Australian political activist targeted by opposition party's lawyers

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by obtino • 13 years ago

95 17 13 years ago

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devx• 13 years ago

I wonder if that Internet filter they've just added to their platform policy will be used to censor websites like that. My guess? Definitely.

It may be why they even decided at the last minute to introduce that, to stop this sort of activism from happening at future elections.

nwh• 13 years ago

They've withdrawn that, claiming it was "poorly worded". It's apparently an opt-in filter now.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-05/no-internet-filter-say...

Though in reality we still have the AMCA filter, which has been used badly in the past.

lessnonymous• 13 years ago

I love that both Turnbull (who will be the internet minister) and Abbott (who will be prime minister) are both back pedalling saying they didn't have time to read it properly.

IT'S THEIR FUCKING POLICY.

https://twitter.com/TurnbullMalcolm/status/37555537509050777...

derefr• 13 years ago

If I recall, there was a blurb on it a few months ago--it's neither opt-in or opt-out, but forced-choice (you can't start using your connection until answer a form stating whether you want it filtered or not.) The party pushing it was just asking for it to be marketed as opt-out ("default yes"), since of the two radio buttons, the "yes" option would be the checked="checked" one.

joshthewanderer• 13 years ago

Direct link to the site: http://dontbeafuckingidiot.com/ Link to the statement that's a bit clearer: http://dontbeafuckingidiot.com/MediaStatement.pdf

jacques_chester3• 13 years ago

I used to be in student politics. There is always an overzealous dipshit who zooms off to play the hard man who makes you look like ... well ... a pack of pricks.

More. More like a pack of pricks.

However, intimidation is a serious charge. The site owner should contact the police. The police would be within their powers to obtain telco phone logs to see who made the relevant call.

famo• 13 years ago

Wow, those statements on dontbeafuckingidiot.com almost reach Charlie Brooker levels of awesome.

Jgrubb• 13 years ago

I'm totally ignorant of Australian politics (can you believe it?? An American who doesn't know the major parties involved in a foreign election??), but this sounds basically like a comparison between the Republican and Democrat parties here. The joke here is that it's all lip service and they both do and act almost the exact same way once elected. Is that the case elsewhere?

alan_cx• 13 years ago

One, I love your honesty. Two, yeah, the UK. Except it turned out we have three parties that are the same. We call them "the government".

shirro• 13 years ago

Not really. Both major parties in Australia still stand for something. They share a lot of common ground on many issues which does make some people feel there is a lack of choice but often these are issues where there is some option which is clearly more pragmatic or reasonable to both. Neither are going to stray far from the US alliance for instance.

The Liberals were sometimes more progressive in the past but now are more firmly a conservative party and have conservative economic and social policies within the context of the Australian system where people would be sensitive to dismantling public health care or education beyond certain limits.

The ALP fundamentally exists to give a fair go to working Australians. In the past that might have been through socialism but these days it more through an efficient market economy (they were responsible for several big macroeconomic reforms) while still ensuring protection for employees and safety nets for health and education.

Economies and governments have reasonable optimum settings and experts like economists to advise and both parties will benefit their constituencies through wealth creation. The ALP perhaps would share a bit of the wealth down and the Libs would direct it more up. Either are prepared to tax and spend on their own constituency to buy votes up to a point. The point being that we are still a AAA rated economy with much lower public debt to GDP than many others.

Like the US, Australia goes through election cycles and parties fortunes change. The conservatives are due for government and have the benefit of overwhelming media support (Murdoch owns nearly all the press) and lack of discipline within the ALP. The thing that strikes me about the Libs is that their policies seem very underdone. They haven't costed them. They seem poorly reviewed. There is stuff like the Internet filter backflip. I wonder if by Abbott trying to channel GWB style anti-intellectualism to gain popular votes he hasn't done his party a bit of a disservice in other areas. Time will tell.

retrogradeorbit• 13 years ago

Yep. Exactly the same here. And just like in America there will be 'believers in the system' who will tell you the major parties differ on several key issues (until they get elected, and then they do exactly what the real power brokers want).

throwaway_yy2Di• 13 years ago

"My ISP contacted me on Wednesday afternoon to let me know that the federal opposition party's lawyers were demanding my personal details. Despite this being a personal project not paid for or endorsed by anyone, I gave them permission to hand over my name, address, and phone number so that the site could stay up."

Is political speech regulated in Australia? If you have an influential website like this, are you required to register publicly to prove compliance with, e.g. campaign spending limits?

I read there's a blackout on political ads, but it doesn't apply to web ads:

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/09/04/no-media-black...

jacques_chester3• 13 years ago

You are required to give the name and location of the person authorising political comment.

The blogs I host, for example, place authorisation on their lead authors.

eg: http://larvatusprodeo.net/about-larvatus-prodeo/electoral-co...

40• 13 years ago

Seeing lots of people I know posting this on Facebook made me very uncomfortable. It feels the far-left and far-right crazies (we all know the type) breaking into the mainstream.

It's desperate, disrespectful and just plain inaccurate.

The problem with something like this spreading on social media is its only going to polarize our country taking us further towards the toxic political environment of the US.

Let's take a look at some of the claims:

* Gay Marriage

“GAY MARRIAGE WITH LOVE & RAINBOWS AND SHIT vs. ARCHAIC DISCRIMINATORY FUCKWITAGE Tony Abbott is a bigot. Fuck him and his hateful, backwards, repressed nasty fuckery. If two people are in love who the fuck are you to tell them it's not 'valid'. Fuck you.”

Gay marriage was defined as between a man and a woman with bipartisan support in 2004.1 Both party platforms opposed gay marriage until this year 2011, when the ALP said they would allow a conscience vote. Our old prime minister Julia Gillard, an athiest, from the ALP party personally opposed gay marriage. Kevin Rudd, current prime-minster only changed his position in support of gay marriage in May 2013. Tony Abbott has a lesbian sister, his daughters support gay marriage and his wife is open to the idea.2 So the fact is the ALP is not for gay marriage. They are only for a conscience vote and only very recently. The LNP conducts conscience votes inside their caucus and choose their position as a party as a whole.

Gay marriage is a nuanced issue in every country. It is not black and white. Most Australians are religious 3 and if that is what you have been brought up to believe its going to take time to work through it. If this is bigoted to you, have some balls and go call every religious person a bigot, don't single out one Australian.

If someone supports a civil union bill which provides equal rights to hetero and homo but is sensitive to the use of the term 'marriage' for some strange religious reason, are they the same as someone who believes being gay is a lifestyle choice. If this is still bigoted, go label that group as bigots - just watch out because they might be a decent person voting for your party because of another issue.

It's better to bring people with you on this issue than to call them bigots.

* Climate Change

“SAVING THE FUCKING PLANET vs. TOTALLY FUCKING THE PLANET Abbott fucked Turnbull on the basis of climate change being "crap”, he's a climate-denying, self-serving, short-sighted, right wing tool and he will actively fuck up your children's future. Do you want to look back in 20 years time and remember that you voted for the guy that was against saving the planet? You'd be like one of those dipshits that opposed women voting.“

In Oct 2009 Abbott said "the argument is absolute crap… However, the politics of this are tough for us. 80% of people believe climate change is a real and present danger”, then in Dec 2009 said he had used “a bit of hyperbole” at that meeting rather than it being his “considered position”.

In Nov 2009 Abbott said “we should take reasonable precautions against credible threats”.

The issue is how proportionate should our response to climate change be - and this has always been Abbott's point. There are opinions throughout the spectrum on this issue, it is certainly not black and white. What kind of increase in cost of living are people acceptable with, how much debt should we incur to invest in new enviro-friendly energy sources, what spending wil we forgoe because of the drop in revenue from reducing our use in coal, how less internationally competitive are we willing to be as a result of exporting to countries without a price on carbon.

Most importantly, how much do we want to economically handicap ourselves before the US, China and Russia act.

ALP is now for an ETS. LNP is for direct investment in renewable technologies whilst we wait for the rest of the world to act. It is a reasonable debate to be had.

* Economy

PRETTY FUCKING GOOD ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT vs. IGNORANT ARSE-BACKWARDS ECONOMIC POLICY THAT WILL FUCK US ALL FOR A LONG TIME Even the motherfucking right wing Economist reckon's Labor's economic policy is a much better idea than slashing, cutting, and burning our economy. Keynesian stimulus bitches, it works.

There was plenty of waste with stimulus. The ALP's argument is that as long as we didn't go into recession they did the right thing. The fact is our net debt was 0% and will now peak at about 13%. Both parties are now in agreement that we have to make cuts to spending to reduce our structural deficit. The LNP is simply arguing that the ALP could have spent less. When people see unpopular cuts to programs like the ALP cutting university funding to put into high schools, it is right to ask the question: would we have to make this choice if we used less stimulus money. There are arguments from credible professors that the stimulus actually caused higher unemployment, given that our low Australian dollar and strong demand for exports from China actually kept us out of recession rather than the stimulus spending. 4 If the author feels its so obvious, he might have been better to mention the complex counter arguments and illustrate how obviously false they are rather than “Keynesian stimulus bitches, it works.”. But that would probably require an understanding of economics, some careful thought and research, and wouldn't fit in with his diatribe. Despite your entitled moaning about cost of living pressures (while you sip imported beers looking at wall-sized plasmas in your McMansions) shit is pretty good. You vote for Abbott and you'll find out pretty fucking quickly what austerity results in and feels like.

LNP is not doing austerity. This is just a scare tactic from the ALP. All LNP costings are out today, no-one would consider it austerity and its simply spending 6bn less than ALP which is not much at all. Macro-economics is not a household budget and our debt levels are fucking negligible. Seriously, wake the fuck up and stop being a credulous cock.“

Debt will peak at 13% and is unlikely to be paid off in our life times. The number of consecutive surpluses we would need is huge. Considering at each election each party wants to promise bigger and better than the other party, to have a government with the fiscal discipline to actually reduce our debt faster than we grow it is unlikely to happen. They just wouldn't be popular enough. A bit of debt is fine, but you only get to run it up once. The LNP has been attacking the ALP because they fervently promised surpluses by this 2012-13, but instead produced a $30bn deficit. Both parties agree that debt is an issue and a return to surplus soon is neccessary. The LNP has slightly more cuts than the ALP. Again the author is not on steady enough ground to make claims with such hyperbole.

* Ramblings

Also, despite all of Labor's faults and instability, they do actually give a shit about people and communities and, usually at least, create policy that's informed by evidence instead of ideology.

You can read this as the LNP doesn't give a shit about people and communities. It's just not neccessary. It sounds so desperate. I could list plenty of pros and cons for each party but its just not worth it.

So you could just take it as a joke, but the way he finishes it makes it sound like he believes everything he has written, and then appeals for you to vote for the ALP. It doesn't come across as satire, or comedy.

The comedy is in the way he captures what would be written by a biased obnoxious bleeding-heart Labor party voter after everything the party has been through. I don't think he realized this though :P

Normally you could ignore something like this or but seeing how popular its got is alarming. Yes, free speech and all that, but I would prefer this to be removed from Facebook, and something equally popular and vulgar from the LNP be removed if it came about.

Australian political activist targeted by opposition party's lawyers

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