This petition of the Citizens Electoral Council draws to the attention of the House the opportunity for Australia, and all nations, to participate in the process that the BRICS nations of Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa have initiated: to create a new financial architecture for the world based on equitable and inclusive multilateral credit institutions that prioritise investment in physical economic development, instead of speculation.

The present, inequitable IMF-World Bank system is collapsing under the burden of hundreds of trillions of dollars of unpayable global debts and derivatives obligations, including the Australian banking system's derivatives exposure of more than $27 trillion. This is the legacy of decades of reckless financial speculation unleashed by IMF-enforced deregulation, and is the driver of the world's present strategic tensions which have increased the threat of a thermonuclear world war.

Through such new financial institutions as the $100 billion New Development Bank, the $100 billion Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), the $40 billion Silk Road Development Fund, the $20 billion New Maritime Silk Road Fund, and the planned Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) bank, the BRICS nations will direct massive investment in much-needed physical infrastructure projects on which all nations can collaborate, forging a basis for lasting global peace and economic prosperity.

We the undersigned therefore petition the House to commit Australia both to full participation in the AIIB, and to full support for the BRICS-initiated process of creating a new financial architecture for the world as the basis of a just economic order.