Tagged: Australia

We may have a new government but it looks like they’re going to be just as painfully conservative in some areas as the last lot. On New Year’s Eve (nice sneaky date for it) the communications minister Stephen Conroy announced a plan to filter internet content at the ISP level. This despite the fact that every computer-savvy person knows it just won’t work. Complaints that the plan was repressing free speech was met with this comment:

“Labor makes no apologies to those that argue that any regulation of the internet is like going down the Chinese road,” he said.

“If people equate freedom of speech with watching child pornography, then the Rudd-Labor Government is going to disagree.”

I can only roll my eyes in despair at that kind of statement. CP is so often used as the tool of censorship, it’s endlessly frustrating.

Meanwhile, Adultshop.com lost its appeal in its attempt to make X-rated (sexually explicit) adult videos legal throughout Australia.

This opinion piece sums it up well and offers this depressing comment:

This court case has, for the first time, shed light on how the offensiveness test is applied to sexually explicit material in Australia. In the past, it has always been assumed that a majority needed to be offended. What the court has confirmed is in fact the opposite: that a minority will suffice.

A depressing start to the year.

There’s been a landslide of depressing things happening here in Australia with regards to censorship and privacy issues.

Depressing News Story 1: Australian police can now tap phones and monitor emails for 45 days if they suspect a person is “believed to be connected with child pornography.” I don’t think there’s a lot of checks and balances on this legislation so basically they can say that anyone is involved without a lot of proof.

Depressing News Story 2: The Melbourne Underground Film Festival has been banned from screening Tony Comstock’s film Ashley and Kisha because it has not been classified. Full story at Tony’s blog here.

Depressing News Story 3: After the Eros Association so helpfully mentioned it, the government moved to ban NT aborigines from accessing legal R-rated adult movie channels on Pay TV.

Thankfully there’s been a bit of an outcry about this ridiculous idea, which gives me some hope. For a start Austar, which is the local pay TV channel, says it would have to block the adult channel throughout the entire Northern Territory. And the Council for Civil Liberties has spoken out:

“Civil liberties are to be applied equally, not selectively,” he said.

“The fact is that there is no evidence that anyone can produce that allowing adults to access pornography, particularly in the medium of television, has a causal connection to child sexual abuse.

“Professor Paul Wilson of the criminology section of Bond University has written about this extensively over the years and is probably Australia’s leading authority on the proposition that there is no evidence to say adults watching adult pornography leads to adults committing child paedophilia acts,” he said.

From this article:Banning R-rated TV ‘discriminatory’

Australia Post has also refused to be the government’s censor of mail. Story here.

An NT Labor politician has also spoken out: Fed gov’t ‘shows contempt for aborigines’

Meanwhile a spokeswoman from an anti-child abuse group says that a lack of sex education is a major problem in aboriginal communities. Reading this article it becomes apparent that porn isn’t the problem per se, it’s ignorance.

This is a fairly depressing topic for what should normally be a fun blog. But I just felt the need to write about it. It’s getting me down. It all makes me feel helpless because I can’t do anything about it. I don’t have the courage to stand up and speak out because, well… when you stick your head up you tend to get shot. How long would it be until ASIO or the federal police decided that I’m somehow “connected” with CP and I find my phone tapped? Perhaps that’s paranoia but perhaps the time has come to be paranoid.

It’s depressing, but not surprising. The Australian government’s plan to prevent aborigines in remote communities from accessing porn has sparked calls for more censorship.

Mr Anderson said that by banning pornography flowing into NT Aboriginal communities, the Howard Government had effectively conceded there was a link between watching the material and acting in dysfunctional ways.

“I think what comes out of this is we are now conceding that there’s a problem with this stuff, and frankly I think that all Governments ought to have a long hard look at it again,” he said.

The strange thing is that Australians are a lot more laid back about porn than Americans. I’m not sure conservative sex-hating tactics like this are going to work on the “battlers.” At least, I hope not.