Hacker News Reader

Comment by quink | Hacker News Reader

One recent quote from the former prime minister when Australia was planning to introduce backdoors to end-to-end encryption:

> "The laws of mathematics are very commendable, but the only law that applies in Australia is the law of Australia"

View on HN

Oh my god this is a real thing...

https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/07/australian-pm-calls-en...

> Australia is a lucky country run mainly by second rate people who share its luck. It lives on other people's ideas, and, although its ordinary people are adaptable, most of its leaders (in all fields) so lack curiosity about the events that surround them that they are often taken by surprise.

- Donald Horne, 1964

I think this describes other commonwealth countries, like here in Canada, as well. Likely an outcrop of former-colonial mentality. The history of leadership here when we still had a mother country was one of governorship and colonial administration. The towns and streets are named after them. Frankly the attitude towards politics has persisted. It has its positives (stability and a relative lack of dysfunction) and its problems.

In Ontario as well we have this kind of problem with state-capture by industries all over. Regulations and land zoning are in many ways geared for the already-haves rather than a level playing field. An example being the wine industry regulation here.

The residential land in Quebec is still using the Seigneurial (feudal) pattern.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seigneurial_system_of_New_Fran...

Australia is a vastly different country in 2020 than it was in 1964.

That quote didn't do Malcolm Turnbull any favours.

He was certainly one of the more forward-thinking, progressive PMs we've had. As just one example, he actually believes climate change is real.

But he changed his stripes on Climate Change to become Prime Minister, and then changed back once he got ousted from the position.

He had the opportunity to act on Climate Change and he stuck to Tony Abbott's script. Weak as piss.

And this was a hip "tech savvy" PM who was CxO at an ISP, the rest of them are worse.

The same Prime Minister who promoted an innovation economy at the same time as switching out fiber-backboned network upgrade plans for the existing rotting copper network.

At greater expense than the original plan! And now we are shortly going to have to roll out fiber anyway. It makes me so angry.

How Labor haven't turned that into a win is beyond me. The Libs are lying sacks of burning, corrupt garbage, and Labor are, seemingly, totally politically inept.

Australia's two choices.

Vote Greens.

The Greens are politically inept, lying sacks of burning, corrupt garbage.

There are no good politicians.

The only thing any of them have going is that some of them accidentally make reasonable policy choices occasionally.

Vote for good independents

Heh, this reminds me of the Indiana Pi Bill[0] which tried to legislate the value of Pi. The Indiana bill at least happened a long time ago, unlike the prime minister's statement.

[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill

Reply on news.ycombinator.com