Truth, Accountability, Transparency

[George Orwell ],

[During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.]

A Transparent Government is the key . It’s no secret that governments are not completely honest all of the time. Our Australian Constitution establishes the people as sovereign, and so it is the government that should be the servant of the people, not the people in servitude to the government. Elected representatives must be fully accountable to the people. The Australian Patriots Association will keep nothing from the people, to whom we serve. With an APA government there will be no secrets, no lies, no cover-ups and no deception, on political issues.

We support the concept of employing a group of citizen auditors to scrutinise and work with independent auditor teams involved in auditing and investigating government records. These citizens will be chosen from a variety of qualifications such as lawyers, accountants, school teachers, scientists, business operators, etc. These individuals would be selected much in the same way as people are randomly chosen for jury duty. This special team of citizen auditors will be sworn to uphold the truth and protect privacy where relevant. They shall have far reaching powers to search at will any and all government records, expenditures, receipts, transactions, and to scrutinise government dealings and operations in any areas they deem essential or desirable to investigate (including intelligence operations). Not even the Prime Minister’s office will be exempt from being scrutinized.

At the expiry of their investigation, they will jointly present a written account and report on their findings/recommendations to the Australian people. The account will be publicised in major news papers and on the internet for all to see. A truly accountable government (such as that formed by APA) should have nothing to fear in establishing and empowering such a citizen auditing body to ensure that government remains honest, and above corruption. We will also introduce procedures to have the media be more accountable and non bias in its reporting on political issues, whilst upholding the spirit of “freedom of the press”.