People in Shepparton and the Goulburn Valley win in every sense if they embrace and adopt a universal basic income, according to Melbourne man Michael Haines.
Mr Haines, a businessman of broad experience, argues that a UBI could mean people are happy to work less and consume less because the extra money is used to buy time rather than goods.
“It’s clear that we also need to move to a ‘circular’ economy, using renewable energy and local production and remanufacturing, with far less packaging,” he said.
Mr Haines has worked at senior levels across various national and international companies, including Carlton and United Breweries, CDF-Hooker, Mistral, Lawrence and Hansen, Toyota and Westgate.
He was a board member of the Australian Logistics Council and a member of the Austroads Intelligent Transport Industry Reference Group.
In 2011, he established the Virtual Australia and New Zealand Initiative, a national work group comprising representatives from the major surveying, architectural and engineering firms, as well as international technology providers.
Its purpose was to broker the development of a legal framework for the emerging digital-built environment from planning through construction to facility management.
He has also spent 40 years investigating how money, banking, tax and welfare systems function together.
He has recently published papers on central bank digital currencies with the Levy Institute in the United States, as well as on the failings of cryptocurrencies.
In 2021, Mr Haines led the development of a basic income policy.
Then, he helped to set up a new not-for-profit named Basic Income Australia Limited, which aims to get support for the policy in Australia.
Mr Haines will be a virtual guest at Shepparton’s Beneath the Wisteria on Saturday, October 28, at 11am.
Mr Haines will explain and talk about the UBI idea, explaining how it works, how it would be implemented and its benefits, and then will clarify his arguments by answering questions for another 30 minutes. The event should end at about noon.
Interested people can join the event and hear Mr Haines at tinyurl.com/4e6w25x7
Beneath the Wisteria convenor Robert McLean can be contacted on 0400 502 199 or at r.mclean7@icloud.com