Already extensive irrigation projects have been undertaken; it is proposed that the policy should be carried out on a wider scale.

But the Australian Labour Party is not fanatical upon this form of "State Socialism." It does not argue, like the British Independent Labour Party, that the civilization of a community can be measured by the extent of collective ownership, for Australasia's experience has already shown the immediate and practical limits of this kind of a movement.

New Zealand is already burdened with a very large national debt; Australia proposes that its debt shall be increased only for the purpose of building commercially profitable railways or irrigation schemes, etc., and not in any case for the purpose of national defense or for other investments not immediately remunerative.
The national debt, aside from that based on profit-making governmental undertakings, like railways, is to be reduced, and nationalization of other monopolies is not to be undertaken until new measures of taxation have become effective.

These are a graduated land tax and an extension of the graduated income and inheritance taxes.[79] The program concludes with vigorous measures for national defense.
Australia is to own her navy (supported not by loans, but by taxation), and is to be as independent as practicable of Great Britain.

She feels a need for military defense, but she does not propose to have a military caste, however small; the whole people is to be made military, the Labour Party stands for a citizen defense force and not for a professional army.