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Comment by hoodoof | Hacker News Reader

This is being put in place to kowtow to the religious right isn't it?

To a particular Senator, yes. Fielding. Senator Conroy is the Minister and a bull-headed man in his own right, so it might not get dropped right away.

However the composition of the Senate will change on July 1st, with the Greens assuming the balance of power.

I personally suspect that internet filtering will be used as a bargaining chip in negotiations with the Greens over the details of a carbon tax / trading scheme.

I believe that censorship is mostly being pushed by Senator Conroy himself, who comes from the Catholic, Social Conservative right faction of the party (For non-Australians: the left-wing Labor party is in power in Australia, with the support of a number of independents. Conroy is a member of the Labor party, but isn't from the trade-unions and is regarded as right-wing. He's also very socially conservative for Australia. For example, he opposed the RU486 "morning after pill" on a conscience vote http://www.australiavotes.org/conscience/index.php#vote)

There's no doubt that Fielding likes the plan too, but don't expect to disappear while it is in Conroy's portfolio.

I've never heard of the internet filtering being a carbon-tax bargaining chip before. Given that it was planned before Labor supported the carbon tax I'd be surprised if it planned that way.

(Also, note that this is technically voluntary filtering by these ISPs, so it probably wont' go away even if Conroy left)

Planned that way? No. Being repurposed? Quite possibly.

Frankly, I hope you are right!

"For example, he opposed the RU486 "morning after pill" on a conscience vote"

In fact, the RU486 is a abortion-inducing pill effective in the first 2 months of pregnancy [1], while "morning after pill" is a common name for emergency contraception pills effective for the first few days after intercourse [2].

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mifepristone [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_contraception

Sorry, my mistake. Thanks.

What are the best news sites to follow Australia's politics?

Big list of independent Australian media: http://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/dw95o/big_list_of...

I don't follow political opinion pieces though, so I can't say which are good.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/

I really wouldn't recommend The Australian. This is a newspaper who have stated in editorial that it is their goal to "destroy" the Australian Greens party. Agenda runs thick in their editorial decisions.

What they actually said was:

"Greens leader Bob Brown has accused The Australian of trying to wreck the alliance between the Greens and Labor. We wear Senator Brown's criticism with pride. We believe he and his Green colleagues are hypocrites; that they are bad for the nation; and that they should be destroyed at the ballot box."

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/news/opinion/needed-a-policy...

They also outed a prominent anonymous political blogger because the head of the ABC said bloggers could provide better analysis than newspapers sometimes: http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/39038.html

And they attempted to sue a journalism professor for repeating comments by a former journalist at a conference that the Australian had an overt policy of suppressing stories that suggested that climate change was real. http://www.crikey.com.au/2010/11/26/the-torture-of-writing-a...

My aggregator/filter for Australian news stories is http://www.reddit.com/r/australia/

Beware the comments threads though, there be dragons, and rather cynical people.

The best: http://www.crikey.com.au/

I'm fairly partial to http://www.abc.net.au/news

Also worth checking out are:

http://grogsgamut.blogspot.com/

http://blogs.crikey.com.au/pollytics/

http://newmatilda.com/

http://www.thepunch.com.au/

(Full disclosure: I work for the ABC)

http://blogs.abc.net.au/antonygreen/

Although the blog is focused on election analysis, which you may not want.

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