Pillar 2 ... Fair Wealth Distribution.

A stable, fair and progressive tax system, along with stable, fair royalties on our natural resources should hopefully provide sufficient funds to run the government and provide for those down on their luck.

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This is where we need compromise between the right and left wings of government. It appears that the right wing is worried that the left wing will want to dole out money like it grows on trees. It does not and we have to be careful not to be too irresponsible. The left wing perhaps feels that the right wing is too miserly. A balance is needed. The reality is that any family, any government has a limited bank balance. We should not spend more than we earn. In times of crisis, perhaps we can use a two-thirds acceptance vote in both houses of Parliament to get us through the crisis ... BUT ... when the crisis is over, we need to return the balance to a slight surplus and that means an interim tax until the crisis debt has been paid off. Then the recovery tax can be ceased and the regular progressive tax system can be re-adopted. Perhaps to be fair to the workers of Australia, the progressive tax brackets could be indexed to inflation.

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When it comes to royalties on our natural resources (oil, gas, minerals, etc), we still need to strike a balance. On the one hand, we don't want to be the mug that obtains too small a payment on our resources. On the other hand, once the royalties for an electoral term have been struck, we must not change them without a two thirds parliamentary majority acceptance vote. The energy companies and miners need stability and we shouldn't just change the royalties on a whim because we feel that they are getting too good a bargain. We need to negotiate hard once an election has been won, establish the royalties for the electoral term and then leave them at that until after the next election has finished. WE MUST BE FAIR TO ALL PARTIES (the people of Australia who own the resources and the big corporations who are taking the risks.)