Australia to introduce new laws to force media platforms to unmask online trolls
reuters.com
reuters.com
I can't express how much I hate this. The online world SHOULD be a wild west, away from government reach, in my opinion.
No part of the world is away from government reach, you espouse a fantasy.
1. Land damage as in the largest public lands system in the world? 2. Violence against women who were among the first in the world given the right to vote? 3. Violence against people that were plenty violent? 4. Cowboys spoke many languages. Your point is what? 5. Chicago is the "Wild West", huh? 6. Immigration is good, depending.
Leave the internet out of your politics, please.
Your comment would have a lot more value without this cheap attack. The article and all the comments are about the politics of the internet. OP has the right to express their opinion, however wrong they might feel to you.
This "we need more wild west" is a fantasy. It ignores pretty much all current governance and community consensus processes everywhere. Not even John Perry Barlow believed his own quote applied to all things all the time.
The IETF is not the wild west. IANA is not the wild west. BGP speaking is not the wild west.
Cowboy culture and wild West was exploitative bullshit, both literally and figuratively. What was happening was a fight between expansion for cows, other farming, and the sweep westward. It lasted 30 years before it was legalised into normality. Dodge city cowboys are a myth based on thin facts and nothing about the wild west is good regarding internet governance
Nothing about the real wild west as you describe it has anything to do with the internet. Where are the analogous internet cows or commercial exploitation of internet prairies, or sweeps westward? This is all nonsensical. The literal reality of the wild west has nothing to do with regulating "trolls" (criticism of politicians) online.
Heck, many people make their self worth based on Instagram or whatever, and many make their livelihoods online. The Internet is not what it was two decades ago, and pretending otherwise is foolish. It simply cannot remain the Wild West, like the real Wild West couldn't and didn't. Real life people are impacted, up to and including death (radicalisation and joining a terrorist group, or driven to suicide through harassmwnt, to name two "fun" ones)
That’s unhealthy; why should promoting unhealthy social media adoption be our policy priority?
> Real life people are impacted, up to and including death (radicalisation and joining a terrorist group,
This occurred before the Internet, too. The answer is more speech, education, and enabling people — not censorship.
> or driven to suicide through harassmwnt, to name two "fun" ones)
Then we need to focus on individual resiliency - not building a hug-box.
Nobody should promote it, people should fight against it, but until that changes, it should be taken into account.
> This occurred before the Internet, too. The answer is more speech, education, and enabling people — not censorship.
Before the Internet the potential reach was much more limited. Recruitment for ISIS online, for instance on Twitter, was highly successful where before they would have struggled to reach disillusioned youth in France or Indonesia for instance. More education, ideally secular, is needed, but how do you force that to happen in Indonesia for instance?
> Then we need to focus on individual resiliency - not building a hug-box.
How ? How do you make it so everyone is immune from, for instance, rape threats or personalised ( e.g. racial) harassment online ?
There were mean, bad people before the internet too. We can deal with that fact, or fail attempting to get rid of them with censorship, while harming real information and exchanges in the process.
What they want though is to be "reachable" by everyone without the drawback of people actually demonstrating a negative view, very much like removing dislikes from Youtube. They want to remove the dislikes from their online personas but done for everyone so it's less obvious they are hiding their critics. Because at the end of the day they need to be famous to get sponsorships or money whatever way they do it, hence they need to pretend to be "reachable".
The alternative is to destroy the tech industry as it exists. That's a fair chunk of the world economy. How do you plan on implementing that policy?
"[Radicalisation and joining a terrorist group] occurred before the Internet, too. The answer is more speech, education, and enabling people — not censorship."
I don't suppose you could provide an example or three? Of your "answer" working; I have plenty for the problem.
"Then we need to focus on individual resiliency - not building a hug-box."
1. Victim blaming.
2. Personal responsibility for one's actions.
I would agree to an extent, but I think there are a few examples where the government should step in. Child porn being the biggest.
Are there pedophiles abusing children in your country? Then go arrest them. They won't be posting anything on the internet while they're in prison.
Are there pedophiles abusing children in some other country? That is that country's problem, not yours.
Nothing about the internet has to change in order to do this.
I agree in principle. However (China nonwithstanding) the internet knows no borders. Any one country not policing and arresting CP provides material for paedophiles in any other country.
If consuming online CP increases the likelihood that paedophiles will go on to abuse children (as I suspect it would) then child abuse in another country is your problem.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Relationship_between_child_por...
TLDR: All we have are correlational studies that conflict with each other, and correlational studies are inherently dogshit regardless, so that hasn't been established at all.
This seems identical to the argument that we need to do something about violent video games from other countries because they could cause someone to commit an act of violence in your country. It hasn't been established that this actually happens, but if someone does the bad thing in your country then they still go to prison. People are responsible for their own actions.
And how do you stop the spread of the child porn already on the internet? Just leave it up since you can arrest people who make it or consume it?
There are other things the government should probably stop as well. C&C servers for malware. What is your solution when the people involved in malware are in another country and that country isn't taking care of the problem?
Who is paying for bulletproof hosting of controversial materials when anyone producing or consuming it is in prison?
> C&C servers for malware. What is your solution when the people involved in malware are in another country and that country isn't taking care of the problem?
What's your solution? Hacking the C&C servers in violation of the laws of whatever country they're in? That already is the "wild west" solution.
The alternative would be something like voluntary blocking by endpoints and firewalls, which nobody would have any reason not to use as long as the block list contains only things like this which nobody actually wants, and therefore doesn't require any government mandates.
Who said anything about bullet proof hosting? You just need to host in a country who isn't going to do anything about it.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say there are some people producing and consuming it not in prison. You can try to arrest everyone involved but you will never get everybody.
That was my point. If the solution is to just arrest people doing it then how do you stop the spread by people who didn't get caught?
>What's your solution? Hacking the C&C servers in violation of the laws of whatever country they're in? That already is the "wild west" solution.
Perhaps. If the country the server is hosted in isn't dealing with it, then maybe that is the best solution. I don't know, but this does feel like a thing for the government to be involved in. If the government hacks a server to bring it down is it really different than a more official way?
>The alternative would be something like voluntary blocking by endpoints and firewalls, which nobody would have any reason not to use as long as the block list contains only things like this which nobody actually wants, and therefore doesn't require any government mandates.
Who is doing this voluntary blocking? The average person couldn't handle it so it would have to be ISPs or the government. Many people don't have choices in their ISP so they could be stuck with an ISP not doing blocking.
Everybody hates child pornography. Random internet trolls will autonomously DDoS you into oblivion and no one will come to your defense when they do, because it's child pornography.
> If the solution is to just arrest people doing it then how do you stop the spread by people who didn't get caught?
If it's being hosted in another country, how is your government going to stop it? By violating another nation's sovereignty?
> I don't know, but this does feel like a thing for the government to be involved in. If the government hacks a server to bring it down is it really different than a more official way?
That seems like a bad precedent. You do it for child pornography, now somebody else wants to do it for blasphemy or lèse-majesté or "misinformation" as defined by a corrupt foreign government, and then what are you going to say? Those things are illegal in their country.
> Who is doing this voluntary blocking? The average person couldn't handle it so it would have to be ISPs or the government. Many people don't have choices in their ISP so they could be stuck with an ISP not doing blocking.
It doesn't need to be the ISP, it could be your own internet router. There is plenty of competition there.
This is assuming the servers are known. As far as I know child porn servers aren't sitting out in the public view.
>If it's being hosted in another country, how is your government going to stop it? By violating another nation's sovereignty?
I wouldn't advocate for a country to go send in the military to a data center to seize servers or anything like that.
I don't know if hacking a server hosting child porn is actually violating a country's sovereignty.
>That seems like a bad precedent. You do it for child pornography, now somebody else wants to do it for blasphemy or lèse-majesté or "misinformation" as defined by a corrupt foreign government, and then what are you going to say? Those things are illegal in their country
Governments already do this so it isn't setting a precedent. It is just going further on what they will attack.
>It doesn't need to be the ISP, it could be your own internet router. There is plenty of competition there.
Routers are provided by the ISP for most people so it would still require the ISP to be involved.
The problem is not stopping the general public, but those who seek it out. If you do the blocking at the router level people would easily get around it.
This is not a different problem for governments. Somebody has to go find them.
> I don't know if hacking a server hosting child porn is actually violating a country's sovereignty.
How would you feel about it if China or Russia or Iran did this to servers in the US?
> Governments already do this so it isn't setting a precedent. It is just going further on what they will attack.
Maybe precedent is the wrong word.
If you did this once decades ago and have since realized the error of your ways, it's valid to condemn someone else for doing a bad thing you used to do, because it was bad both times.
If you're actively still doing it, how are you going to argue that they shouldn't do it to you? Or are we just going with might makes right?
> Routers are provided by the ISP for most people so it would still require the ISP to be involved.
Your argument was that people don't have competition for ISPs. There is plenty of competition for routers. Anyone can go to Walmart or Best Buy and get one for $30.
> The problem is not stopping the general public, but those who seek it out.
This is not the problem for C&C servers. Nobody is purposely pwning their own devices and adding them to a botnet. Or if they are then they're security researchers and government interference in their research is not warranted.
Blocking works when the endpoints want it, and only then, because then they don't try to get around it. If the user actually wants to contact the thing, they'll just use a foreign VPN or any of a dozen other alternatives.
Just to be clear, I am against this law, but trying to say we should have the wild west seems like a bad idea.
If you take 'wild west' to be pure anarchy free from any law, then sure. But I don't think that's what is actually meant, nor does it describe the real wild west, nor even the popular perception of the wild west. Pop-media depictions of the wild west are filled with sheriffs, bounty hunters, judges, etc. That wild west outlaws exist as a trope implies the existence of laws for these outlaws to violate. Utter absolute lawlessness is not the implication of 'wild west'.
I'm in favor of having robust freedoms both online and offline don't get me wrong but I don't see the internet as some sort of mystical realm and I don't want anarchy on the internet for the same reason I don't want it in the neighborhood I live. The 'online world' is not some space any more that is solely a refuge for people who felt maligned in the 'normal' world, it's part of the fabric of everyday life and that means it can't be a playground without rules.
States tend to want a monopoly on harming people.
Isn't Facebook already censored and guarded strictly? Not sufficiently apparently. There still are a lot of weirdos, bullshitters and political trolls there AFAIK (but I admit I didn't really check - I just read about that a lot, incl. here on HN). I.e. fact-checking should be enforced, whoever is caught on repeated intentional lying with purpose to manipulate audience should be banned.
And the more defeaning the silence is when the idiotic ideas these people float about as plausible and desirable things, the more confident and less cautious that they are in support and pursuit of those things.
As somebody who spent the last week reading Facebook post after post from these people specifically in Australia not just defending but promoting concentration camps, military round ups and forced medication, I cannot emphasise enough caution in the idea that they should just be left alone in their harmless walled gardens with their amusing but inconsequential fantasies, not subject to the trauma of critical inquiry by third parties.
There are no concentration camps, no military round ups, and no forced medication* in Australia.
* There is no vaccine mandate per se, but some types of businesses face fines for admitting non-vaccinated people onto the premises. You might call this a de facto mandate, others have certainly made that point.
Yes there are, not a troll, straight from the horse's mouth so to speak. https://youtu.be/vQok3GMMSAI
> and no forced medication* in Australia.
That part is true but I never said there were yet. I said clueless information walled gardens were constantly advocating for them with very little push back exactly because they're in walled gardens where that is the narrative they want pushed.
> There is no vaccine mandate per se, but some types of businesses face fines for admitting non-vaccinated people onto the premises. You might call this a de facto mandate, others have certainly made that point.
I do think it is to an extent. But there's definitely a gap between that and forcibly injecting people against their will, and that is what I was seeing many posts advocating for along with those military round ups and concentration camps that are already facts on the ground and are only being varnished with more PR friendly labels just like they were in every single deployment in history.
> forcibly injecting people against their will, and that is what I was seeing many posts advocating for
I believe you. Seeing the viciousness, tribalism, and callousness that other Australians have treated each other with during covid has been nothing short of disgusting.
One part of the Australian psyche that is not often discussed, is that in times of disaster, we are expected to engage in collectivism. Australia is besieged by more than its fair share of natural disasters (bushfires, floods, cyclones and droughts are all commonplace) and in those times, the community pulls together and supports one another. Covid was largely viewed through the same lens, where those who don't pull their weight are shunned. Given the amplification of toxicity that the internet can provide, you get posts like the ones you've seen. Not excusing it, just explaining it.
[0] - https://www.defence.gov.au/operations/opcovid19-assist
With regards to the cover story, you do understand that in many previous deployments of military roundups and concentration camps, they were not accompanied by announcements of "we are the evil empire now and are deploying our military against our own citizens to round them up and place them in concentration camps?". Because this is the exact defense I am hearing from aforementioned Facebook drones and I don't see how it's not predicated on the assumption that they're not military roundups and concentration camps until the government proudly and loudly announces them as such.
I could believe the Facebook drones in question are just not very bright, but I don't assume that at all for this particular forum and you seem a lot less naive than that.
Would the exact same protests from any of the other previous or extant regimes who have offered the same explanations for their actions have held water for you? And if not, why do they in this instance?
What happened, in actuality, is that the Howard Springs mining camp was repurposed for quarantine. People have opted to go there instead of hotel quarantine. They are there for a total of 14 days, at which point they enter society at large. The army was providing transport to the location. People could have opted to stay at a hotel instead.
That's it.
At my core, I'm a civil libertarian. I am skeptical of government, and an anti-authoritarian. I am very, very much not a government apologist. But I am a strong believer in the importance of using facts as the basis of an honest, good faith discussion. My comments might just be a futile attempt to reduce the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect of this particular story.
Using the term "concentration camp" used to refer to nazi death camps is euphemistic. It really misses the core horror of the holocaust by drawing attention away from the death/extermination aspect of the camps and instead naming the camps for concentration (e.g. internment.)
"Not to be confused with concentration camp." - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Extermination_camp
The camps for Japanese-Americans during WW2 could be appropriately called concentration camps. Wikipedia redirects "concentration camp" to their page on internment, with this note: "Not to be confused with [...] extermination camp." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concentration_camp
As a civil libertarian myself, I think given the nature of governments, and in particular the Australian government, that precedent is something that should be horrifying enough to all observers, without extending it to the hyperbolic gesticulation of direct comparisons with the historical Nazi extermination camps, Soviet Gulags, Khmer Rouge killing fields, etc. And I believe that strongly enough that I'm planning to renounce my citizenship over it ASAP and would rather die than return. I cannot emphasize enough how disgusted I am by these events.
Further, the cover stories and reasons given just don't matter. Look at the reasons the Nazis gave for their concentration camps, it's not a long bow to draw; chief amongst them was disease control. Really think about the idiocy of offering alternative of even more expensive hotels to some of the poorest people in Australia as alternatives to said concentration camps, and then the cherry on top with the unique AU execution of the idea is that they actually have the nerve to bill the interns of said concentration camps anyway! 2.5k AUD per week for singles or 5k AUD for families.
I just can't believe this has actually happened, but when this entire covid event started, and the initial lockdowns dragged on and the AU government in general seemed intent on escalating degrees of authoritarianism, I drew a mental line in the sand and that line was military roundups and concentration camps, and no matter which way you slice it, the facts on the ground are that that's exactly where we are now. Even worse is that people I've known and respected my entire life, intelligent people in forums like this one, people like you in fact, and I do not intend at all to denigrate you by putting you in this group, but to draw attention to just how corrosive this kind of thing actually is to any kind of trust in a civil society, are defending, and even calling for the escalation of these tactics.
Meanwhile, no other country on the entire planet is doing this. Even the most egregious examples of Austria aren't going to these lengths. I really can't understand why anybody is trying to defend it, and even less so why they're calling for it to be escalated. I feel like I've stepped through the looking glass into crazy world.
It's a spectrum. More a question of temperament than intelligence:
Some people desperately wish to told there's someone out there, looking out for them. A wise enlightened leader, preferably in a tie or a white lab coat.
"Just follow orders and everything will be alright."
Others prefer to assume responsibility and evaluate risk on a case-by-case basis. This end of the spectrum is more sparsely populated, because it requires personal struggle and sacrifice. So such people are always a minority, with obvious implications for democracy (AKA the rule of the majority).
Most people oscillate somewhere in between, swayed by pragmatic incentives and currents of social zeitgeist.
This is just kind of hilarious. I have no other words.
OP please just stay off facebook
The defense of the behaviour has indeed also caused me to stay off facebook, though.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Australian_immigration_detenti... ? I agree, that's a terrible piece of policy.
Now I keep to myself and watch the patterns, and I'am ok with that it is what it is, I love my friends and I don't think less of them because of that.
There are many wild wests on the internet in the clearnet, yet most of the people I know that would want to be treated like children already exclusively are via fb, insta, etc.
Be that as it is, I see no reason for further controls. Heck, I doubt I would have had any real interest in learning about computers if my only options for internet fun were boring sites like the top socials. From experience, I would imagine most of the appeal of the net for people if it were to become some locked down nanny land would be in breaking out of it or in "misusing" the services. Or, more likely, people would just make new sites that would serve as the wild west. The infinite of the undeveloped is not containable.
I hate their usage of 'troll' too. To me, 'troll' means a guy who argues about 0.9 bar not equaling 1 in a math forum. I have no idea what the hell these people mean when they say 'troll'.
I think they are using it to mean something closer to "cyberbully", maybe.
This is a foundational problem in our anthropogenic decimal system of math (which we only use because of the evolutionary accident of a modal (n.b.: not average) human happening to have ten fingers); the whole issue doesn't even exist in the only correct representation of numbers, ternary (base-3).
For example, let's multiply 1 / 3 * 3:
In decimal `1.0 / 3.0 == 0.3 bar * 3 == 0.9 bar` and we've proven that 1 equals 0.9 bar, which is clearly nonsense and falsifies the whole concept of decimal representation of numbers.
In ternary, though, `1.0 / 10.0 == 0.1 * 10 == 1.0` -- see? no contradiction. Maths just work properly if you use the true numeric base.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. I will not be taking any blasphemous questions from unbelievers about dividing and multiplying by two.
I find it really fascinating that different numeric bases all suffer from this same issue, but for different values. That the division by three which breaks decimal representation survives in ternary, but the division by two which is fine in decimal breaks ternary.
Of course, it seems to me that the real underlying problem is that we insist on writing these values out as an infinite series of fractional digits in the first place, instead of keeping the values in a precise fraction form. One third times three equals one; there’s no controversy there even in decimal. It’s only when someone insists on actually performing the division and representing that initial “one third” value as being a zero followed by an infinite number of fractional threes that the whole “omg 0.9 bar equals one??” paradox appears.
It's like coming to a MacDonalds and demanding that all the personnel gets their asses out for a walk while we have a party there with other 5y-olds.
The online world has been, from its inception, a foundation for creativity, knowledge, entertainment, communication, and so much more. When a malicious party recognizes the power of the online world and starts to abuse it for their own gain, if you TRULY support all that is the online world, you shouldn't allow such parties to exist.
In other words, it's pathologically stupid to allow freedom of expression to be exploited against freedom of expression.
If you're not flexible, you break at the slightest bent.
Just because you are able to insulate yourself from all the shit that goes on ‘out there’ does not mean everyone else has to be okay with it. Some of that online trolling and hating has affected a lot of people more personally than others. Think about them too.
A regulation set out to protect the information rights of the individual.
I remember when Malcolm Turnbull made the quote: “The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia,”
[1] https://www.newscientist.com/article/2140747-laws-of-mathema...
Yes this will be enforced, it’ll be enforced selectively against critics of the current government. There is a video of the announcement with the current PM grinning and smirking in the background like a little kid when this is discussed https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/r3qh1m/the_way_s....
The current pm is coming under a lot of criticism recently as well as other mp’s. There’s an election coming up in May so this is convenient timing. Recently a popular YouTube comedian / journalist had the anti terror police let loose on him for criticising mp’s with accusations of corruption. https://www.michaelwest.com.au/tamed-estate-arrest-of-friend...
Australia has no bill of rights for its citizens and the current government seem extremely self serving for personal gain.
The new Amazon documentary Burning about the 2019 bushfires goes on bit of an attack of the current Australian PM.
Australia is still very much the “Lucky country” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucky_Country
The media landscape in Australia is extremely consolidated, to the degree that there are only a few major media players, and they are almost completely aligned in their agenda and messaging.
There is an incestuous relationship between the media and the politicians - the hyperconsolidated media acts as kingmaker, which gives an incentive for the government to coddle them. In return for favourable legislation, the media runs stories (or doesn't run them) to the benefit of their favoured political party. That party is almost always the conservative LNP, if you're ever wondering why Australia has such a prominent right-wing authoritarian streak, know that the Murdoch media has a dominant print market share, a monopoly on cable TV, and a large majority of the free to air TV market is ideologically aligned.
I would bet real money that any random HNer who has clicked on the recent posts regarding Australia's incursions into digital freedom has heard more about it than the average Aussie.
this is indeed correct, but then you say
>hat party is almost always the conservative LNP, if you're ever wondering why Australia has such a prominent right-wing authoritarian streak, know that the Murdoch media has a dominant print market share, a monopoly on cable TV, and a large majority of the free to air TV market is ideologically aligned.
The fact that people make statements and believe things like this should make it clear just exactly who is in control of the Australian media, and what the propaganda is pushing.
First let's look at the facts. Murdoch owns 25% of the Australian print media and 1 cable news network. They own zero, (yes zero) of the 5 major TV networks. Yes that is all! The remaining 75% of the Australian print, and almost all the free to air channels are controlled by mostly ideologically left wing groups and they try desperately to push their views on the Australian people, yet the Australian people refuse to listen, and continue buying Murdoch papers, then switching off the free to air channels, and paying their own money to watch the Murdoch owned sky news.
It is a good thing too because the only news media putting any effort into resisting the Authoritarian lockdowns and other authoritarian measures being taken by the state governments are the Murdoch owned media (yes you wouldn't know all the authoritarian measures have been taken by the left wing state governments and not the right wing federal government from listening to the media would you, why is that?).
The Authoritarian streak is being pushed almost entirely by the left wing media, and I have personally seen people who consume this media become radicalized by it. They push, non stop, the idea that freedom of speech is bad, that working class people are stupid and don't know what is good for them, and the country needs people from the professional classes to take control (and therefore systems like China's would be better). They have been pushing for and, in the left wing controlled Melbourne succeed in, instigating the harshest lockdowns in the entire world. Melbourne is Australia's version of San Francisco - that is where the video of the police beating up and pepper spraying the 70 year old lady came from. They also try to inflame a lot of racial hatred and get people to fight among themselves.
Thankfully, Australian is a very down to earth, working class culture, and most people don't fall for it. Despite the endless propaganda being pushed on most channels and media, they switch it off. Unfortunately, as the parent commenter does correctly point out, it comes with a downside, that people don't really know what is going on. They don't care because life is good. Most people don't watch news at all and that is how the government can get away with a lot of the things it does.
EDIT: Channel 9 is chaired by Peter Costello. Channel 7 is chaired by Kerry Stokes. The ABC is chaired by Ita Buttrose. All three of these people have much closer ties to the political right than the political left.
A pretty good summary of the current state of affairs can be seen at https://independentaustralia.net/business/business-display/t...
EDIT 2: More links:
https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Depart...
SBS could reasonably be described as 'generally left wing' (no, not "far, far left", that's ridiculous). The ABC has shifted right massively lately from being centre left recently - personalities like David Speers and Leigh Sales basically becoming Government spruikers, Insiders and Q&A becoming infested with a lot of "false balance" (i.e. get a right-wing personality with no qualifications on to debate this PhD climate scientist), etc.
I think left-wing hatred is such a potent force that comments sections get dominated by these people and we get a very skewed view of things.
As you mentioned, thankfully the mainstream has too much commonsense and doesnt take it seriously.
the name Conrad Black comes to mind for some reason ...
If they're defending, sure, they need to be covered but if they want to go after the public they can pay for it themselves.
https://www.news.com.au/national/politics/peter-dutton-sugge...
A YouTuber lost a truth defense because things a politician said in parliament are inadmissible in court so it's not reasonable to claim they are "using the same avenues that any other member of the public can also use". That politician could given up parliamentary privilege and made it a level playing field but he did not.
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-11-05/john-barilaro-settles...
The internet comedian Friendlyjordies managed to settle very favourabliy because he managed to crowdfund literally a million dollars to fight when John Barilaio sued him. Otherwise that wouldn't have been possible for him to even think about fighting it.
The Australian system is certainly not without its issues, but it is far better than most other countries in the world, especially the madness of the US federal FPP system.
I suspect that this is why Australians are seen to be complaint/obedient. It’s because we know that half of us explicitly voted for this government - either directly or indirectly through preferences - and if it fucks up too much they will change their minds and this mob will be gone (and good riddance if you ask me).
I believe that this is also why Australian politics is quite centrist relative to many other counties.
This was a huge problem for Julia Gillard in particular. Despite being one of the most effective prime ministers in Australian history[0] you didn’t hear about this from the MSM at the time. Supposedly serious commentators complained in the Murdoch press about her _choice of clothing_ [1].
With powerful filters like this, blurring the achievements and policies of even the very leader of the government of the day, it’s always going to be difficult to distinguish between the parties.
[0] https://www.theguardian.com/news/datablog/2013/jun/28/austra...
[1] https://www.sbs.com.au/guide/article/2021/09/09/australias-f...
If you are not satisfied with either party you still need to vote. Even if you vote for a minor party you know many who aren't as engaged in politics will vote for one of the two majors anyway on relative, not absolute basis limiting the power of your "politically engaged" vote.
That's my impression of Australia's politics. There's no perfect system.
We are also witnessing a significant shift to minor and independent parties, as voters are apparently becoming less affiliated with specific parties over time. Most people I know consider their vote carefully, even if they don’t vote the way I do.
In any case, while the Australian system is far from perfect, it does lend greater legitimacy to the incumbent government, and has the effect that if the government you personally voted for does something you don’t like, next time you’re more likely to vote differently.
In terms of destructive forces in Australian politics, I think the lack of media diversity is far and away the greatest threat to our country - far ahead of requiring the governed to have a say in who governs them.
Instead, he was humiliated when the president of France called him out as a liar over his mishandling of submarine contracts, and no one wanted to talk to him.
France was pissed of with Australia because they took a perfectly legal exit on a contract for submarines. This kind of staged contract is normal for large military tenders as once committed you are locked into an effective monopoly. So with each stage there is typically an exit path to keep pressure on the vendor who would otherwise have no incentive to perform.
After many delays and cost overruns, Australia took a completely legal exit on the French contract and took up another commitment for UK/US nuclear submarine tech. This was a vastly superior option and pretty much everyone agreed it was the right decision. This is particularly the case, as the strategic situation in the Pacific is radically different to when the French sub contract was taken. As you would expect Australia played its cards close to its chest before informing the French they wanted an exit. This is perfectly normal approach as anyone would do in a similar situation whether they were buying a car or a Boeing 747, let alone something with massive geo-political consequences like a defence contract.
Scott Morrison was accused of being a liar by the French who pretended they weren't aware the sub contract was at risk. A text message was leaked that showed, in fact, the French were aware and Macron had lied. A lot of people have been suggesting Macron was simply playing up to nationalist sentiment in an election year (same for the current French/UK fishing disputes etc).
Scott Morrison was also called a liar by the previous unsuccessful Australian Prime minister, Malcom Turnbull, who he replaced. Malcolm is well-known as someone with an axe to grind and a massive chip on his shoulder. Malcolm himself has been called out for lying in his recent autobiography. He was also recently called a liar by Ben Fordham, a journalist, details are here:-
https://www.2gb.com/hes-lying-ben-fordham-reveals-untold-sto...
So make of that what you will, but as always, the situation is a bit more complex than the partisan one-liners you read in the comments section.
The French subs need recharging. The US and UK offer are single charge for life.
It's a five eyes con. We pissed off the Japanese to take the French deal and pissed off the French to take the US/British deal. This is childishly stupid politics about arms for 2030 or 2040.
Morrison won't be in power in two terms more. Normally Australian defence is bilateral. The libs under Abbot tore bilateralism apart.
I trust Macron less than I trust Merkel but more than I trust Johnson or Morrison.
France is muscling up. Look how they told the UK to fuck off over the cross channel policing meeting. Macron isn't taking any shit from anyone, he's occupying the power vacuum Merkel is leaving behind.
Stupid politics for an economically weak nation like Oz. We will gain little for this posture. Strike an own goal time. (Just like the TPP is better without Yankee distortions, and I have little doubt Morrison will usher the Americans back in, to our trade detriment. Every us au trade deal has materially disadvantaged Australian businesses)
Furthermore, nobody can really say if the choice was better. Theyd be comparing a programme in advanced design stage vs a purely theoretical "we'll buy subs based on US or UK design with US nuclear reactors". There's no design, no costs. If in 2050 Australia still has no nuclear subs which isn't impossible (they hve no nuclear infrastructure), it would have been the wrong choice.
Complex defence contract negotiations, submarine technology, geo-strategic planning.
Its really quite impressive.
It's insane. The Crikey guys came to the same conclusion I had - he doesn't just use big, strategic lies for political advantage - he lies about the small things when it's not even necessary, and they come back to bite him.
I actually, seriously and honestly think he might have an actual personality disorder (like NPD or something). It's not normal, even for a politician...
> The reason so much stupid policy comes out of Australia
Here we go, the real reason.
An example from the bullet train party:
What are your other policies?
− Getting a Bullet Train for Canberra is our policy
− We aren’t trying to form government and run the whole show
https://www.accessnow.org/surveillance-state-incoming-with-a...
> When defamation ruins reputations and destroys livelihoods, there needs to be an avenue to peel back the mask of the username, get to the identity of the person who’s engaging in appalling and trolling behaviour that breaches our laws if they were don’t face to face, so that person who has been defamed or have their reputations destroyed or faced criminal acts online can get accountability for that, can take them to court, can sue if necessary or can deal with them through the police.
The Guardian's commentary here:
> There was this bit, which states what the legislation is actually about. The government is focussing on children and women in its sell of the legislation – but it’s actually all about defamation actions. Which, given the expense, is not an option for the vast majority of people.
Controlling online discourse is thought control and artificial consensus creating. See reddit for example.
This is absolutely ridiculous on so many levels. The "standard" here is that if someone thinks they are being defamed, bullied or attacked?! What that simply means that in practice anyone can get anything they don't like erased off of the internet. This law isn't just an attack on free speech, its the complete obliteration of free speech and open discourse all together.
"If it’s in the public interest, the Commonwealth Government can intervene in these cases on the side of the defamed person against the social media company.
Prime Minister Scott Morrison said the government would proactively search for such cases to intervene in."
Taken from: https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/new-australian-la...
It's best seen through a lens of a lazy right wing government that's been out led by every state leader for the last two years. They are just looking for a good headline.
If it does get legislated, then I REALLY hope that social media companies just abandon Australia and lock us out. It may just be the best unintended consequence ever.
So there will be lots of political stuff coming out of Australian in the next 3-5 months (until an election is called).
This I'd simply take as an announcement with little chance of it getting through.
>users who post defamatory comments
Wouldn't that be more like Twitter Mob. Does the word "Troll" means something different in Australia, or is it the headline written by Reuter using the word "Troll" differently to what I understand, or does "Troll" means something differently in the US given Reuter is an US media. Just what is "Trolls"?
It's a really dire state of affairs. Hopefully this is just the death throes of a collapsing party in Government, there is an election in a few months and the party in charge is polling terribly (as they should be), and there's also a really strong independents movement to get more independent candidates who are pro-integrity and pro-climate action on the crossbench (which could make a massive improvement in our politics, because while the opposition is a lot better in a lot of ways than the currently ruling party, in some areas they do the same crap).
>>The new legislation will introduce a complaints mechanism, so that if somebody thinks they are being defamed, bullied or attacked on social media, they will be able to require the platform to take the material down.
If one merely "thinks" they are being bullied or attacked, the law will require the platform to erase that material. Obviously this is completely subjective nonsense.
We're already in Eurovision, surely we're halfway there? Just sign a few forms and we're part of the EU?
....please?
Targeting the bots (et al) and ignoring the barons is the failed war on drugs strategy redux. Toss drug users in jail while sucking up to cartel heads at celebrity charity fund raisers.
Own goal anyone?
Also his stupid religious discrimination act is worse (or at least as bad) as this stupid law.
This is like the stupid movement from conservatives in the US against "big tech" despite the fact that social media manipulation is a core part of their political strategy, and they're against government regulation.
Right wing politics has become so muddied with libertarianism that they can't do anything now without hypocrisy.
> muddied with libertarianism
Right.
South Korea spent much of the 20th century under military dictatorships, going from one military coup to another. Singapore's single-party system (with suspiciously fascist iconography[0]) is notorious for harsh authoritarianism. Japan today is a lot more liberal than it was a century ago, but their criminal conviction rate is too high to be believed and public support for the death penalty is around 80%. All three of these are nice countries in many respects, but I don't think any of them are particularly liberal by anglosphere standards.