This issue is regularly floated by both "sides" of politics, usually to much criticism (on both technical and moral grounds). It is like the Hydra - chop off one head and it will simply grow two more. This time the policy announcement is especially reprehensible, coming 48 hours before an election which is all but decided in advance and buried in fine-print.
No doubt the new government will announce that it has "a clear mandate" to implement the filter as it was tucked away in their last-minute policy announcements.
1. Voting. If you live in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria or Tasmania, you can vote for the Pirate Party in the Senate on Saturday. If you live in NSW, Victoria or Western Australia, you can vote for the Wikileaks Party. Live anywhere, and you can vote for the Sex Party or the Greens.
2. Activism. Join one or more of these parties.
3. Software. Write software that circumvents the censorship.
> This issue is regularly floated by both "sides" of politics
People who think there are only two sides are wrong.
Sorry, I didn't mean to say it is impossible to fight. In the sense that I could fight Mike Tyson, or Don Quixote could fight a windmill, obviously it can be fought.
I meant to say that as a citizen, this is impossible to stop. I say that as someone who will vote Wikileaks on Saturday. But in realistic terms, unfortunately there are only two viable sides in the legislative house. Polls (and consequently betting markets) don't even anticipate a single seat going to a minor party at this election.
> Sorry, I didn't mean to say it is impossible to fight. In the sense that I could fight Mike Tyson, or Don Quixote could fight a windmill, obviously it can be fought.
It is possible to win. We blocked SOPA and ACTA. The vote to partially defund the NSA was only lost by a narrow margin. There are Pirates in the European Parliament (and will probably be more next year). There is more awareness of digital rights than there ever has been before, and importantly for the future it's higher amoung younger voters.
Perhaps at the grand old age of 32, I am becoming bitter and jaded but after SOPA and ACTA was blocked, they are just going to come around and try again and again and again. This is exactly what has happened in Australia with this damn internet filter.
I remember what it was like to dial into BBS's when I was in high school. The freedoms we had online then were incredible compared to what we have today.
The fight we are fighting is not one to win new territory or new freedoms - its one to protect what we already have. Sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. But we have to win all the time just to keep things where they are today. All it takes is one loss and something is irrevocably gone...
And the artists of the world can have a fresh supply of human skulls -- with the unfortunate defect that there is a bullet hole through them. But that just makes them a bargain.
Don't feel bad. It just means the family of the deviant hacker criminal won't have to pay the bill for the bullet.
Or in other words: Yeah, china. There's an ideal to aspire to.
I meant to say that as a citizen, this is impossible to stop.
Of course it's not. People forget that the NBN cost the Liberal party the last election. People care about "this stuff" now
Polls (and consequently betting markets) don't even anticipate a single seat going to a minor party at this election.
That isn't true. Brandt (Greens) is the favourite in Melbourne[1] and Wilkie is favourite in Denison[2]. There's also a conservative independent who is favourite to win a seat in Victoria but I can't find her name or the reference at the moment.
One good thing about the House of Representatives is that, because it uses AV, you can give your higher preferences to the smaller parties without it being a a wasted vote.
Handing seats over to the greens and independents is pretty much why we had a minority government though. The system works on a seat by seat basis, but it doesn't seem to work when forming a government.
Though this election is going to be a landslide for the Libs, and split votes aren't going to have much impact.
The system has almost always worked as intended: the Government is formed in the House, which has the monopoly on questions of supply. Because the House is single-member electorates, there has been a clear majority in every election except for 2, including this outgoing Parliament.
The Senate doesn't form the government and cannot originate supply bills, but otherwise has coequal legislative powers. It is elected on a proportional basis.
The system works well because a government can normally form quickly and govern stably, but in order to pass legislation it must give consideration to minority parties in the Senate. You get an Executive that can execute but which must nevertheless be prepared to compromise.
Good points, thanks for that. I guess I have thought about the minority government a little too much when it is an anomaly.
I have no problems with the senate. I vote for minority parties (Sex Party last election and this one) because I want protection from the government when required.
Doesn't the fact we had greens and independents win lower-house seats prove that there are other options beside the 2 major parties?
Doesn't the current minority government - along with numerous examples of senates where the balance of power wasn't held by the major parties - prove that these parties can have significant influence?
The libs will probably win the lower house easily (although I suspect the Greens will hold Melbourne and Wilkie will hold in Tasmania). But I think the senate will be interesting.
Yes, there are other valid options beside the 2 major parties. Having them win individual seats in the lower house shows that the system works. But my argument was that it harms the major party they are most closest to at the macro level.
If there were 100 seats and 50 went to the libs, but labor and the greens split 30-20, the libs are (most likely) going to form government even though the people voting greens would prefer a labor government.
They get their local representative, but ultimately it means nothing, because the government that forms is on the political opposite of the spectrum. As pointed out in a sister comment though, this has only happened twice in our history, so I'm probably making a bigger deal than is appropriate.
Agree that the senate is going to be interesting though.
And I think the only sensible course of action is for the greens and labor to form a similar coalition, or have some kind of agreement that the greens will always support labor in a minority government.
The agreement that no minority government (by both the libs and labor) would be formed this election cycle could only of helped the liberals - not that they needed it.
I think this could be quite off-putting for some Labor voters and that the very loose alliance is best kept as an unspoken or informal one for that reason.
There is a very strong anti-Greens sentiment in places and Labor could not risk being entirely tarred with that brush.
It's really depressing -- I recall when I used to browse Slashdot a few years ago, all you would ever see tagged "Australia" was censorship and filter proposals.
Good luck with that -- it's a royal PITA to get citizenship in AU.
Usually the countries without US extradition treaties have much more worrying issues, like abysmal civil / human rights records, IIRC. Also, it doesn't stop the US from leaning on them to extradite you as a special case, anyway.
After which the prime minister (president equivalent) immediately personally apologised, flamed the police minister, and they have since been good about the whole thing.
What do they think doing this serves, in their opinion? In the US, there's at least the excuse that there's this big block of neoconservative religious-fundamentalists to win the votes of. Does Australia have those too?
I don't think this is a vote-winner; this policy has been as well-hidden as it possibly could be. 99% of voters will not even know about it.
More likely some back-room deal has been done with vested interests and the implementation of this policy somehow benefits them (financially or politically).
It is likely a combination of: rightsholder companies who will eventually twist the filters to block internet-based competition, large IT contracting companies who will get lucrative contracts for implementing it, and (tin-foil hat time) the Catholic church.
There are some VERY skeezy links between the federal opposition and the Australian Catholic church which see the church hold significant lobbying power over LNP policies. See: marriage equality, abortion rights, royal commission into child sexual abuse etc.
As a small, uncontroversial example, the current government handed over regulation of charities (including churches) to an independent regulator last year. The Catholic Church in particular hates being under the thumb of a regulator it doesn't have in its own back pocket. Conveniently the LNP plans to scrap the regulator if they win the election. Even mainstream newspapers are reporting that this is at the behest of Cardinal George Pell:
"The answer, in part at least, may be the lobbying power of church conservatives, the Catholic Church in particular, and the office of Sydney Cardinal George Pell, more particularly still."
"And the Victorian and Tasmanian-based Churches of Christ Community Care has begun an online petition to save the commission, warning that the Coalition alternative would be ''an advisory body with no teeth''. That, say critics, appears to be the point."
It's worth noting that when the Labour party attempted an internet filter, they insisted INSISTED that the only sites on the black list would be pedophilia sites. Wikileaks ended up on the black list.
The blacklist contains one url from Wikileaks, which (judging form the URL) is yet another (non-Australian) leaked blacklist of banned sites.
I'm not defending censorship (one look at the list shows what a STUPID idea it is) but I think implying that it was used to "block Wikileaks" overstates what happened.
That does sort of make sense, though. Publishing the list of blocked URLs would be like publishing a list of the addresses of people under Witness Protection: useless to anyone except those who want to go to them. And not just those who want to look at one site in particular--you can know whether a particular site is on the list by just testing it, after all. Instead, the only use of having the entire list would be to look at sites just because they're on the list; in est, to get suggestions for new sites related to your interests.
How do you know the difference between a blocked site and a site with a networking issue without uh... subverting the block and using a proxy or a vpn?
> the current government handed over regulation of charities (including churches) to an independent regulator last year
That's pretty awesome that that was even done, though. I cannot imagine something like that happening in the US. I am so sick of seeing religious institutions abuse their tax-free status to play Real Estate Tycoon.
For what it's worth most of the sector (including religious charities) strongly support the regulator.
We had some issues in the past with some very high-profile sports people setting up "charitable funds" which undertook a lot of fundraising and tax deductible activities without actually doing any philanthropy. That undermines trust in organisations who actually help people (Salvation Army, World Vision etc).
The leader of the opposition is a devout Catholic. As the minister for health he tried to block abortion treatments until overruled by his party, and nearly became a priest before settling for lifetime politician.
He became the leader of the opposition by one vote (internal votes) after a debate between him and the previous leader over climate change (which he successfully argued to his party wasn't occurring, later changing his mind to satisfy the polls)
The leaders of the three biggest parties, ALP, Liberal and Greens are all Catholic or in the case of Rudd a Catholic turned Anglican. Catholics are the second biggest cult after the Protestants in Australia and just ahead of the non-believers by a whisker. Catholics are possibly over-represented due to private school networking in the case of the Abbott and Pyne types and a concern with social justice issues in the case of a Rudd or Milne type. It really isn't about the religion though.
It is all about power, money and special interests corrupting democracy. Abbott for all his Catholicism will have signed his soul over to big carbon polluters, the tobacco lobby, Rupert Murdoch and lots more to take the election.
Abbott has demonstrated that he is prepared to distinguish between his private beliefs and his public policy. He has no choice: trying to introduce the Catholic wishlist would see him voted down like an obese person on reality TV.
Both of of the US's major political parties are more conservative than the Australian major conservative party. Particularly when it comes to fighting crime (when our police started fucking up with SWAT tactics, they were stopped in short order) and waging war.
Outside of politics, it really depends on what you look at. There's certainly a strong urge to conform in mainstream anglo America (clipped lawns, identical houses, visible laundry is unsightly, etc) that doesn't really have a parallel here, but on the other hand, Americans are a bit more socially outgoing than Australians.
AU political party names were very confusing for me; the Liberal party is politically conservative, and both parties are more liberal than the US. =P
AU successfully managed to de-militarize its police force? The US needs to use you guys as a case study! However, I suspect that you were only able to do that because of your very low tolerance for firearms violence, as evidenced by the near-complete disarmament of your civilian population via that massive buyback program & subsequent legislation after the Port Arthur massacre. I wouldn't be surprised if US citizens like the idea of a militarized police, ready to respond with overwhelming force to whatever movie-plot terrorists happen to pop up.
If filtering doesn't happen immediately, fear may be exploited and politicians will have to find something else to procrastinate on rather than tackling real issues (poverty, health care, budget waste).
It will be until we form a group large enough to have pull like the ACLU (500k members) or the NRA (5M members).
The grassroots opposition to ACTA and SOPA were effective for round one, but we will lose in the long run unless get serious about organizing.
The EFF (eff.org) is a good start, but it needs more members.
Our tech-freedoms lobby could have the same model as the NRA and ACLU, lots of members to give it a clear mandate when lobbying and cash flow from effected industries for fighting legal battles.
Just imagine if we had a group with the weight of the NRA.
The problem is, what industry with deep pockets would support EFF policies? For instance, the NRA is supported by firearms manufacturers but the EFF is opposed by copyright trolls like Hollywood.
The Pirate Party could be the best party on the ballot, however if it wants people to vote for it, it should consider a non-churlish name. I can relate to a lot of the Pirate Party's policies in the UK, but struggle to take them seriously with such a silly name.
I voted for them last time, and I'm voting for them again. Be aware that voting for the sex party is almost a donkey vote in all but Victoria though. Make sure you vote below the line.
I've always wondered about people's reactions (or lack thereof) when this was first put into practice. It seems to me that the results can only be negative. It just encourages lazy & uninformed voting and perpetuates the problem of money in politics -- the more $$ you have, the more signs with your name on them you can buy; the more signs you have, the more people have heard of you, and the more blind votes you get.
If you do know the names of the members that comprise a party, then you can just as easily vote for the members specifically by name (and if you're too lazy to do this then how did you manage to haul your carcass to the polling booth?) If you're so ignorant that you don't know the names of the members that comprise a party, maybe you shouldn't be blindly casting a vote for them.
Seriously! What's wrong with "The Techno Freedom Party" or something like that? If only these party leaders would spend 5 minutes reading about how to effectively market themselves to voters, they'd realize how politically suicidal they've been by giving themselves a party name that sounds like a practical joke. I think they'd be surprised how many people would get behind them & their policies if they stopped preaching to the choir and made an effort to appeal to the voters who don't already know about them.
yes to the pirate party. Even tho they are unlikely to garner any actual majority, giving them your vote means that they could potentially affect policy.
And it is not just the policy on porn filtering that has been left to the last minute. The conservative party has waited until less than 48 hours before the election to release the vast bulk of their policy detail, including in major areas like health, education and the environment. I'd normally be tempted to vote for the Liberal party, but not when they perform cynical stunts like this.
You'd think this sneaky behavior would be a fat red flag that the party doing it was not to be trusted.
FFS, if you can't even slap together, before the last minute, a theoretical document outlining what you are supposedly going to do -- which you're not even going to be held accountable for if you fail to accomplish it or completely reverse your stance on it -- then what good are you?
A recession might be good for rich programmer geeks like us. We can keep on working getting paid through the wazoo and start buying up properties when everyone else is suffering and defaulting.
I really wish your average Joe in AU would quit playing Real Estate Tycoon -- it drives up the prices and makes homes too costly to afford for those who want to own a home and have it paid off earlier than 30 years.
The blackout is for election advertising, which these days seems more about muckraking than policy advertising. In any case, it doesn't stop politicians from giving speeches to journalists, only paid advertising. This policy released today (Thursday) is within that blackout period (midnight Wednesday eve).
Blackouts don't make much sense in our always-connected world, but I think they should be swapped for "all policy must be announced 7 days out".
If you have no economic policy announced the Saturday before the election then you're going in to the election with NO policy and you're not allowed to talk about what you'll be doing in regard to the economy in that last week.
Not that it ever really meant anything; it's not like you lose your job if you don't meet policy goals or attempt to do the opposite. Heck, you don't even lose credibility if no one even remembers what you promised.
Sorry, I take my policy queues from Abbott and Turnbull. I haven't really thought it that far through. But if you vote for me I can probably muddle through.
Yes, my thought is that you have to submit your full policy plan to be costed independently at least 2 weeks before the election. This is then used by a neutral party to draw up unbiased election material that is the only material that parties are allowed to hand out on the day.
It is crazy to give the public the costings of your promises 48 hours before the election. The average person isn't never going to have or want to take the time in that period to really look into what is released and the liberal party know that.
Malcolm Turnbull (@TurnbullMalcolm) tweeted at 7:43 PM on Thu, Sep 05, 2013:
Policy released today wrongly indicated we supported an opt out system of internet filtering. That is not our policy and never has been.
(https://twitter.com/TurnbullMalcolm/status/37555476615306854...)
And as the article notes, this pledge has been snuck into a document that will be read by few, and released after an "advertising blackout" point has been passed which prevents TV advertising (and thus critical ads) for the final couple of days before the election.
Can anyone explain to me how this isn't a really low move?
According to a radio interview I just heard with the opposition shadow minister Malcolm Turnbull on TripleJ, this is a "software filter" that ISPs will install and enable on "home broadband routers and smartphones" by default, and there will be "no server-side filter".
While this of course sounds terribly stupid, pointless, costly and technically infeasible, it also sounds fairly innocuous as far as these types of proposals go.
It sounds like users would be able to enable/disable it whenever they like, without adding their name to a central database at the Ministry for Censorship (unlike the UK proposal?). He declared that the point was to enable this kind of filtering for people who aren't technical enough to set it up for themselves, and that ultimately the decision and responsibility lies with parents.
In fact, it sounds a lot better than the system the current government (who is of course already criticising this policy) tried to ram down our throats recently.
(Disclosure: I just heard about this policy on the way home from voting early, and the intent of my vote was to benefit the current governing party more than the opposition proposing this system, after my preferred minor candidates are eliminated...I like Malcolm Turnbull a lot, but I don't like his party's policies any more than I suspect he does, at the moment.)
"We had no intention of accidentally releasing this policy decision so close to an election. We will correct the version online immediately with our temporary watered down version until we've won."
"The correct position is that the Coalition will encourage mobile phone and internet service providers to make available software which parents can choose to install on their own devices to protect their children from inappropriate material."
The Australian election just keeps on getting better and better. I cannot believe Tony Abbott is actually going to win if the polls are to be believed... I get Kevin Rudd messed up, but I think he was honestly trying his best to right his wrongs after recently becoming leader again. The NBN and the fact Labor aren't for a mandatory Internet filter are two good reasons alone to vote for Labor.
I believe this is Abbott letting his Catholic views get in the way of policy. Much like his opinions on gay marriage and abortion align with that of other Catholics, he's a puppet. And even if Kevin was a puppet, at least he went about hiding it a bit better.
In six months or so people will realise they made a mistake voting for LNP but it'll be too late. Filtering will not only be used to filter adult content, it'll be used to block whatever content Abbott and church/parent groups of Australia want banned. It'll also block legitimate content as the test run of a filter a little while ago actually showed.
This is just the beginning. A filter is nothing compared to what Abbott will be capable of doing in his position of power. He is hell-bent on proving a point by rescuing the economy by taking dirty lobbyist money in exchange for a few lax laws and blocked sites here and there.
There is already a filter in place. It was utilised most recently earlier this year. ASIC maintains a database of fraud/scam websites, and blocks them so as to minimise the impact on unsuspecting victims.
"The Federal Government has confirmed its financial regulator has started requiring Australian Internet service providers to block websites suspected of providing fraudulent financial opportunities, in a move which appears to also open the door for other government agencies to unilaterally block sites they deem questionable in their own portfolios." (http://delimiter.com.au/2013/05/15/interpol-filter-scope-cre...)
And direct press release from ASIC: "ASIC has already blocked access to these websites."
Will they cut with the porn bullshit we all know this is all about power and controlling what people can see.
Once a filter is set up it's very easy to block any website they want.
Porn/sex shouldn't be taboo to begin with it's how we all got on this planet.
I grew up on the internet without filters and I'm happy to report I'm just fine stop filtering my shit.
It's so easy to convince someone who understands nothing about how computers and the Internet works that "filtering out (child) pornography" is a good thing, easy to do and won't cause any collateral damage.
I wonder if all these spying scandals and the rise of censorship in the West will lead to an noticeable increase in the size of tor/i2p/...
What is needed is a simple "throwing the baby out with the bathwater" analogy that effectively communicates how it's a) impossible to effectively filter out such things and b) how easy it is to abuse said filters once they're in place.
Unfortunately, for the vast majority of voters (or people in general), counter arguments don't really matter if they liked what they heard in the first place. Then they just think "what you're saying makes things more difficult, I'd rather not hear it".
Don't forget the studies implying that, when presented with evidence to the contrary, people will hold their original beliefs stronger. The more I learn about everything, the less certain I am about anything; I wish more people were the same.
The idea is to come up with a metaphor that is as short and sweet as it is compelling. As much as the idea of "selling" truth disgusts me, we need to "market" the unpleasant realities of a filter as effectively as politicians have sold the lie of it being "for the children" in order to have a fighting chance of preventing it.
I've lost count of the number of times various parties have tried to implement Internet filtering in Australia. It almost seems to be a seasonal cycle, whereby some legislation gets proposed/approved, the IT industry and civil liberties advocates explain why it's both wrong and can't work, and then it sort of fades away from view.
Both sides have said everything they have to say on the issue. I'm of the belief that it's only for point scoring with various conservative groups that the idea even continues to be floated. I think even Tony Abbott (the opposition candidate and almost-certain victor) probably understands how it can't possibly be made to work but is just going along to placate certain segments of the electorate.
A cycle! Seriously! I recall when I used to browse Slashdot a few years ago, all you would ever see tagged "Australia" was censorship and filter proposals. Not a good look for Australia.
Let's hope that you're right and they're not actually ever taking it seriously.
Well they snuck this in at the last minute hoping no one would notice and their supporters would be too dumb to care... Based on current opinion polls sadly good assumptions. Add this to killing the NBN as another stake in the heart of our digital future...
"The filter will be contained in software installed in either people's smartphones or modems ... which can be disabled at their option." - Malcolm Turnbull (Liberal party shadow communications minister) on Hack[1] tonight.
Fucking scumbags.
48 hours before we go to the polls.
And apparently they plan on hacking our devices in order to implement it? They have no clue.
Someone needs to start doing version control systems for legislative bills and documents in governments everywhere. Most lawmakers are ugly sneaks and we will need to watch their every move.
1. Convert all bills to perfect Markdown for nice looking diffs.
2. Parse amendments (e.g. "Section 1: Omit paragraph 1, replace X with Y".) for bills currently before parliament and create consolidated versions of the bills to view changes in context.
3. Fork GitLab.org and create a pretty interface for law makers to use.
I don't know if this would really fix anything, but it sure would be awesome to see the one-line pork additions to a bill tied directly to a Senator's name.
The Australian lawmaking process is more transparent than the US. Bills cannot be amended in committee behind closed doors. All amendments must be moved by an MP, from the floor of the House or Senate.
We also have the strictest party discipline in the world, so there's very little room for back-scratching.
Finally, our Constitution bans any bill about appropriations from dealing with any other subject. So you can't tack riders onto other subjects.
Not to mention that you give third parties a fighting chance for representation with your preferential voting system.
That's a really clever appropriations bit in your Constitution. I've often thought that the US needs some sort of Kevin Bacon Law -- all the measures within a bill have to be related to each other with only a few degrees of separation. No more banning internet poker in a port security bill! (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SAFE_Port_Act)
95% of Australians will defer to their parties' chosen preferences, rather than stating their preferences explicitly. This is mostly because you have to number hundreds of boxes if you chose to vote "below the line".
Some argue that parties' preferences will not always reflect the intention of the voter - but they get away with it because its too difficult to vote preferentially.
A good demonstration of where theory fails in reality.
I also hear that in practice, the third parties are basically bribed with minor legislative concessions if they form a coalition with a major party and cast the deciding vote in favor of their legislation.
Still better than the third party not existing & having a say at all, though.
To anyone not familiar with the Australian Constitution, we do not have a bill of rights and no explicit guarantee of freedom of expression. (AFAIK freedom of expression is an implied right http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_constitutional_law#F...).
This blew me away when I first heard about it. My favorite WTF example of the AU government trampling on freedom of expression? The banning of a TV ad arguing for the legalization of voluntary euthanasia[1], and, even more alarmingly, the "crime" of using a "a telephone, fax, email or the internet to discuss or research assisted suicide."[2]
The Australian government is always threatening to implement draconian filter, censorship, or data-logging plans; luckily, in true government form, they never carry through on it.
It's a pity that such things are the only exposure the tech crowd has to Australia, instead of more compelling things like the massive and ambitious National Broadband Network fiber-to-the-home infrastructure project.
(Some context: the opposition party -- which apparently is going to win? I don't follow politics too closely -- was suggesting that the NBN project could be done more cheaply if it was fiber-to-the-node instead... thus completely defeating the purpose of the network upgrade.)
That's basically all it comes down to. Not enough people care about what a fast network can do for the country, and they've been brainwashed to think that the economic management of the last few years has been appalling.
It's really really strange. People all of a sudden seem to give a shit about how much we are spending and think it's a bad thing, when every economic commenter has said it's been managed brilliantly. It looks like a lot of people are trying to be smart and are failing hugely.
Well it doesn't help that all those pits have asbestos in them -- but that's not the project's fault. That would have to have been cleaned up eventually anyway.
It's the same problem the US has IMO: no one wants to support grand, forward-looking projects that are going to take longer than a term in office. That's why poor NASA has its funding yoyo-ed around a 4-year presidential election cycle, and can't ever follow through on the bigger projects anymore.
Hunh... never heard of anyone bumping up against it. How is it mandatory -- ISPs required to implement it upon pain of fines? Or did they just tell Telstra to do it, since they own all the lines?
As far as the data-logging goes, I meant it as done by the native government -- although I agree that's largely a "tomato, tomahto" distinction.
The existing filter is supposedly for the vilest, illegal things. It has however caught some pretty plain stuff in the past, though is largely forgotten now.
As a human being I am angered by these rapid advancements of Internet censorship in the developed world.
As someone in the business of circumventing said censorship I am excited to have the solvent westerners as my clients in additional to generally poor third-world folk we are currently serving.
Wikileaks preferenced One Nation ahead of the Greens, Labor and Liberals in the senate. Since the final senate seat will likely come down to One Nation / Greens in 1 or more states, the only effective outcome of voting for them is a vote for One Nation.
Wikileaks Party Prefs for Greens
FAEHRMANN, Cate The Greens 57
RYAN, James The Greens 58
BLATCHFORD, Penny The Greens 59
HO, Christina The Greens 60
FINDLEY, Amanda The Greens 61
SPIES-BUTCHER, Ben The Greens 62
Wikileaks prefs for One Nation
HANSON, Pauline One Nation 108
MCCULLOCH, Kate One Nation 109
PLUMB, Aaron One Nation 110
My apologies! You are right. It's the Shooters and Fishers Party and the white nationalist Australia First Party they are preferencing above the Greens. It's the Sex Party that is preferencing One Nation.
Only 3.8% of voters vote below the line. At least 95% of Wikileak's votes will go to One Nation.
And then there's the question of why the hell you would support a party that does this sort of shit. The only thing they will ever do is appear on a ballot and distribute their preferences, and they can't even do that well (I mean assuming you wouldn't want to vote for One Nation... if you do, then go ahead).
Edit: I got mixed up. Replace One Nation with the "Australia First" party (even worse IMO... look them up) and the shooters and fishers party.
Whatever you think about Assange, at least he can be relied upon to oppose: internet censorship, technologically retarded broadband infrastructure and sexual consent laws.
Wait what? Opposing sexual consent laws is a good thing? I could see why Assange is in favor of legalizing rape given his own personal history with the crime, but still...
Off-colour joke... I'm pretty sure his policy platform makes no mention of criminal law reform. It was more a meta-comment on "Think what you will about Assange".
This issue is regularly floated by both "sides" of politics, usually to much criticism (on both technical and moral grounds). It is like the Hydra - chop off one head and it will simply grow two more. This time the policy announcement is especially reprehensible, coming 48 hours before an election which is all but decided in advance and buried in fine-print.
No doubt the new government will announce that it has "a clear mandate" to implement the filter as it was tucked away in their last-minute policy announcements.