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Comment by quink | Hacker News Reader

> You speak with your votes; if you vote a$$ hats into power, don't complain when they do this kind of stuff.

I think it’s gone beyond that, the electorate is a captive audience and we’re in a democratic death spiral. Like just today again with Palmer and $75,000 for The Nats or Costello in charge of Nine or the ABC backtracking on Invasion Day - all without me even mentioning Newscorp. There’s no hope of an informed electorate or a healthy media policy. The states need to step in as the only other authority left and tell the government that its already super shaky interpretation of section 51(v) has gone too far, it has usurped power from the real authority, and take it to the High Court if need be.

Like happened in Germany in 1961 with their section 73(7).

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Struth. The Libs are fundamentally dependent on the electorate being swayed by the constant anti-labor pro Lib background noise. And it may sway only 3% to the right, but that's enough. 10 minutes of Friendly Jordies, 60% of which is bullshit gags contains more journalism than a full Sunday paper.

Deputy Leader for 13½ years of the party in power, then make him chairman of the second largest media organisation in the country for 5 years now.

Yet somehow the problem isn't with said organisation or party but that Google lists things published by said media organisation without paying? You couldn't weave a dumber more on the nose basketcase if you tried.

Better still. The people that read NewsCorp will bleat that said Deputy Leader is a "Lefty plant" for "Lefty Fairfax" now

The two companies have shifted the overton window so far that they can play off each other to maintain a false narrative of 'balance'

If they block google for real, it may be a good opportunity for something like https://voteflux.org/ to take off. Because many unhappy people trying to tell the government why exactly they are unhappy is a perfect situation to promote direct/liquid democracy.

> Like happened in Germany in 1961 with their section 73(7).

Could you elaborate on this analogy please?

It's not an analogy, it's pretty much the same thing:

Basic Law of Germany, Article 73:

> The Federation shall have exclusive power to legislate with respect to [...] 7. postal and telecommunication services

Constitution of Australia, Article 51:

> The Parliament shall, subject to this Constitution, have power to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to: [...] (v) postal, telegraphic, telephonic, and other like services;

The Federal Republic of Germany wanted to start a TV network to compete with the public regional broadcasters created under the oversight of the allies and tenuously linked to the states. The states sued in 1961 in the Constitutional Court, saying that regulation of broadcasting and the media wasn't granted to the federal government by the constitution (or than technical standards and communications infrastructure where applicable) and they won.

In Australia a similar court case was brought in 1965 by a private person and the judges, at least some presumably born before Australia was even a country, stretching the powers too far and basically assuming that YouTube or Netflix or even video tapes would never exist ruled in what the Federal Law Review called a "failure by the majority judges to justify their decisions on a basis of logic or experience" http://classic.austlii.edu.au/au/journals/FedLawRw/1965/5.ht... Which leads me to think that if this were re-litigated in today's age by the states it may well yield a different outcome.

Also note how the wording in the Australian constitution is actually a bit more restrictive on top of all of that.

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