Australia blocks access to Wikileaks, $11K/day fine for linking to it (2009)

That said, it's somewhat interesting this is being linked from here now, it gives the impression that this is an attempt at damage control over cablegate on the part of our idiot politicians, but if you look at the release date of the linked article this is completely unrelated to the recently released cables.

1. Australia has a history of communications ministers who are simply inappropriate for the role (google: "worlds biggest luddite").

2. The latest minister, Senator Conroy, and his government choose to focus their political will and energy on attempts to censor information and apply control over what Australians can and can't see on the Internet.

3. This is largely because the sitting government has an interest in pleasing an organisation called "The Australian Christian Lobby", who have openly, publicly and repeatedly called for censorship of the Internet. The ACL influence a significant voting block across a large number of constituencies.

4. The news from down here regarding the intersection of Government and technology seems bad because there isn't any good news to plug the gaps between the bad news.

5. The government does very little to foster an environment to encourage entrepreneurship or technical innovation by start-ups and micro-companies.

6. Finally, Australia doesn't have a bill of rights. Unlike the US and England, the High Court doesn't always have the final say on matters. The government is relatively free to introduce laws where it needs to in order to continue it's agenda (getting reelected).

And to end on some good news, the government did recently open a new fund to be managed by local VCs, of which at least some of it will trickle through to Internet technology startups:

http://delimiter.com.au/2010/11/08/80m-splash-carr-fills-up-...

Yes.

Australian cultural DNA is a weird hybrid of the US, UK with it's own particular mutation. Despite being blessed with a large land mass, Australia is devoid of imagination and cannot successfully combine technology and entrepreneurship like the US. It has the smarts but lacks the sophistication of public relations and finance of the UK.

At a political and business level we seem to get stuck with leaders who revel in being 50 years behind the times.

This is smart politics. The government tells Australia's religious kooks that it's on God's side. Meanwhile, the civil liberties mob focuses on something the government can't do, and it gets up to worse bastardry with less embarrassment.

The article says it's on the ACMA blacklist, and if you link to a site on the blacklist from an Australian website then you are eligible to be fined. Whether anyone has since been fined for leaking to Wikileaks, I don't know.

If/when our abomination of an internet filter idea comes in, then it will become blocked by the filter. I think 2013 is the soonest anyone thinks that will happen.