What kind of Australia do you want to live in?

It occurs to me that I can go on and on about current events, but in order to ascribe any particular meaning to them, I must first examine my personal philosophy.

I really, really hate it when public discourse gets derailed by accusations of who is left/right, who is this or who is that.  I hate labels, and I don't subscribe to them.  I think that they limit discussion and an objective view of all the issues at play.  I want the logic of my argument to speak for itself and not to be distilled into meaningless placards.

That said, I think you could probably broadly say that I fall mostly to the left (it would be impossible for me to have such radical reform ideas and still be considered a conservative).  On the other hand, I place a high regard in the lessons that can be learnt from the history of our political system. 

I think we take too much for granted - I think we are limited by a lack of imagination, by an assumption that we can't change the things that need to be changed.  I don't believe that.  We can change anything we set our minds to - it is our right, and responsibility, as citizens, to shape the society in which we live.   

So the point of this post is to ask the question - if you could completely redesign the country, what would it look like?

For me, the list is a very long one, but it starts like this:

1. Revise the constitution to provide for two levels of government, Federal and Regional.  The regional governments would have powers somewhere in between our current State and Local governments.  The Federal government would be solely responsible for taxation, and funds would be allocated to the Regional governments by head of population.  Regional governments would oversee service delivery.
2. Revise the taxation system to provide for one single method of taxation, probably transaction or consumption based, with no deductions or loopholes. As soon as you introduce deductions then you introduce a way for clever people and companies to beat the system, and a way for corruption to flourish.  So no deductions = no loopholes.  We all pay our fair share, and we all share equally. 
3. A debate about what we want our government to achieve.  I believe that government should be involved in business, limited to the basic services that we require as a society to survive, that we should expect our government to provide to us from our taxation.  Such services would include electricity, water, roads/public transport, military/disaster relief, justice/police, education, banking/fiscal management and environmental protection. The free market can rule in any other arena, just not in the ones that we, as a society, consider essential to our survival.
4. A bill of rights. 

I guess to a free-market capitalist, some of these ideas will seem positively socialist.  Personally I see them as more in the vein of true democracy.  We have something we like to call a democracy, but it is a very poor facsimile thereof.  Why shouldn't we have a discussion about what democracy means to us?  Why shouldn't we explore and examine new ideas, perhaps even, radical ideas?  Are we really so sure we're on the right path?

I am under no illusion that any of these things can happen overnight.  On the contrary, I honestly believe that changes of this magnitude will take generations - but we at least need to start the discussion.  

I hope over coming months and years to expand upon these ideas and generate complete vision of the Australia I want to live in, and I hope, if nothing else, to generate debate.