Welcome to Australia's first national community-based futures planning process
We have it in our power to create the world anew
Major Essays
From time to time ACFP publishes major essays on issues affecting the future wellbeing and security of Australians.
Major essays can be accessed via the links provided below.
November 2023
Saving Australian democracy and sovereignty by making a new Constitution
In this four-part essay, ACFP's Founder Bronwyn Kelly discusses how Australians are being dragged into a full ceding of sovereignty over their country and how, if we do nothing to reverse this, we will end up losing our democracy itself. She offers evidence in the essay that we are on the brink of losing both our sovereignty and democracy. To help prevent this loss, Bronwyn suggests that Australia needs a new type of Constitution and to substantiate this need, she poses four questions:
-
Why does Australia need a new Constitution?
-
What’s wrong with our democracy?
-
How can Australians take back their democracy and sovereignty?
-
How can Australians achieve a peaceful coexistence of sovereignties and self-determining political equals?
The answers can help Australians establish a new democracy and take back their sovereignty over their beautiful country.
Click here for a full transcript of the all four parts of the essay.
Listen to the essay on Episodes 40, 41, 42 and 43 of the Australia Together Podcast.
March 2023
Conversations with Australia’s Treasurer about building an Australian’s people’s economy
In February 2023, Australia’s Treasurer Jim Chalmers released an essay on the economy called Capitalism After the Crises. A few months before that he also expressed a desire to have a conversation with “the Australian people” about “how we pay for the services that they need and deserve and have a right to expect”.
In this essay ACFP’s Founder Bronwyn Kelly replies to the Treasurer and offers some ideas about how Australians may participate in conversations with the government not just about how they might pay for the services they deserve but also how their values might influence the shape of Australia’s next economy.
Click here for a full transcript of the all four parts of the essay.
Listen to the full essay here on ACFP's YouTube podcasts.
December 2022
Local governments can show national governments how to plan better: Integrated planning and reporting reforms in Australia
After two years of trialing National Integrated Planning & Reporting as a new means of helping Australians get together and plan a better future for their nation, ACFP published an essay on the genesis of National IP&R in the peer reviewed Commonwealth Journal of Local Governance.
Read the full essay here.
September 2020
Prospects for journalism, the free information market and democracy under the ACCC's news media bargaining code
In 2020 the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) developed a proposal to legislate the introduction of a "News Media Bargaining Code". The Code was designed to level what the ACCC deemed to be a bargaining power imbalance between two digital media platforms (Google and Facebook) and news media businesses. The ACCC contended that this was a threat to democracy and that this could only be corrected by a "Code” which compelled Google and Facebook to pay arbitrarily determined amounts for the content of certain Australian news media businesses (and only those businesses).
This essay by ACFP's Founder Bronwyn Kelly rejected the ACCC’s assertions about the news market and bargaining power imbalances. She proposed a suspension of the process for passage of the legislation on the News Media Bargaining Code pending the establishment of a community engagement process for development of a rational program of regulation of Australia’s modern digital age information market – a regulatory framework that is consistent with the aims and values of Australians in democracy. The legislation was passed by parliament.
Read the full essay here.