From my experience as the Australian Citizens Party’s liaison to Parliament, where I meet with politicians from all parties to discuss policy solutions for Australia, I am convinced Australia won’t solve the most fundamental problems unless we end the duopoly of the two major parties.

I’m also convinced that the ACP has the knowledge and the vision Australia needs in Parliament.

That’s why I am running as the ACP’s lead Senate candidate for Victoria.

I joined the Australian Citizens Party 33 years ago and have worked full-time in the party since 1993, first as an organiser and researcher, and for most of the last two decades as Research Director.

My wife Elisa works with me as Editor of the ACP’s weekly magazine the Australian Alert Service, and we have two children who have grown too quickly, and their future is one of our constant motivations for our shared mission to fight for peace and prosperity.

When I joined the Citizens Party, I was a university student in Queensland studying commerce (accounting), but I found myself drawn into politics when the government, in the middle of the 11 per cent unemployment of the “recession we had to have”, shut down industries in my region.

Attending the protest meetings I felt and shared the anxiety of the people who had lost their jobs, and who were searching for answers.

Vague political theories abounded, about such things as the meaning of the term “New World Order” that US President George Bush had just declared, but none of the theories represented any solutions.

When I met the Citizens Party, however, I saw a distinct difference: a party committed to ideas that foster  and harness the creative talents of Australians to advance the common good of all, as the foundation for policies to promote the economic development of both Australia and the world.

I have had the honour of fighting for those principles ever since.

Along the way, I have come to know thousands of Australians from all walks of life, who are the salt of the earth, and from whose expertise and experiences I have gained a real, practical knowledge of economics, industry, banking and finance, technology, social justice, international affairs, and many other issues.

Working in the Citizens Party’s campaigns to fight for solutions to these issues has also taken me overseas, to meet like-minded people fighting for similar solutions in the USA, UK, Europe, Asia and Africa.

These experiences have taught me that policy solutions based on the principle of the common good are universal–equally applicable in Africa as they are in Australia.

After now a few decades working as a researcher and then Research Director of the Citizens Party, contributor to Australian Alert Service, and co-host of the weekly Citizens Report YouTube show, I can honestly say that the biggest thing I have learned is the paramount importance of national banking as a policy solution.

All the research projects I have worked on with the Citizens Party’s research teams have shown that national banking has been central to the political fights, both current and historical, that have shaped Australia.

These include our original research projects that investigated the neoliberal take-down of the economies of Australia and New Zealand in the 1980s and 1990s; the history of Australia’s republican and labour movements and the ongoing fight for national sovereignty; the role of banks in sponsoring the rise of fascism to oppose the national banking policies of the Labor Party in the 1930s; the history of the Commonwealth Bank; and the infrastructure development of Australia.

In doing this work, the Citizens Party and I came to know senior Australian political figures, including former prime ministers, who gave us direct insights into how this fight shaped their time in politics.

We have been able to take what we have learned and apply it in our campaigns for a national bank, a Glass-Steagall separation of deposit-taking banks from speculation, defeating the attempt to ban cash, stopping the “bail-in” of bank deposits, a public postal bank, and an independent foreign policy that seeks peaceful cooperation with all nations.

Leading our campaigns on these policies has taken me regularly to meet with politicians in Canberra, to find common ground with politicians in many parties and lay a foundation for a broad coalition of support for these solutions, some of which our collaborators have already introduced into Parliament as bills drafted by the Citizens Party.

I have also had the honour of testifying before a Senate committee in Parliament House on how a public postal bank would solve many problems besetting Australia.

Given the big impact the ACP has had on policy debates from outside of Parliament, I know that if Victorian voters backed the ACP into the Senate we would be able to see our policy solutions through to fruition, and deliver prosperity, security and peace for all Australians.