  The report had shown the 3.5km Epping line extension cost of $650 million compares badly to Perth's 72km Mandurah rail line completed in 2007 for $1.2 billion. more...

13^th June 2010

• Australians could be in Afghanistan on anything between 10 and 30 years if they continued to support the current strategy. more.... (We recommend partition more...)

8^th June 2010

• Updates to Fast Rail page. Leaning more towards Maglev based on higher speed and easier track placement.

6^th June 2010

• Article saying Julia Gillard wanted Rudd's ETS dumped altogether. Coupled with her relentless support for school league tables and private schools suggests she would take the Labor party even further to the right. more...

27^th May 2010

• Former Supreme Court judge Ken Crispin reflects on a lifetime in the justice system and calls for an end to prohibition. more...

12^th May 2010

• Budget predictably ignores the environmental crisis. No environmental tax shift, little new eco-spending. more... .

11^th May 2010

• "Miners strangely silent on the billions they reap in tax credits." more... .
• Check out this OECD National debt graph. Most of Australia's debt is private - the only risk would be if the banks crashed and the government bailed them all out. Note the position of the USA near Greece in top right.

3^rd May 2010

• The NewAustralia response is here!
• We support many aspects of the Henry tax review but would have liked to see a shift to environmental taxes.

22^nd Apr 2010

• Added paragraph on Binding Citizens Initiated Referenda to proposed republican constitution.

13^th Apr 2010

• Added page on Rubber-Tyred Metros. These offer a great way to use the centre lanes of existing freeways and tollways for commuter train operation. Conventional steel rail systems cannot cope with the gradients typically found on many freeway bridges and tunnels. Often the only surface easement in to a city that is left is the freeway easement.

5^th Apr 2010

• Why the F-22 and the Sukhoi PAK-FA have the 'Right Stuff' and why the F/A-18 and the F-35 do not. APA NOTAM.
• "The Brumby government's $2 billion dollar Food Bowl Modernisation Project, used to justify taking 75 gigalitres for Melbourne from the already stressed Murray Goulburn Basin, was based on a premise so absurd it amounted to a lie." more...

31^st Mar 2010

• An 'obvious' new approach to education funding proposed by Jim McMorrow and Lyndsay Connors of the faculty of education at Sydney University. more....

23^rd Mar 2010

• "Average buyers can't compete with rich, tax-subsidised investors. If you are an aspiring first home buyer, rising house prices raise the bar and put home ownership out of reach." more....

17^th Mar 2010

• Added paragraphs supporting Tobin or similar taxes of speculative financial transactions to tax page.

15^th Mar 2010

• "Jellis Craig says that, last year, 36 per cent of their sales in Kew, Hawthorn, Canterbury and surrounds were to overseas purchasers, predominantly Asian buyers (up 125 per cent on 2008), particularly from China and increasingly from India....We know that the 2009 changes to the Foreign Investment Review Board rules made access to secondhand properties a lot simpler for overseas buyers, forcing local buyers to dig deeper." more...

13^th Mar 2010

• "The price for each of the US-built new-generation fighter jets that will form the centrepiece of Australia's future air defences is nearing $122 million - more than double the 2001 estimate.." more....

11^th Mar 2010

• After some debate and consideration of the views of people such as James Hansen we have changed our stance on fission power from 'opposed' to 'sceptical'. Nuclear fission options should be investigated but we doubt it would be a safe or cost effective option.

10^th Mar 2010

• "Australia's former army chief has said we should consider cutting funding from the defence budget - currently $27 billion - and redirecting it towards diplomacy and aid programs." more...
• "The $50 billion reform package ''is largely spin'', said John Deeble, the co-architect of Medicare." more...

7^th Mar 2010

• Added some links to information about possible native pets to the Biodiversity page.

3^rd Mar 2010

• Added Peter Russell's world clock to the home page and to population page.
• Added Telecommunication page and linked to home page and sitemap.

28^th Feb 2010

• Renewables could power the world! Encouraging research on how it could be done and what it would cost. more....
• Bad news on Australia's new choppers more....

26^th Feb 2010

• Added fusion paragraph to energy page, with link to the ANU's plasma research facility.
• Removed kangaroo paragraph following member poll on the subject.

24^th Feb 2010

• 'The Medicare Safety net is great - for the well off. The poor are missing out.'. more...
• Rome's transport smartcard system: $53m, Singapore's: $90m, London Oyster Card: $290m, Victoria's Myki system: $850m so far - and it STILL doesn't work! more...

23^rd Feb 2010

• A new member found inconsistent references to a congestion tax. Actually we ditched that idea ages ago but I still had some references to it which are now removed. See tax and energy pages.
• Poll underway in the forum to see if kangaroo farming idea should be dropped.

18^th Feb 2010

• "The emergence of the Russian Sukhoi PAK-FA marks the end of the United States' quarter century long monopoly on the design of ... stealth aircraft" - Air Power Australia. more...
• New data and images added to Airforce page.
• Note that the PAK-FA is likely to be half the cost of the Lib/Labs inferior Joint Strike Fighter.

12^th Feb 2010

• Two of Australia's six trouble-racked Collins class submarines will be out of action for a combined total of at least nine years. more...
• Updated wording re kangaroo farming proposal. more...
• Telstra's half yearly results have important and damaging implications for his $43 billion national broadband network. more...

3^rd Feb 2010

• How leading countries are taking the lead on renewables by Matthew Wright. more...
• Calls to limit salt content of food, as per our policy. more.
• Change this site from advocating a tax 'shift' to a tax 'swap'. This better indicates in one word that the shift we advocate is revenue neutral.
• Weak poll-driven climate policy released by Coalition. However, it may result in less fossil fuel subsidies than Labor's version if it was ever implemented.
• JSF project in more trouble, general in charge sacked. more. Australia should abandon plans to buy the JSF.
• New Sukhoi stealth fighter (T-50/PAK-FA) will challenge the F-22 and will be far ahead of the JSF according to Air Power Australia . more.

13^th Jan 2010

• Joseph E. Stiglitz (Columbia University Professor, 2001 Nobel Prize for economics) argues for exactly what NewAustralia has been promoting:
  "Perhaps it is time to try another approach: a commitment by each country to raise the price of emissions (whether through a carbon tax or emissions caps) to an agreed level, say, $US80 a tonne...".
  See full SMH article, also his web site: Joseph E. Stiglitz.

11^th Jan 2010

• Updates to New Kyoto page.
• Updates to Tax.xls re Australia's carbon emission levels from burning fossil fuels.
• Updated text related to kangaroo farming.

7^th Jan 2010

• Added draft New Kyoto page. Comments please!

31^st Dec 2009

• Updated defence page.

20^th Dec 2009

The 'Global ETS' approach at Copenhagen has predictably failed. China and India have said before that they will never accept emission targets per head that are less than the Western target per head and the West was never going to agree to cut its emissions to the level of China and India.

A different approach is to try and negotiate a global agreement on carbon taxation. This would involve each nation shifting tax from labour to carbon. This agreed level of carbon taxation would be the same for every nation and so avoids the rich vs. poor deadlock. Swapping some income and payroll taxes for climate taxes won't disadvantage any country so the concern about 'who goes first' is removed. A simple & transparent carbon tax is also far easier to verify than the proposed corrupt and opaque ETS, and the strong and steady price signal of a carbon tax will drive a rapid change to a sustainable economy.

13^th Dec 2009

• Updated tax page with latest tax data for all levels of government. See tax.pdf.
• Copenhagen falling apart as China and India will never accept and ETS, as they have said for years. An agreement to raise 20%+ of revenue from eco-taxes is the only solution.

9^th Dec 2009

• Re-arranged defence page.
• Wait and see what happens with Copenhagen. Hard to see a meaningful agreement emerging.

1^st Dec 2009

• Updated the home and about pages given Liberal's shift to the right under Tony Abbott.
• The choice is now between weak and ineffectual action and doing nothing!

26^th Nov 2009

• "As the world prepares for the largest investment in nuclear power in decades, owners of uranium mines last week raised the prospect of fuel shortages." more...

22^nd Nov 2009

• Added note re new 'bistatic' anti-stealth radar to Airforces page. This is yet another radar system that will be able to 'see' the Joint Strike Fighter.
• Added note that crew of the recommended Amur 1650 submarine is just 35 compared to Australia's Collins Class submarine crew of 58. This is highly relevant given 3 of 6 Australia's existing Collins subs are laid up due to lack of submariners. See navy page.
• Updates to about page re Democrats 2007 Immigration 'Action Plan'

• Updates to Immigration policy.
• Updates to Affordable Housing page re proposal to phase out foreign nationals from residential property market.

• Air Power Australia rates the Sukhoi-35 as being equivalent to the F-22A raptor. APA has advocated buying the F-22A for a decade so this is a major turn around! We recommend the Sukhoi-35 as its about half the price of the Joint Strike Fighter. See Is the JSF Really a Fifth Generation Fighter?

• Updates to water re coal power station's massive water consumption. more...
• Updates to defence - navy to note range of suggested $330 million Rubin subs is around 9,500 km - so what is the need for long range subs worth $3 billion each?

• New ASC atack subs to cost ~$3 billion each vs. ~$330 million for Rubin subs. more...
• Added info on gas fuel cells and wave power to Electricity page.

• Added section on Tidal Turbines to Electricity page. (Thanks Roger)

• Added Be-200 video to bottom of Fire & Flood page.
• Added Su-35 video to bottom of Airforce page.

• Updates to home page format.

• Updated Electricity wording re power storage and nuclear.

• Updated abortion wording.

• The end of carrier fleets - and all other surface vessels? China's Dong Feng 21, a mach 10 balistic ship killer. No need to ask how Australia's 'destroyers' would cope with mach-10 missiles! TheAge, Sino Defence.

• "Rudd Government an obedient servant of the big polluters". Ken Davidson article that says it all.

• Changed policy on Afghanistan to support a pull out of Australian forces following the ballot on this topic. See Defence - Deployments page.
• Updated Energy pages re collapse of Solar Systems.

• Added road-recycling image to Transport page.
• Added FAQ pdf, which will be expanded.
• Update Energy page.
• Added Crime page.

• Updates to Waste page.

• The Bushfires Royal Commission findings handed down. Emphasis is on 'Go' instead of 'Stay'. I can find no serious consideration of individual fire shelters in the report. This is extraordinary and will result in people dying in their cars rather than their houses as people will leave too late and get trapped on impassible roads. Community fire refuges get some mention but the problem remains people have to be able to get to them which cannot be guaranteed. Interim Report.

• Removed Google Search from home page as it didn't work there anymore. Link to Sitemap page where it does work instead. (?)

• Added The Schweeb to monorail and cycling pages. more....

• Added article noting coal reserves not that great and Australia is the main supplier. more...
• Added Nissan Leaf to list of promising concept cars that are on the way. more....

• Telco: Added note on home page about cancelling $43 broadband plan and using the $ elsewhere. We can add more details later...at the moment no link to a telco page.
• Education: Added note about Tertiary Colledge scams and how to fix them. more....

• Health: The National Health and Hospitals Reform Commission report recomends a Denticare Scheme which we have had as policy for some time.
• Water: New option of thermal desalination linked to gas power plants. more.... Also huge savings from getting rid of single-flush toilets.

• Added section explaining why the flat vehicle registration charge (including compulsory third party) is a Bad Idea and why it should be replaced by a slightly higher fuel excise. See: No Rego.

• Added article on inefficiency of coal plants to electicity page more...
• Added health-system credit card idea to health page. more...

• Added Student Bonus Scheme to education page.

• Update to wording at top of home page (in the grey box)
• Link to Matt Taibbi's article about Goldman Sachs being 'a great vampire-squid wrapped around the face of humanity'. more...
• Noted push for n-subs by Navy League. This makes sense if you want to attack other countries but counter productive (and very expensive) for self defence. Plus diesel-electric subs are quieter.

• Removed proposal to cancel the F/A-18F 'Super Hornet' seeing as they are being delivered - see Airforce page. Note cost has increased to $A7.6 billion for just 24 aircraft!
• Call for new global reserve currency noted on economics page. more...
• Minor updates to style sheet + various fixes.
• New news articles on climate.
• Some reformatting of Vic rail page.
• Added Fast Rail page.

• Added Super Tax Breaks to list of loopholes that should be closed.
• Added list of tax breaks that should be replaced with the higher TFT.
• Added June newsletter (PDF 270kB)

• Cleaned up about page.

• Updates to tax pages. Removed idea of 30% cap on income tax - focus on higher Tax Free Threshold instead.
• Updates to home pages - added 'Made possible by...' comments.

• Updates to defence pages. More weight given to F-15E as an option. Added Kockums submarines as another option for sourcing cheaper submarines.

• Ralph Bennett and Gregary Boyles elected to the National Executive. About page updated.
• Updates stats re Junk food.

• Ballot under way for National Exec members in the Supporters Forum.
• Updates to Housing - Safe page re fire shelters - new image of FireShelter being installed.

• Note $USD on the slide, as is expected when you print money. Next stop is OPEC pricing in Euro and US hyperinflation. See Economics section.
• Black Saturday bushfire enquiry considers mandatory evacuations (To where & how?) more.... We maintain our support for fire-safe buildings with underground shelters.

• An outline of the NewAustralia Party constitution loaded here. Link added from About page.

• Updates to home page to add population stabilisation to 'Saving the Biosphere' section.
• Updated about, forum and contact pages re how to get policies changed & contact NewAustralia.

• Added clarification of stance on migration - see Population page.
• Updated Biodiversity page.

• Updated Parks page with new section on expanding parks (Thanks SF).
• Re-worded Faith part of society page.
• Added opposition to mandatory evacuations for bushfires on Fire & Flood page.

• Implementted new 'one click' join button on home page. Also now using a new Yahoo Group for members to join that is separate from the Supporters Forum. This is designed to make it easier for people to join. (Note: No need for current members to join this new group.)
• Associated changes to Contact page and added Forum page.
• Updates to population page re proposed maternity leave scheme.

• Added Parks page covering park management, no take zones, etc.
• Added Waste page stub...will fill out soon.
• Updates to Links page.

• Updates re defence page for new White Paper.

• Updates to Defence re Labor's $100 billion offence plan.

• Updates re Carbon Farming. (Thanks JH)
• Added Monorail Myths section. (Thanks Rod)

• Sent off Climate Tax Shift (PDF) proposal to Federal Coalition shadow cabinet members.
• Note the Green Tax Shift Proposal (PDF) Is now 322 on the on the Senate Select Committee on Climate Policy. No wonder I have been swamped with calls.

• Re-arrange first part of defence page to emphasise cost savings. (Thanks ML)
• Added Sustainable Biofuels section noting succesful production of biodiesel from sewage in New Zealand.

• Almost nine out of 10 climate scientists do not believe political efforts to restrict global warming to 2 degrees will succeed.  more...
• G20 Makes Crisis Worse. more...
• APA analysis on F-22 cancellation: Why Australia will not be able to rely on the US for protection any more. more...

• Updates to Foreign Affairs page re Partition of Afghanistan and Israel - Palestine Solutions.
• Added Links page.

• The cancellation of the US F-22 Raptor will make the Sukhoi Flanker the most capable production fighter plane available. It also marks a historic shift in air-power from the US to Russia and the countries that use its defence technology. This will be compounded by the release of the Sukhoi's stealth fighter the PAK-FA later this year. more...
• Updated Solar section to note that the $43 billion for a national broadband network would be enough to replace all brown-coal and half of black-coal electricity generation with solar.
• Updates to chevy-volt specs & image on Energy-Transport page. Whether GM survives to build it is another thing!
• NewAustralia Submission to the Senate Select Committee on Climate Policy e-mailed in. This is a 'minimalist' two-page document. Hopefully someone will read it. (To be posted here later.)

• Updates to Credit Crisis page.
• Updates to Bushfire Resistant Housing page.
• New Ken Davidson article on Frankston Toll Road. more...
• ACF calls for 2/3 of Federal transport funding to be on public transport and rail. At present the Federal Government spends 12 times as much on roads as it does on rail. more...

• Updates to Climate Taxes page to remove duplication with main Tax page.
• Added Alcohol section to Health page. (Previously only in tax pages.)
• Updated defence page to fix typos and add note about White Phosphorus at the bottom (thanks ML).

• Added News Archive page to take old news of the home page.
• Updated Airforce page to note the JSF will contain classified components that cannot be serviced in Australia.

• Moved "News" from this page to the home page to make site appear more dynamic.
• Moved stuff that was on the right of the home page to the about page.
• Added link to Ken Davidson article supporting C-Tax. more...

• Added picture of double-articulated bus to Bus page.
• Various tweaks to home, contact and about pages.

• Renamed 'Industrial Relations' as Jobs page. Various reformatting of this content.
• Updated defence & peace pages - we have slipped behind Canada in military spending - but probably not for long!).
• Updated the FTA data on Jobs pages - these agreements really have been a total disaster.

• Added 'World plus four degrees map to Climate page.
• Added note on Geo-Engineering to climate page. See NewScientist article Hacking the planet.

• Updates to Credit crisis page. (Note that NewAustralia had policies like credit rationing and more regulation in early 2008.)
• New concept car on Transport page. (Thanks Slugface.)
• Added stuff on hybrid busses to Bus page.

• Updates to Health and Illicit Drugs. (Thanks Mai Ling.)
• Fix to Soliant caption on Electricity page. (Thanks Slugface.)
• Update to F-22A Raptor section on Air Force page re possible termination of this aircraft. The F-22A is the only current fighter that would clearly beat the Su-35. If the F-22A was cancelled the only aircraft that could match the Su-35 would be other Su-35 - as recommended by us.

Updates to train running ideas on Vic Rail Page.

Updates to Vic Rail page to account for new Connex timetable.