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Comment by westicle | Hacker News Reader

As a citizen, this is impossible to fight.

This issue is regularly floated by both "sides" of politics, usually to much criticism (on both technical and moral grounds). It is like the Hydra - chop off one head and it will simply grow two more. This time the policy announcement is especially reprehensible, coming 48 hours before an election which is all but decided in advance and buried in fine-print.

No doubt the new government will announce that it has "a clear mandate" to implement the filter as it was tucked away in their last-minute policy announcements.

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> As a citizen, this is impossible to fight.

There are several ways you can fight it.

1. Voting. If you live in New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria or Tasmania, you can vote for the Pirate Party in the Senate on Saturday. If you live in NSW, Victoria or Western Australia, you can vote for the Wikileaks Party. Live anywhere, and you can vote for the Sex Party or the Greens.

2. Activism. Join one or more of these parties.

3. Software. Write software that circumvents the censorship.

> This issue is regularly floated by both "sides" of politics

People who think there are only two sides are wrong.

Sorry, I didn't mean to say it is impossible to fight. In the sense that I could fight Mike Tyson, or Don Quixote could fight a windmill, obviously it can be fought.

I meant to say that as a citizen, this is impossible to stop. I say that as someone who will vote Wikileaks on Saturday. But in realistic terms, unfortunately there are only two viable sides in the legislative house. Polls (and consequently betting markets) don't even anticipate a single seat going to a minor party at this election.

> Sorry, I didn't mean to say it is impossible to fight. In the sense that I could fight Mike Tyson, or Don Quixote could fight a windmill, obviously it can be fought.

It is possible to win. We blocked SOPA and ACTA. The vote to partially defund the NSA was only lost by a narrow margin. There are Pirates in the European Parliament (and will probably be more next year). There is more awareness of digital rights than there ever has been before, and importantly for the future it's higher amoung younger voters.

This is a fight that can be won.

Perhaps at the grand old age of 32, I am becoming bitter and jaded but after SOPA and ACTA was blocked, they are just going to come around and try again and again and again. This is exactly what has happened in Australia with this damn internet filter.

I remember what it was like to dial into BBS's when I was in high school. The freedoms we had online then were incredible compared to what we have today.

The fight we are fighting is not one to win new territory or new freedoms - its one to protect what we already have. Sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. But we have to win all the time just to keep things where they are today. All it takes is one loss and something is irrevocably gone...

Take a look at china. All this means is that ordinary people will have proxy education in their teenage years.

And the artists of the world can have a fresh supply of human skulls -- with the unfortunate defect that there is a bullet hole through them. But that just makes them a bargain.

Don't feel bad. It just means the family of the deviant hacker criminal won't have to pay the bill for the bullet.

Or in other words: Yeah, china. There's an ideal to aspire to.

I meant to say that as a citizen, this is impossible to stop.

Of course it's not. People forget that the NBN cost the Liberal party the last election. People care about "this stuff" now

Polls (and consequently betting markets) don't even anticipate a single seat going to a minor party at this election.

That isn't true. Brandt (Greens) is the favourite in Melbourne[1] and Wilkie is favourite in Denison[2]. There's also a conservative independent who is favourite to win a seat in Victoria but I can't find her name or the reference at the moment.

[1] http://www.theage.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2...

[2] http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-04/denison-hold-for-wedne...

RE: #3, I feel compelled to repeat myself:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6138515

In a nutshell -- resorting to technical fixes treats the symptom and not the disease, and leaves behind the majority of the population.

The senate is it though. If you live in a safe seat like me you have no influence on who gets into government, only wrecking things when they are in.

One good thing about the House of Representatives is that, because it uses AV, you can give your higher preferences to the smaller parties without it being a a wasted vote.

Most states have Liberal Democrat senate candidates, for those of a more libertarian bent.

There will always be only 2 relevant sides in politics.

If there were 3 or more, then it means that one sides vote is split, and so will not get a majority.

Unless of course you have some wacky proportional representation system.

In Australia we have a wacky proportional representation system.

Handing seats over to the greens and independents is pretty much why we had a minority government though. The system works on a seat by seat basis, but it doesn't seem to work when forming a government.

Though this election is going to be a landslide for the Libs, and split votes aren't going to have much impact.

The system has almost always worked as intended: the Government is formed in the House, which has the monopoly on questions of supply. Because the House is single-member electorates, there has been a clear majority in every election except for 2, including this outgoing Parliament.

The Senate doesn't form the government and cannot originate supply bills, but otherwise has coequal legislative powers. It is elected on a proportional basis.

The system works well because a government can normally form quickly and govern stably, but in order to pass legislation it must give consideration to minority parties in the Senate. You get an Executive that can execute but which must nevertheless be prepared to compromise.

Good points, thanks for that. I guess I have thought about the minority government a little too much when it is an anomaly.

I have no problems with the senate. I vote for minority parties (Sex Party last election and this one) because I want protection from the government when required.

I basically miss the Democrats. It's a pity that Stott-Despoja killed them by zagging left.

"The Democrats died because they zagging left" narrative is one I've heard before, but it doesn't match the facts.

The fall of the Democrat vote mirrors the rise of the Greens vote, and the Greens are way more left leaning than the Democrats ever were.

I think their demise had more to do with internal infighting and the Andrew Bartlett drunk in the senate debacle.

But yes, I miss them too - they were basically a sensible party who wouldn't do stupid things.

When she took the party left, the Greens were already outflanking them.

Zagging left cost them the votes they got from Liberal voters.

And that was that.

I'm not sure I understand your point.

Doesn't the fact we had greens and independents win lower-house seats prove that there are other options beside the 2 major parties?

Doesn't the current minority government - along with numerous examples of senates where the balance of power wasn't held by the major parties - prove that these parties can have significant influence?

The libs will probably win the lower house easily (although I suspect the Greens will hold Melbourne and Wilkie will hold in Tasmania). But I think the senate will be interesting.

Yes, there are other valid options beside the 2 major parties. Having them win individual seats in the lower house shows that the system works. But my argument was that it harms the major party they are most closest to at the macro level.

If there were 100 seats and 50 went to the libs, but labor and the greens split 30-20, the libs are (most likely) going to form government even though the people voting greens would prefer a labor government.

They get their local representative, but ultimately it means nothing, because the government that forms is on the political opposite of the spectrum. As pointed out in a sister comment though, this has only happened twice in our history, so I'm probably making a bigger deal than is appropriate.

Agree that the senate is going to be interesting though.

Yes that's a fair point.

But it's worth noting that the conservative side of politics in Australia has had this problem for a while, and has a perfectly workable solution.

The Liberal/National coalition has often held power, and yet Liberals & Nationals run against each other in elections.

There are similar examples in other countries too.

Coalitions are interesting because once the minor party has a role in government their views cannot be ignored so easily.

And I think the only sensible course of action is for the greens and labor to form a similar coalition, or have some kind of agreement that the greens will always support labor in a minority government.

The agreement that no minority government (by both the libs and labor) would be formed this election cycle could only of helped the liberals - not that they needed it.

I think this could be quite off-putting for some Labor voters and that the very loose alliance is best kept as an unspoken or informal one for that reason.

There is a very strong anti-Greens sentiment in places and Labor could not risk being entirely tarred with that brush.

Australia has Instant-Runoff Voting for the House of Representatives, and a somewhat more crazy scheme in the senate.

So yes, we have historically had "3rd" parties quite often, from the Australian Democrats in the 90's through to the Australian Greens now.

It could be argued that all democracies, by definition, use PR.

It's really depressing -- I recall when I used to browse Slashdot a few years ago, all you would ever see tagged "Australia" was censorship and filter proposals.

EDIT: Also depressing is how long the relevant Wikipedia article is: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_Austral...

That might ax a few plans for US -> AU citizenry.

What country without US extradition is the most socio-libertarian/anarchist friendly?

Pick a country from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:United_States_extradition_... that's in gray.

I think you'd be looking at Vietnam, Andorra, or Croatia, although you could hardly say any were ideal by those measures.

Croatia is a thought. Some Croatian friends mentioned property values are skyrocketing because of pervasive construction. Split is nice too.

Absolutely beautiful coastline and an EU member too (which, I suspect, will mean an extradition treaty with the US will probably apply at some point).

https://goo.gl/maps/HcAHM

Owww, actually looking at the map I would suggest Taiwan!

Taiwan's cool.

Good luck with that -- it's a royal PITA to get citizenship in AU.

Usually the countries without US extradition treaties have much more worrying issues, like abysmal civil / human rights records, IIRC. Also, it doesn't stop the US from leaning on them to extradite you as a special case, anyway.

Sometimes what is good is difficult to attain. Otherwise everyone would.

(It's a good thing a dear friend is an immigration atty.)

What country without US extradition is the most socio-libertarian/anarchist friendly?

NZ can't be worse than AU. I am a citizen of both (and DE) and plan to move to NZ myself.

Didn't NZ have that whole fiasco with kowtowing to the US and sending a SWAT team after Kim Dotcom?

After which the prime minister (president equivalent) immediately personally apologised, flamed the police minister, and they have since been good about the whole thing.

What do they think doing this serves, in their opinion? In the US, there's at least the excuse that there's this big block of neoconservative religious-fundamentalists to win the votes of. Does Australia have those too?

I don't think this is a vote-winner; this policy has been as well-hidden as it possibly could be. 99% of voters will not even know about it.

More likely some back-room deal has been done with vested interests and the implementation of this policy somehow benefits them (financially or politically).

It is likely a combination of: rightsholder companies who will eventually twist the filters to block internet-based competition, large IT contracting companies who will get lucrative contracts for implementing it, and (tin-foil hat time) the Catholic church.

There are some VERY skeezy links between the federal opposition and the Australian Catholic church which see the church hold significant lobbying power over LNP policies. See: marriage equality, abortion rights, royal commission into child sexual abuse etc.

As a small, uncontroversial example, the current government handed over regulation of charities (including churches) to an independent regulator last year. The Catholic Church in particular hates being under the thumb of a regulator it doesn't have in its own back pocket. Conveniently the LNP plans to scrap the regulator if they win the election. Even mainstream newspapers are reporting that this is at the behest of Cardinal George Pell:

http://www.smh.com.au/business/bad-liberal-policy-will-damag...

Sorry, this link probably outlines the relationship much better than the above:

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/federal-election-2013...

"The answer, in part at least, may be the lobbying power of church conservatives, the Catholic Church in particular, and the office of Sydney Cardinal George Pell, more particularly still."

"And the Victorian and Tasmanian-based Churches of Christ Community Care has begun an online petition to save the commission, warning that the Coalition alternative would be ''an advisory body with no teeth''. That, say critics, appears to be the point."

It's worth noting that when the Labour party attempted an internet filter, they insisted INSISTED that the only sites on the black list would be pedophilia sites. Wikileaks ended up on the black list.

Reference requested. I don't believe that is true.

http://wikileaks.org/wiki/Australian_government_secret_ACMA_...

Which points to:

http://wlstorage.net/file/acma-secret-blacklist-18-mar-2009....

The blacklist contains one url from Wikileaks, which (judging form the URL) is yet another (non-Australian) leaked blacklist of banned sites.

I'm not defending censorship (one look at the list shows what a STUPID idea it is) but I think implying that it was used to "block Wikileaks" overstates what happened.

It overstates the case for that point in time. But it doesn't overstate that they were prepared to do it.

Remember: this is a secret list that Australians cannot legally see.

That does sort of make sense, though. Publishing the list of blocked URLs would be like publishing a list of the addresses of people under Witness Protection: useless to anyone except those who want to go to them. And not just those who want to look at one site in particular--you can know whether a particular site is on the list by just testing it, after all. Instead, the only use of having the entire list would be to look at sites just because they're on the list; in est, to get suggestions for new sites related to your interests.

How do you know the difference between a blocked site and a site with a networking issue without uh... subverting the block and using a proxy or a vpn?

I don't know whether it is true, but similar things have happened in the UK, Germany and Finland, so it could well be.

> the current government handed over regulation of charities (including churches) to an independent regulator last year

That's pretty awesome that that was even done, though. I cannot imagine something like that happening in the US. I am so sick of seeing religious institutions abuse their tax-free status to play Real Estate Tycoon.

For what it's worth most of the sector (including religious charities) strongly support the regulator.

We had some issues in the past with some very high-profile sports people setting up "charitable funds" which undertook a lot of fundraising and tax deductible activities without actually doing any philanthropy. That undermines trust in organisations who actually help people (Salvation Army, World Vision etc).

Labor's NSW Right faction is a bit of a Sunday mass too. And they're the most powerful single bloc in the ALP.

The leader of the opposition is a devout Catholic. As the minister for health he tried to block abortion treatments until overruled by his party, and nearly became a priest before settling for lifetime politician.

He became the leader of the opposition by one vote (internal votes) after a debate between him and the previous leader over climate change (which he successfully argued to his party wasn't occurring, later changing his mind to satisfy the polls)

The leaders of the three biggest parties, ALP, Liberal and Greens are all Catholic or in the case of Rudd a Catholic turned Anglican. Catholics are the second biggest cult after the Protestants in Australia and just ahead of the non-believers by a whisker. Catholics are possibly over-represented due to private school networking in the case of the Abbott and Pyne types and a concern with social justice issues in the case of a Rudd or Milne type. It really isn't about the religion though.

It is all about power, money and special interests corrupting democracy. Abbott for all his Catholicism will have signed his soul over to big carbon polluters, the tobacco lobby, Rupert Murdoch and lots more to take the election.

Abbott has demonstrated that he is prepared to distinguish between his private beliefs and his public policy. He has no choice: trying to introduce the Catholic wishlist would see him voted down like an obese person on reality TV.

Different, but effectively yes.

I was under the impression that Australia is much much more conservative in general compare to USA.

Both of of the US's major political parties are more conservative than the Australian major conservative party. Particularly when it comes to fighting crime (when our police started fucking up with SWAT tactics, they were stopped in short order) and waging war.

Outside of politics, it really depends on what you look at. There's certainly a strong urge to conform in mainstream anglo America (clipped lawns, identical houses, visible laundry is unsightly, etc) that doesn't really have a parallel here, but on the other hand, Americans are a bit more socially outgoing than Australians.

AU political party names were very confusing for me; the Liberal party is politically conservative, and both parties are more liberal than the US. =P

AU successfully managed to de-militarize its police force? The US needs to use you guys as a case study! However, I suspect that you were only able to do that because of your very low tolerance for firearms violence, as evidenced by the near-complete disarmament of your civilian population via that massive buyback program & subsequent legislation after the Port Arthur massacre. I wouldn't be surprised if US citizens like the idea of a militarized police, ready to respond with overwhelming force to whatever movie-plot terrorists happen to pop up.

("Conservative" doesn't necessarily mean "socially paternalistic along Old-Testament Christian lines" in most countries, though; thus the question.)

It's a moral panic [0].

If filtering doesn't happen immediately, fear may be exploited and politicians will have to find something else to procrastinate on rather than tackling real issues (poverty, health care, budget waste).

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_panic

It will be until we form a group large enough to have pull like the ACLU (500k members) or the NRA (5M members).

The grassroots opposition to ACTA and SOPA were effective for round one, but we will lose in the long run unless get serious about organizing.

The EFF (eff.org) is a good start, but it needs more members.

Our tech-freedoms lobby could have the same model as the NRA and ACLU, lots of members to give it a clear mandate when lobbying and cash flow from effected industries for fighting legal battles.

Just imagine if we had a group with the weight of the NRA.

The problem is, what industry with deep pockets would support EFF policies? For instance, the NRA is supported by firearms manufacturers but the EFF is opposed by copyright trolls like Hollywood.

Just one of many good reasons to vote Greens in the senate.

Or pirate party!

The Pirate Party could be the best party on the ballot, however if it wants people to vote for it, it should consider a non-churlish name. I can relate to a lot of the Pirate Party's policies in the UK, but struggle to take them seriously with such a silly name.

Same deal for the Sex Party. Their civil liberties platform is actually very sensible.

I voted for them last time, and I'm voting for them again. Be aware that voting for the sex party is almost a donkey vote in all but Victoria though. Make sure you vote below the line.

I always vote below the line. Preference deals are an abomination of democracy.

I've always wondered about people's reactions (or lack thereof) when this was first put into practice. It seems to me that the results can only be negative. It just encourages lazy & uninformed voting and perpetuates the problem of money in politics -- the more $$ you have, the more signs with your name on them you can buy; the more signs you have, the more people have heard of you, and the more blind votes you get.

If you do know the names of the members that comprise a party, then you can just as easily vote for the members specifically by name (and if you're too lazy to do this then how did you manage to haul your carcass to the polling booth?) If you're so ignorant that you don't know the names of the members that comprise a party, maybe you shouldn't be blindly casting a vote for them.

Seriously! What's wrong with "The Techno Freedom Party" or something like that? If only these party leaders would spend 5 minutes reading about how to effectively market themselves to voters, they'd realize how politically suicidal they've been by giving themselves a party name that sounds like a practical joke. I think they'd be surprised how many people would get behind them & their policies if they stopped preaching to the choir and made an effort to appeal to the voters who don't already know about them.

yes to the pirate party. Even tho they are unlikely to garner any actual majority, giving them your vote means that they could potentially affect policy.

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