Category: Law and Politics

I’ve avoided blogging about tomorrow’s federal election so far, mostly since the campaigns have been pretty lacklustre and the differences between Labor and Liberal policies minimal at best. That said I’d prefer Gillard to get back in if only because Labor has made some kind of commitment to fighting climate change, whereas Abbott is on record as describing it as “a load of crap” (not that Labor’s policy is great, but it’s better than the Libs’).

There’s also something about Abbott I just don’t trust. I can’t pin it down but he comes across as sinister – as if he’s playing nice for the cameras but rubbing his hands and plotting something nefarious in the shadows. Sure, I wouldn’t trust Gillard as far as I could throw her, but being alone in a room with her wouldn’t give me the crawling heebie-jeebies the way Abbott would.

At least the blackout came in the other day, which means the TV and radio waves have been free of the endless campaign ads that’ve been driving us all mad. I tell you, if I hear one more scaremongering spiel about THE BOATS I think I’ll knock someone’s hat off with a cane (I’d have to procure a cane first of course, but I’m so sick of it all that I’d be more than willing to do so).

My ideal outcome tomorrow? Labor in the Lower House, Greens in the Senate. But honestly any outcome where the Mad Monk isn’t PM is OK with me.

Well, I’m near death with swine-bird-buffallo flu (by which I mean a minor cold) and so not going to write much, but I can’t let the appointment of Australia’s first female PM pass unmentioned. Shame it was done via leadership upset rather than an election, but it’s still a start.

Now let’s see some movement on asylum seekers, climate change and killing off that internet filter eh?

A comment from my work colleague Daniel about the Tree Man.

“If he’d worked for those four months he could of paid to have the tree moved into his backyard”

Well, America has finally moved into the 20th century. Well done guys!

I wonder how Glen Beck will react? I’m betting on incoherent gibbering, twitching and howling followed by devolution into some kind of lobster-like creature live on air.

Well thankfully it looks like South Australian Attorney General Michael Atkinson has backed down over his ridiculous and anti-democratic laws concerning political blogging. Excellent!

For those late to the party, Atkinson got some new laws put in in South Australia this week forcing anyone who wants to post anything anywhere online about the upcoming state election to sign their comments with their real name and postcode. It seems that he was motivated to create such laws because he believed the opposition were using a false identity to harass him in the comments section of a local newspaper website (oh poor diddums!). Apparently this wouldn’t threaten free speech in any way because people could still say what they liked, they’d just have to say who they were at the same time (the fact that the option of anonymity is crucial to genuine free speech seems to have evaded his tiny mind).

In the face of (unsurprising) public outrage he’s had to back down and promised to retroactively cancel the laws after the election. He’s attributing this outrage to the “blogging generation”, which only goes to show how hopelessly out of touch he is.

Additionally, in a nice bit of irony it turns out that the ‘fake commenter’ created by the Liberal Party to harass him in the Adelaide Advertiser is in fact a real person who lives less that 500m from his office. Nice to know he keeps in touch with his electorate.

Of course Atkinson is the same guy who’s singlehandedly preventing an ‘R’ classification for computer games anywhere in the country, apparently on the basis that anyone who wants to play anything more sophisticated that Mario Cart is a ravening sociopath. He also claimed that the gamers lobby (who are trying to get such a classification set up) are sending him death threats – on the basis of one threatening letter that turned out to be related to a completely different case.

What can you say but roll on the election!

The federal government has green-lighted its highly controversial censorship plan to introduce a mandatory internet filter that will block refused classification content* from being accessed on Australian soil.

* By which they mean anything on a secret government blacklist compiled without any oversight (judicial or otherwise) and with no right of appeal. Hooray for democracy!