One of the most annoying phrases that I have ever heard seems to have been popping up in all sorts of places lately. On Q&A, Lateline, in Parliament, on Q&A again…
“I am not a climate scientist, but…”
I’m not a brain surgeon. If I was chatting to someone who had a sub-arachnoid haematoma I wouldn’t dare offer a suggestion on how I should get in there and have a fiddle to fix it.
I’m not a structural engineer. Outside my office window I can see Melbourne’s “Southern Star” Wheel being reassembled. I wouldn’t go over there and tell the people rebuilding it where I think some of those big white metal bits should be stuck.
I’m not a lot of things. And I’m sure I’m not alone. I’m pretty sure most of us could sit down and think of a heck of a lot of things we’re not, and for most of us, that would include being a climate scientist.
So why the hell do people feel as though that phrase entitles them to follow on with a raft of suggestions issued with such urgency they’e bordering on demands?
“I’m not a climate scientist, but how the hell can less than 1% change in emissions change the climate?” “I’m not a climate scientist, but we’re talking a few parts per million right? What effect would THAT have?”
You know what? If you WERE a climate scientist you’d be able to answer those questions. The simple fact that you outlined the fact that you’re NOT a climate scientist thereby invalidates anything else you have to say about what might or might not happen to the climate.
So shut the hell up about it and stop playing cheap politics with a potentially catastrophic global issue.
Today Joe Hockey released details of the Coalition’s “Direct Action Plan” for combating climate change. The entire policy can be found right HERE and is actually not a bad read.
I applaud the coalition for some sensible action plans to assist in reducing future emissions growth and graduated energy generation and augmentation schemes, especially the focus on solar – something that should be a real “no brainer” in a country with as much low density usage arid land as we have.
Unfortunately, and I am more than willing to stand corrected on this matter, there is a dire lack of information on how this plan will work towards reducing existing emissions. The only real section addressing that issue is this:
The Emissions Reduction Fund will use the existing National Greenhouse and Energy Reporting Scheme (NGERS) to determine proposed emissions reductions beyond overall base levels already determined for individual firms. Businesses that reduce their emissions below their individual baseline (‘historic average’) will be able to offer this CO2 abatement for sale to the government. This will provide businesses with a direct financial incentive to take direct action to reduce their CO2 emissions below their baseline levels. Small businesses and other entities not covered by NGERS will be able to participate on an ‘opt-in’ basis.
Ignoring the potential misuse of the acronym NGERS, there’s no real drive to get polluters to reduce carbon emissions. Sure there’s a payment offset for businesses to reduce emissions, but there’s no real driving force to do it. Add this to the speech going around the fringes of the Coalition lately, namely that anthropogenic climate change is a myth and nothing humans do matters, would lead one to wonder what corporate supporter of the coalition would actually voluntarily chose to disadvantage his or her business to get an as yet undefined amount of compensation for that action?
All carrot, no stick, and ultimately without a little bit of stick very few businesses will do anything to change their existing business methods.
Nice try Coalition, but it needs more.
I’m just putting this information forward without comment. I received an email from an aid to Scott Morrison, Shadow Minister for Immigration. What I present here is the policies that the Coalition want to use to “stop the boats”
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There is no doubt that the Gillard Labor Government has comprehensively failed to manage our borders and has lost control of asylum seeker policy. Since August 2008 when Labor wound back and abolished the Coalition’s successful policies, more than 200 boats have arrived unlawfully carrying more than 10,000 asylum seekers. These include the ill-fated SIEV 36 that was set alight killing four people, and the tragic SIEV 221 that crashed against the rocks of Christmas Island in December 2010, killing 50 people.
As a consequence of Labor’s failure, our detention network is stretched beyond its capacity. When the Coalition left government, only 4 people who had arrived illegally by boat were in detention. Today that figure is more than 6,300 including more than 1,000 children.
The annual budget has increased seven-fold since Labor came to power, with a total blowout of over $1 billion in running costs alone – and the boats continue to come. Of the more than 10,000 people who have turned up by boat, only about 160 people have been returned to their countries of origin.
A further impact has been the reduction in humanitarian visa grants to offshore applicants who are being crowded out of our refugee and humanitarian programme. In 2009-10 there were just 3233 offshore humanitarian visa grants, compared to a peak of 6736 in 2005-06 under the Coalition. Public support for our immigration and refugee program has also plummeted as Australians lose confidence in the capacity of this Labor Government to contain a problem of their own making.
Despite leading Australians to believe there would be no expansion of our onshore detention centres prior to the last election, the Gillard Labor government has added another 4,900 beds to the detention network – costing more than $400 million – since the election.
The Coalition supports an immigration and humanitarian program that is non-discriminatory and believes that our process for selecting those who come to Australia should be open and transparent. The Coalition will continue to honour our international obligations in relation to asylum seekers but will not support any process that creates a bias in favour of illegal arrivals; or that provides people smugglers with a product and encourages more people to get on boats.
The Coalition has urged the Government to adopt the Coalition’s plan to restore control over our borders and integrity to our immigration and humanitarian programmes.
At a domestic level the Coalition will:
· Reintroduce temporary protection visas for all illegal entrants and apply mutual obligation to payment of benefits;
· Reintroduce third country processing of all illegal boat arrivals on Nauru;
· Turn boats back where the circumstances permit;
· Presume against refugee status for those who are believed to have deliberately discarded their identity documentation;
· Return failed asylum seekers to their country of origin;
· Restore the single case officer appeal process for asylum;
· Provide priority processing for offshore asylum applicants over illegal arrivals;
· Restore the requirement for on shore asylum applications to be made within 45 days of arrival (the 45 day rule);
· Introduce mandatory minimum sentences for people smuggling crimes, and longer sentences for aggravated offences;
· Introduce a full private sponsorship programme for offshore asylum applicants; and
· Oppose the introduction of “complementary protection” which widens the grounds for asylum seekers to make successful onshore claims.
At a regional level the Coalition will:
· Continue cooperation with regional partners to combat people smuggling through joint enforcement, intelligence gathering and surveillance operations;
· Encourage the establishment of tougher laws to combat people smuggling within the region;
· Encourage the development of tougher border controls within the region to discourage secondary movement of refugees and other displaced persons into the region;
· Work with and assist countries of first asylum within the region, to address the humanitarian and resettlement needs of asylum seekers generated from within our region;
· Identify new areas for regional cooperation through the Bali Process, initiated by the Howard Government in 2002.
At an international level the Coalition will support reforms that:
· Seek to curtail secondary movement of refugees and other displaced persons beyond the country of first asylum;
· Foster the development of international agreements to address issues in source regions for asylum seekers, in particular Central Asia, that discourage secondary movement.
· Seek to improve conditions for refugees and displaced people in countries off first asylum, including access to case assessment;
· Prioritise the needs of the most vulnerable refugee populations, in particular women and children at risk;
· Ensure that re-admission agreements are in place so that failed asylum seekers can be returned to their countries of origin; and
· Support the safe repatriation of refugees and other displaced persons to their country of origin, including the placement of UNHCR observers to monitor their safety and treatment.
Regards,
Troy Loveday
Office of Scott Morrison MP
Shadow Minister for Productivity and Population
Shadow Minister for Immigration and Citizenship
Federal Member for Cook
My original political leaning, like most people I guess, came from my parents.
My mother was never (and still isn’t, truth be told) very interested in politics. She’s a classic swing voter. She’ll vote based on whatever issue is brought up each election that moves her enough to vote a particular way. In some ways, she is what all political parties dream of – someone available to be “won over” to their way of thinking.
I took after my father politically, however. Growing up, he was a firm supporter of the Liberal party. Australia’s “conservative” party. As a child growing up during the Menzies years of the 1950s, Dad came into his own political awakening during the Holt/Gorton/McMahon/Whitlam years and all its associated strife and turmoil (compared to the stoic, static years of the 50s.) (I’m not adding McEwen in there, he was only PM for 23 days.)
Working for the Public Service, I assume Dad was confronted fairly constantly with the CPSU and regular strike actions, which gave him a fairly determined anti-unionist stance. (In fact, I know that he wasn’t a member of the CPSU for his entire time at Social Security, which annoyed his Union Representative work friend to no end.) We lived in regional NSW, in what used to be a safe Labor seat. Unlike rural areas of NSW, the regional areas had a lower socio-economic grouping that lead itself to Labor leanings without the conservative rural/farming stance that gives the Country/National party it’s base.
As a teen myself, I saw the outcomes of Hawke/Keating era policies – 18% interest rates, a collapsing AUD and what to me looked like penalisation of any attempts at earning additional income (in the form of the introduction of the CGT, etc.) Along with that, the cultural cringe factor of the LARRAKIN AUSSIE Bob Hawke and the general smarminess of Paul Keating, I firmly entrenched myself into a Liberal party way of thinking as well.
I have voted Liberal at every state and federal election since I turned 18. I’ve supported what I thought were free market enabling policies. Border security. Encouragement for people to return to work (“them dole bludgers” etc.) and paralleling that, my own work career has gone ahead in leaps and bounds. From technical support over the phone, right through to travelling internationally selling computer software, designing multinational rollouts and talking to high level executives and politicians around the asia-pacific region – I’ve done a lot with my various jobs.
But the older I’ve gotten, the more disenchanted I have become with where the Liberal party has headed. I no longer see policies to enable free market interactions – I just see more deregulation to enable already rich executives and investors become richer off the work of others. I’ve watched a property market swell beyond the reach of average people due to the greedy acquisition of “investors” who see their want to make money as more important than the need for housing for the public. I’ve seen the disadvantaged masses from around the globe be marginalised further and demonised for political gain (i.e. “STOP THE BOATS!!!”) I’ve seen state sanctioned wealth concentrations and fearmongering.
I can’t put up with any of that any more.
I can no longer conscionably consider myself to be a Liberal any more. I am no longer a conservative political thinker. I have grown up from my childish view.
As a species, as rational, sentient, emotional beings, we have a duty to look after other people in the form of economic, medical and social support mechanisms. (Welfare. Health care. Social inclusions.) We have a duty to look after the environment, if only for the selfish reason that if the environment is destroyed, we are all destroyed. We have a duty to encourage people to become the best that they can be in whatever field they feel passionately about. If someone wants to cure diseases, they should be supported, nurtured and encouraged. If someone wants to entertain others either in the visual arts, theatre, or even sports, they should be given every opportunity. If someone wants to accumulate personal wealth, then that too should be enabled. Maybe not encouraged or nurtured though. 
What we need is a baseline lifestyle provided and supported by the state, with mechanisms in place to enable those who want to strive for more to do so and to be able to do so successfully.
I think I have finally, after 36 years of thought, become a free market socialist. I don’t even know what that is.
There are so many important news issues out there at the moment I’m having trouble keeping it all straight.
Australia still has no clear government. It looks like power in the House of Representatives will be decided by 4 Independents (with Andrew Wikie set to win the seat of Denison) along with the Greens. The Greens member, Andrew Bandt, has already declared his support for Labor so you can just about pencil in a +1 of Labor’s total.
There are still 4 seats undecided, but if they follow current counting trends, it will still leave neither of the major parties with a majority and needing to negotiate to form a minority government. Fun for all.
One thing that is confusing me, however, is repeated assertions that “the Australian people have spoken and have said that neither party deserves to lead” (for example by ABC’s Barrie Cassidy). While this makes for a great tag line for an article, it really does nothing to add to the current debate. If someone DID write “neither party deserves to win!” on their ballot, the ballot would be declared invalid and thrown away. What the result does show is that the Liberals won most of the seats they were aiming to win, but Labor managed to hold off from losing all the seats they COULD HAVE lost. In that respect, the targeted nature of the campaign seems to have worked.
What do I mean by that? Well both party leaders spent an inordinate amount of time during the campaign visiting marginal seats in Western Sydney and Queensland (mainly SE Queensland). This isn’t a bad thing, and really is a bit of common sense. Polls had shown that a lot of existing seats were looking like staying with the sitting member, but there were a raft of seats that could change hands in the previously mentioned areas. So the election campaign appears to have been engineered around winning/retaining the people in those electorates. Well, that’s nice, but the latte set in Melbourne aren’t as scared of boat people as people in Western Sydney. Folks in Perth aren’t as concerned by “bringing the budget into surplus” as they are by stopping a mining tax they’ve been told will cost jobs in WA.
So what have we seen in the results? Well, a lot of people were pissed off with both parties, so the Greens vote in the house and senate went up. Independents have retained their seats with increased margin. A new independent is likely to be elected (my Mum has said she would have voted for Andrew Wilkie if she could, as he is a ‘Very Nice Man’. Her electorate is over the river from Denison, though).
The electorates so ruthlessly targeted by both parties have seen a fairly heavy swing away from the Government. A few Labor expected to retain have fallen. A few the Libs expected to win haven’t. Fairly mixed.
As for the rest of country? Minimised swings in Vic and SA. Swing towards the ALP in Tasmania. The rest of Queensland and NSW voted in protest of Labor for federal AND state issues. WA was busy crying and rending it’s clothing about it’s poor miners forced to possibly give up some of their $14bn profits in taxes. NT and ACT did… well… who cares honestly.
People voted for issues that affected themselves. They always do. Where millions have been spent in trying to sway electorates, it’s sort of worked. But both parties have ignored local issues at their own cost.
This seems to be something that the Independents understand and are pushing for in negotiations with both parties. A local vote is for a local REPRESENTATIVE – not for a contribution to a party. Both voters and parties appear to have forgotten this, and I hope it’s a concept that can come back to Australian politics.
Australia has voted. It’s people have risen en masse and done their democratic duty, voting in new local representatives and half their allocated senators. And the winner is…
…umm.
As I’m sure most of you know, Australia has just had a federal election. The results are still coming in, and it’s basically pretty confusing.
As for me, I’m torn? I’ve been tweeting up a major storm about this over the campaign (@wombat1974 if you’re keen to see my drivel there) but at this post-election phase what should I talk about? I mean there’s so much.
- no clear majority for either major party
- Greens holding the balance of power in the Senate and winning their first House of Representative seat (at a General Election)
- 3 Independents controlling the balance of power in the House
- My local polling booth running out of sausage sizzles before I could get one
- Yuppie scum cutting in line at the polling both because they had a BAY-BEEEEEE
- 20 year old Wyatt Roy becoming Australia’s youngest ever MP?
- Wilson “Ironbar” Tuckey losing his “safe” Liberal seat to a National party candidate?
Too much to comment on. I might hold off ’till the end result is actually know. If it ever gets known.
Pre-Edit: I think the person I am talking about in this post still reads my blog/LJ. This post is not intended as a “call out” or an “insult”. I respect you and your views, I just don’t happen to share them. Don’t feel obliged to comment or reply in here. If you want to keep anonymity, feel free to message me directly on the usual channels.
Still a little annoyed with what I consider to be a semi-ambush debate I got into last night. I’ve made my personal opinion and stance on guns and gun use very clear. Now someone I do consider on the friend side of acquaintance last night linked me a suggestion on the Australian Liberal Party website that someone wanted to allow Concealed Carry Permits (CCP) for handguns. This is relatively common in the US where most states allow it, and if my memory serves me right Arizona just removed the requirement for people to have a permit to concealed carry.
The discussion around that fell back into my friend and my usual patterns of his trying to show me just how guns don’t alter crime statistics in any negative way, and me trying to debate the opposite. Last night I was in the middle of doing a couple of other things at the same time, so my heart and head weren’t really in the debate, so I was relying on the statistics my friend was providing, which were not clean statistics in my opinion (one of the commentators on the original Liberal Party piece stated that the US had the highest per capita gun death rate in the world, this was challenged and rightly so, as it’s not true.).
One thing I disliked about the nature of the argument that followed however was that the core of the debate was around a suggestion for increased gun ownership in Australia. I personally don’t think that there is any justification for such a thing. My friend is an American who is a reformed gun-hater. He now owns several, has a CCP in multiple states, and regularly shoots and maintains his guns as part of his every day life.
During the discussion though, various stats were brought up – how the gun death per capita was higher in Mexico, Russia and… Brazil? (forgive me, I’m working off memory and I can’t remember the third example given). I tried to ask what a comparative gun death rate is in a first world democracy (as both the US and Australia are. For the record, the US has a gun death rate of ~10.6 per 100,000 people, Australia has a ~2.5 rate. These figures are very approximate, though). After I asked for stats from the UK or Germany, both densely populated nations with fairly strict gun controls, I was given a nebulous quote about high “violent crime rates” in the UK. When I asked for Gun Death figures, I was told I should look for it myself, and that I was “typically apathetic” (misquote I know) about the issue and it was no wonder gun laws were being repealed.
So in response, here we are – the figures from the UK compared to the US. The figures are from Wikipedia, so take that with a grain of salt. They are all attributed on the wiki page here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gun_politics_in_the_United_Kingdom
By way of international comparison, in 2004 the police in the United States reported 9,326 gun homicides.[30] The overall homicide rates per 100,000 (regardless of weapon type) reported by the United Nations for 1999 were 4.55 for the U.S. and 1.45 in England and Wales.[31] The homicide rate in England and Wales at the end of the 1990s was below the EU average, but the rates in Northern Ireland and Scotland were above the EU average.[32]
While the number of crimes involving firearms in England and Wales increased from 13,874 in 1998/99 to 24,070 in 2002/03, they remained relatively static at 24,094 in 2003/04, and have since fallen to 21,521 in 2005/06. The latter includes 3,275 crimes involving imitation firearms and 10,437 involving air weapons, compared to 566 and 8,665 respectively in 1998/99.[33] Only those “firearms” positively identified as being imitations or air weapons (e.g. by being recovered by the police or by being fired) are classed as such, so the actual numbers are likely to be significantly higher. In 2005/06, 8,978 of the total of 21,521 firearms crimes (42%) were for criminal damage.[34]
Compared to the United States of America, the United Kingdom has a slightly higher total crime rate per capita of approximately 85 per 1000 people, while in the USA it is approximately 80.[35]
One other element that was raised last night was that part of the reason Australia has a lower gun death rate was that we have a much lower population density than the US. While this is true, there are contributing factors that this does not account for (for example massive sections of Australia are near uninhabitable desert, and the majority of the population are located on the coastal strip on the east coast, but I digress here…). To bring the discussion back to the UK/US comparison, here are the relative population densities between the UK and the US:
UK: 254.676 people per km2
USA: 32.101 people per km2
(for shits and giggles, Australia is 2.896, just behind Iceland, and ahead of Namibia)
So one of the points raised last night, that the US’s higher gun death rate is partially due to a higher population density, appears to not bear fruit when compared to other nations.
So what’s the difference? In my liberal-biased view it would likely be gun ownership in general. The more people who have a gun (legally or not) the more likely it is for those guns to be used. Now the vast majority of gun owners are like my friend. Responsible people who take the utmost care with their guns and have never shot anyone in their life, nor are they likely to except ni the most extreme of instances. That’s true in the USA, that’s true in the UK, that’s true here. What is a big differentiator from what I can see safely hidden behind a few thousand miles of ocean, is that the US has a very gun-oriented culture. Americans love their guns, which is cool for them I guess, but Australia just doesn’t have that mindset. In Melbourne we’re currently having a problem with people being stabbed. It doesn’t change the fact that I, as a knife owner (love my swiss army knives) now have to leave them at home instead of keeping on me if needed otherwise it’s liable to be confiscated by the police.
However… if guns were more freely available, I’m sure those miscreants stabbing people would be shooting people instead. And if I had gotten into the habit, as many younger people have done, of carrying a knife around with me in case someone ELSE was to threaten me with a knife, I’d suddenly realise that that knife was insufficient for personal defense purposes… so I’d also go and get the same weapon being used to potentially menace me to stop being menaced. THAT, in my opinion, is what is happening in the US. Bad Dudes have guns. It only makes sense for Good Dudes to carry guns to, to keep the arms race level.
In Australia, the UK, Germany, New Zealand, etc etc, the Bad Dudes, for the most part, do NOT carry guns, so the Good Dudes don’t feel the pressure to carry a gun for defence.
I don’t want to cast judgement on US gun owners in those statements. If a gun gives you peace of mind and a sense of security, then good for you. You do what you feel is needed to protect yourself, your family, and your property. Here in Australia, we’re not in a security situation where a gun is needed for self defence. It might get to that stage one day, who knows, but I can comfortably say that here in Australia, in early 2010, there is no need for an average person to have a gun for personal protection.
Since the feedback page on Rimmel’s web site has a 750 Character limit, I am posting this letter to them here, with a link to it on the complaint form I have just sent in. Please read and respond, Rimmel people.
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Hello there, people responsible for Rimmel.
While I am not a regular user of your cosmetics, my wife is. Because I love her, I like buying her things that she likes, and one of those things is “Rimmel Professional Eyebrow Pencil, Black-Brown 004″. Now, according to my wife, she finds the Rimmel formula the ‘best on the market’, which is great. Top Marks for that one. Unfortunately, there are a few shortcomings that I would like to point out that, as an observer on the whole warpaint industry, might be a slight problem.
Firstly, and most importantly, your manufacturing appears to be faulty. Very faulty. Over the past 3 months or so, I would guess I have bought my wife 4 of your pencils. No, my wife is not a Goth, and does not dress up as Racoon regularly. The reasons I keep buying her these pencils is that they get broken more often than Tiger Woods’ Wedding Vows. Sharpening them appears not to help, and in fact hastens their wood-chippy demise.
It’s getting so bad I’m starting to wonder if the eyeliner part is pre-broken inside the pencil? It’s not the sharpener, I’m quite sure of that. We have tried about 5 different types, and they all do the same thing. Wonderfully sharp compressed wood pulp on the outside, broken eyeliner on the inside.
Can you please have a word to whatever Chinese factory makes your pencils, and see if they can remove the step “run over the pencils with a delivery truck before packaging” from the production line. I’m sure that would help in the long run and stop my wife switching to Almay (which, although they cost more individually, hopefully they won’t have the pre-destroyed makeup inside the pencils)
Thank you for taking the time to read this note, and we hope you have a wonderful day, free from broken makeup.
Andrew Callaghan.
At present, the Australian Parliament is in the midst of debating a bill to introduce Emissions Trading to the Australian socio-economic landscape. Of course, this is all an attempt to reduce our overall carbon production and help Save The Planet™.
Unfortunately, as with most Westminster System parliaments, Australian politics has devolved into a two party situation, with the current government being from the Labor party, and their main opposition coming from a coalition of the Liberal and National parties.
A quick political primer for those who care. The Labor party is a party created originally by Trade Unionists to represent their interests in Politics, after the disastrous Shearer’s Strike of the 19th Century. (Interesting aside, they went with the name Labor, instead of Labour, to show their progressiveness and willingness to embrace the new!). The Liberal Party was a party created by Sir Robert Menzies in an attempt to create a more balanced and fair party to protect the rights of individuals and business owners. The National Party is a renamed Country Party. The party of farmers and… more farmers. They have next to no support in any metropolitan region, but are an institution in regional and rural Australia. (There’s also the Greens, but they’re the same in every country, so no need to expand on them).
And here’s the crux of the problem. Each of our political parties has basically got a single massively vested interest and background. So the Emissions Trading Scheme (ETS) has turned out to be, surprise surprise, a massively compromised, virtually ineffectual exercise in uselessness.
From today’s The Age article on the ETS:
The Government has offered the Opposition less than they wanted for heavy-polluting, trade-exposed industries – but will keep current rates of free permits to industry at 94.5 per cent and 66 per cent for more than the initial five years.
The Government has also offered extra additional assistance to the natural gas industry, food processing, manufacturers, and has excluded agriculture from the scheme.
The Government has also proposed additional but limited green measures to increase energy efficiency in homes and allow those carbon savings to be additional to national emissions targets.
So what does this mean? It means that we’re left with a trading scheme that gives the heaviest carbon emitting industries a free pass to do whatever they’ve been doing to get us to this point in the first place.
“BUT!!!” cry the captains of industry, trade unionists, and farmers who are desperate to keep their jobs “BUT! Australia produces much less than 1% of the world’s Carbon Dioxide!”
Well, yes, we do, but the really BIG polluters like Russia, China, India, and even Brazil (the so-called BRIC nations) look at first world economies like us and the USA and rightfully say “Why should we reduce our emissions when those guys aren’t changing a damned thing and they have a much better standard of living than we do!”.
Lead by example, people. We have shitloads of sunlight. We have stable geological conditions. Get out there. Get alternative energy production methods implemented. Get off your asses and stop protecting coal minters and aluminium smelters. If you don’t none of us will be able to have a job anywhere.
The wonderful tradition of absolute idiots running Government policy for IT in this country (Hi there ex-Senator Alston) our current Minister for Communications is Senator Stephen Conroy, sadly from my own home state of Victoria (at least I can honestly say I didn’t vote for him).
As you may or may not have heard of, the Rudd Labor Government is planning to implement at national content filter for all internet traffic. Originally, this was to be an opt-out filter that was in place to protect the kiddies from the horrors of child-pornography and other evils on the internet. At least that’s what it was going to be during the election campaign.
Since their election, the filter has now become a filter that cannot be opted out of, and will not only block sites related to child pornography, but “anything illegal”. Wikileaks last week released a leaked copy of the sites on the blacklist and as has been widely reported, it included such dangers as a Queensland dentist, an association of School Tuckshops and a wide variety of online poker sites. What was truly fascinating, though, was none of these sites had any idea they had been targeted by a blacklist. At all. And how could they? The list itself is illegal to view, illegal to post, and in fact posting links to any of the blacklisted sites can result in a fine of $11,000/day.
Yes, that’s right, you can be fined for hyperlinking to a site that’s illegal to know it’s illegal to hyperlink to.
I’ll let that try and get processed by you, ‘cos I sure as hell don’t understand it.
And what of our wonderful Senator Conroy? What does he say of the filter, specifically questions as to why we need it? Well, anyone who questions the filter is, by Senator Conroy’s reckoning, a supporter of child pornography and wants to harm Australia’s children. Sites on the list that ostensibly have nothing to do with Child Pornography? Poker Sites? Redtube? Abby Winters dot com? Doesn’t matter, if it’s on the list, it’s (apparently) automatically child pornography.
Really? Well while I respect your right to an opinion, Senator Conroy, fuck you.
Child Pornography is sick. It is evil, it is wrong, it has no place in a civilised society, and perpetrators of it should be thrown in jail and have the key thrown away. But normal, legal, pornography is fine. If consenting adults want to watch it, more power to them. You, Senator Conroy, have no right to arbitrarily declare a site to be child pornography or whatever criteria you use to add it to the black list, and then deny Australians to not only view that legally viewable website with legally viewable content, but also deny the viewers of the site AND THE SITE ITSELF, the right to know it’s on the list, and also deny any right of appeal to the list.
How long till the Greens or the Liberal Party websites appear on the list? I personally dislike the hamfisted approach to failure riddled censorship. Am I about to appear on the list?
This is dictatorial and wrong, Senator Conroy. You have no electoral mandate for this as it was announced AFTER the election. You have no moral obligation for this, a child’s parents are wholly responsible for the moral protection of a child.
I hope, for you and your party’s sake, that you abandon this ill-conceived and patently stupid plan.
