The Null Device

The Great Firewall of Australia is dead (again)

According to GetUp, the Great Firewall of Australia is dead(ish); the Coalition have now committed themselves to blocking it in the Senate, should Labor try to force it through, meaning that there's no way it can get through. Mind you, the national firewall plan was written off as dead a year ago, before making a remarkable recovery, so I'd want to see it staked through the heart and its ashes scattered to the four winds before I break out the champagne.

Whether it rears its ugly head again depends on the makeup of the next parliament. While much has been said about Kevin Rudd's genuine religiosity and wowserism, the plan was as much a bargaining chip with the Christian Fundamentalist party Family First, who held an important vote in the Senate, as anything else. If the Religious Right retain their position, or gain the balance of power, in the next senate, it's likely to be back in play; however, if they lose their influence (as some say is likely; keep in mind that the half of the Senate that Family First inhabit was elected in the more conservative times of Howard's culture war, and is now outgoing), it looks to be pretty much dead. (Which is not to say that, in three or four years' time, someone won't introduce something similar, but if they did, they'd hopefully have a harder time convincing anyone that it's not a terrible idea.)

There are 4 comments on "The Great Firewall of Australia is dead (again)":

Posted by: Sat Aug 7 23:35:06 2010

I would wager that the religious right is dead in the senate, with one execption; in NSW, just about every party is preferencing the Greens last, which means a lot of crazies (Democratic Labor Party, Fred Nile Group, Family First, the LaRouchies) have preferences going to them and between them. There's still potential for some stupidity to flow to the top if the wind blows the wrong way.

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org/acb/ Sun Aug 8 08:17:57 2010

Do the LaRouchies count as "religious right", or just "batshit insane"?

Posted by: Sun Aug 8 23:27:49 2010

Well, they count as the kind of "batshit insane" that would probably be happy to keep the filter in place in order to prevent the International Jewish Banking Conspiracy from infecting young minds. Unless, of course, the International Jewish Banking Conspiracy are the ones controlling the filter...you can never tell!

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org/acb/ Sun Aug 8 23:37:09 2010

I thought they'd go either way; that for every two socks-and-sandals-wearing right-wing authoritarians of the One Nation stripe among them, there'd be three ultra-paranoids who believe that the Queen is a giant lizard and runs the world drug trade from inside the hollow earth or something, and would prefer a bunker and some ammo to anything as corruptible as a filter.