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What RCGIA is all about.

Liberal democracy is great on many levels. It is worth preserving. It needs a lot to preserve it because it is so open by its nature. I am starting this site as a way to make public my concerns about the particular threat posed by the Government of the People’s Republic of China (GPRC) to liberal democracy in Australia and to make public the many things Australia can do to resist it.

I am concerned about the PRCG for the following reasons. Firstly, the PRCG’s tendency to harm every opponent it can inside its borders indicates it will attempt to harm its opponents outside its borders. Australia is an opponent of the GPRC whether we like it or not, because we offer an example of a society where the government can be changed at the will of the people. This is contrary to the narrative of the GPRC which is that rule by the Chinese Communist Party is the best system. Secondly, the GPRC has total control of the PRC and the PRC is a super power. Every super power in history has abused its power. Australians may be unaware of the extent to which the USA abused its super power in the 20th century and the British abused their super power in the 19th century. Even regimes that we tend to conceptualise as benign such as the Roman Republic and the Roman Empire, invaded and conquered as much of the world as they could. You do not need any history to know that super powers abuse their power. A few weeks in any human setting, literally any, a school yard, work place or bar will illustrate that humans have a tendency to exploit their own powers and the greater the power the greater the level of exploitation. The idea that the  GPRC.

I am concerned that in resisting any threat, we could lose sight of who we are. In responding to the threat from the GPRC we need to be the best version of ourselves. Australian democracy is vulnerable to interference from the GPRC because it is vulnerable in the first place. In resisting the GPRC we can rebuild a more robust Australian democracy that will be more resistant to the myriad other threats posed by other foreign governments, foreign corporations and even our own domestic special interests. The GPRC will buy every important institution that is for sale, why are our important institutions for sale in the first place.

Some things we could do to resist the GPRC

  1. Make our political parties harder to buy by funding them publicly and banning all donations. Alternately, we could at least make all donations to political parties publicly available in real time. 
  2. Make our universities harder to buy by publicly funding them so that any funding from foreign students is a bonus, rather than being essential.
  3. Make government more resilient to GPRC interference by establishing a Federal Anti-Corruption Agency and by increasing funding to the AFP, ASIO, the Courts, Public Prosecutors, the Ombudsman, the Information Commissioner and any other institutions that build integrity.
  4. Make business harder to buy. This will always be difficult given that sales is a central feature of business. However, we can reduce this a little by ending the China-Australia Free Trade Agreement. 
  5. Make our media harder to buy by banning advertising in and ownership of Australian media by the Chinese Government and by greatly expanding the ABC. 
  6. Make our media more effective by restoring pre-September 11 levels of press freedom.
  7. Make our social media more effective at dealing with GPRC disinformation campaigns by limiting employers abilities to sanction their staff for comment on social media. Currently most Australians working for organisations (e.g. businesses, government departments, charities) are afraid to comment on politic s
  8. Make our public service harder to buy, by criminalising lying by public servants to ministers.
  9. Ensure that our criticism of foreign powers is calm and measured to avoid inflaming racist prejudice. This will require constant resolve and determination as Beijing will try to use this as a wedge between Chinese and non-Chinese Australians.

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