A related issue (drawing on an earlier article on the Constitution) is a Change.org proposal by Michael Johnstone to change our constitutional processes for treaty signing:
Click here for the Conduct a Review into the Australian Treaty Process petition
This change is needed because current the Government (Cabinet) can sign away our sovereign rights in treaties without going to the people and without the full treaty being debated by parliament. Signing something like the TPP and other free trade agreements, like the Korea-Australia FTA, will reduce our options in how we respond to imminent crises by tying us to Investor State disputes and other encumbrances.
Make foreign speculators sell back their ill-gotten gains
Certainly, this scam in which housing needed by native Australians is being sold off to parasitic overseas speculators, violates ethical standards.
Whilst we still have a semblance of free speech and a free and open Internet, it should be possible to remove from office the governments who are complicit in this scam.
Victorians will get a chance to do that at the state elections scheduled to be held on 30 November. This could happen sooner with the help of the labor movement who are against Victorian Premier Dennis Napthine's anti-free-speech "Summary Offensives and Sentencing Amendment Bill"
When that happens, and we are governed by people who wish to serve the people of this country and not wealthy domestic and foreign elites, then every politician and public servant found to have been complicit in this scam can be made to pay.
At the very least they should be sacked. Ideally they should also be made to suffer the deprivation they intend to inflict on fellow Australians. If it can be found they have broken laws, then they should be fined, have their assets, including their homes taken from them or even imprisoned.
Such a government should also make the wealthy foreign speculators sell back their ill-gotten gains at no more than the cost which they paid for the apartments less the cost of administering the buy-back.