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There was a election way back in Australia and the Labour Party posted some stuff to face book

Nice try there, but there is no "Labour Party" in Australia, it would be too close to the name of the ALP. ;)

In OZ the "labour party" is spelt "Labor" http://www.alp.org.au/ They must be dyslexic! It's supporters don't seem to notice the spelling mistake perhaps it is an indicator of their intelligence.

Care to point to the Google policy which you claim is being breached by The Sex Party? Some other parties in Australia also have donate buttons on their websites, and there is no sign of Google refusing their election ads.

Vote for your local independent.

The more independents we get into both houses, the sooner genuine democratic representation can be recovered.

Ummm, while I agree that preferential voting usually results in a more balanced representation of what the electorate think they want, the real villinas who proposed the filter are two independents, Fielding and Xenophon. Labour just went through the motions of a trial in an attempt to buy their senate votes, the previous Liberal government did the same thing and Labor blocked it in the senate, just as the Liberals are now blocking it in the sneate.

Oh, and don't believe everything you read in a slashdot summary. Labour did not promise a mandatory general filter they promised to continue the existing mandatory filter on government owned computers (ie: schools, libraries, etc). Unfortuantely the ministry of truth have been hard at work and the policy document where I read that has been expunged from the web. My guess is they won't have an official policy until they figure out which independent senators they will need to scam after the next election.

Speaking of becoming America, you don't actually have a "Labour Party" at all--- they spell their name "Labor".

In the real world employers don't and or legally can't force you to censor your personal PC's at home, where they are not paying for the Internet Service.

In this instance the State (via the Education System), is providing a PC to the student, the majority of these student's parents will not "see a need" to buy the student their own privately-owned PC, so essentially it's censorship via manipulation (if you can't filter the kids via the ISPs, do it by providing State-owned/Leased machines with the censorship built-in).

I wonder if the original poster is an Australian who's school is buying PC's under the Digital Education Revolution instigated by Julia "I'm a Socialist" Gillard

Anyway... the (clever) kids will bypass the filtering and remote management within a few hours/days of getting the machines, so the point is more or less moot.

I voted for them at the last election, based mainly on their other policies. I knew that the filtering was something they were going to do, but if I had of know it was going to be this bad, I would of changed my vote.

It said it in their election material. That and much much more. Thanks for that. http://www.alp.org.au/download/now/labors_plan_for_cyber_safety.pdf

...reading his party's platform I have to wonder if he is really a conservative. I have to say, what they stand for looks far, far preferable to what so-called "conservatives" in the U.S. are pushing for...

I refer you to http://www.alp.org.au/download/now/labors_plan_for_cyber_safety.pdf There was never any real plan to consider any technical details; Labor was in it to look better than the Liberal's (And for Non-Australians, they are the Conservative party in Australia - false positive for ya). It basically lumps in a bunch of bullshit "Facts" at the start, then rants on about how this waste-of-taxpayers money will some how be better/more effective then the previous. Some of this stuff is golden: "Computer addiction can also cause such things as anti-social behaviour or, if associated with pay per play online gaming, may also have a financial impact." A $180 Million financial impact though?

Yep, sad but true. I encourage all South Australian – hell, all Australian /.ers – to let him know your feelings.

As always, keep it polite and intelligent. Show him that we are mature enough to make up our own minds about what we deem appropriate for our own personal gaming pleasure.

First, I didn't vote labor, I just recognise what an evil blight on the face of this country the howard led liberal party was. (WAS, thank god).

http://www.alp.org.au/download/now/labors_plan_for_cyber_safety.pdf

That's the election policy document, it pretty clearly outlines mandatory filtering, you can even scrounge around and find the announcement of the original policy by Kim Beazley as leader if you can be bothered.

Lol.. copied liberal policy... you haven't followed politics over the past month? Kyoto, Apology, WorkChoices, Iraq and the pacific solution. All clear differentiations between the parties before the election, that the liberals have changed their mind on and fallen in with the labor party on with only 2 sitting weeks of parliament finished.

Anyone who's still trotting out that ridiculous "me too" line obviously has little to say other than what he read in a liberal party pamphlet, what's next, you going to start yelling about interest rates?

Labor's "clean feed" system would prevent users from accessing any content that has been identified as prohibited by the Australian Communications and Media Authority, including sites containing child pornography, acts of extreme violence or cruelty, and X-rated material.

You realise Australia is a multi-party system? As in any political party as an opportunity to create a majority in the lower House and form government? The Greens and Family First (In addition to the two major parties; Liberal and Labor) both field candidates in every seat, so if enough people vote for them they can form government. Instead of complaining "Oh no The Liberal Party and the Labor Party or both the same, it's not my fault if the country goes downhill" how about you do some research.

Australian Greens Policy on Science and Technology.

#24 encourage government use of open-source software, and require the use of open and publicly documented file formats.

#25 regulate to ensure that network neutrality is maintained on the internet.

The only thing I can find about Family First's policies on the Internet

Family First will work to achieve Government commitment to establish a Mandatory Filtering Scheme at the ISP Server Level in this country. (These are quotes but I haven't figured out how to use quotes in Slashdot properly yet)

Liberal Party policy platform which has no mention of the word "internet"

Labor Party "Plan for Cyber-saftey"

A Rudd Labor Government will require ISPs to offer a 'clean feed' internet service to all homes, schools and public internet points accessible by children, such as public libraries. (Mandatory ISP filtering).

I should mention I am a member of The Greens, partly due to their policies in areas of science and technology.

It would very likely cover content outside of Australia. This ties directly into Labour policy that will make ISPs provide a 'clean feed' that is opt-out rather than opt-in. ISPs will be required to blacklist and filter out sites containing material that is X18+ or Refused Classification, no matter where it is hosted. Our classification system is rather onerous, which means that a lot of stuff will be blocked that's seen as perfectly acceptable in, say, the US or UK.

Sorry, the ALP policy document seems to indicate that 98% of the population will be covered by the to-be FTTN network, I guess I'll have to go work on my reading comprehension skills because you tell me I'm mistaken.

Note: I consider 98% to be close enough to 'the whole country'

http://www.alp.org.au/download/now/a_broadband_fut ure_for_australia.pdf

John Howard is a very accomplished politician. He's making "climate change" noises now purely to distance himself from the US election results. This is the man who claimed that the Boat People refugees were "throwing their children overboard" even though the military told his people that wasn't true within 24 hours after the alleged event. He continued to support the Children Overboard story for over a month, until after the Federal Election. See http://www.alp.org.au/features/lies.php for a breakdown of some of his side-stepping and double dealing. Or even better try http://www.google.com.au/search?q=john+howard+lies for a wider view.

John Howard has been using his absolute majority in both Houses to force all sorts of ideologically motivated laws through, regardless of how they may change Australian Culture. He seems to be intent on making us a new state of the USA. He is the person responsible for ensuring that the USA is not alone in its' Kyoto stance. He is responsible for a "Free Trade" agreement which is dismantling our fair-use provisions under copyright, is introducing DMCA legislation, is changing our patents office to be in line with the US model, is diluting our PBS (the Government sponsored sale of pharmaceuticals, all of which must happen before 2010, yet the USA is under no obligations under this agreement until 2022.

He is responsible for setting up concentration camps for refugees (more precisely, for illegal immigrants who are requesting refugee status). Most of these camps are in the back of beyond. There are children who have liven for most of their lives behind the razor wire, and there is a horrific incidence of mental illness associated with this detention in sub-human conditions.

Now that public opinion can be shown to be swinging against the US Republican approach to the Middle East and "The War on Terror" he's simply waving an extremely large, colourful and exciting flag (climate change acceptance) to distract people from his complete failure to interface with the Democrats. The news is now that the Democrats are going to demand a US inquiry into the AWB scandal (The AWB, run by Howard's mates, was busted paying hundreds of millions of dollars to Saddam Hussein to get around the trade sanctions, abusing the UN "Oil for Food" program).

I, along with many other informed Australians, do not believe there is any change of heart in Howard's new "Climate friendly" position. It's all just an attempt at distraction from the real issues.

Why rant about the Labour Party? They don't even have any members in an Australian Parliament. I'm more concerned about the failing credibility of these guys: http://www.alp.org.au/ The Labor Party

Australian Liberal Party = Republicans (the Liberal Prime Minister's kids even work for Dubya)

Australian Labor Party http://www.alp.org.au/ = US Democrats is pretty correct these days, although the ALP *used* to be a genuine social democrat party like the UK one. Nowadays it's seeming more like a clone of the right-wing Liberal Party (again, much like the UK Labour Party has gone). That said, the Labor Party itself has left and right wing factions, although the latter seem to be holding most of the reigns at present. And I *would* vote for them in preference to the Libs (out of desperation basically).

But there IS a REAL Australian Democrat Party http://www.democrats.org.au/. Politically they are kinda somewhere between the ALP and the Greens (the latter being much like the Greens http://www.greens.org.au/ in Europe and the US). So there is at least the chance to vote Green if you wish (although they suffered badly by conniving preference deals between the parties last election which led to the religious-right Family First party getting seats ahead of the Greens although they had fewer primary votes (Australia has preferential voting)) .

In Australia, the expression "small-l liberal" is used to refer to people who'd be called "liberals" in the US, and "Big-L Liberals" to refer to the members or supporters of the Liberal Party. Apparently the Liberal Party WAS "liberal" compared to its opponents in the earlier days of Australia. Personally, (small l) liberal is not a dirty word if you ask me :).

"AC" in Sydney, Australia.

Australia has the unfortunate tendency to blindly accept these imports - software being a significant and costly example. The so-called "Free Trade Agreement" codifies and enforces this disastrous situation (thankyou Mr Howard), right down to "fixing" our patent system and making our continent safe for US multinationals. The inevitable, if unmentionable, corollary is that local interests (such as the independent developer you mentioned) are completely compromised, as everyone knew they would be (hence the widespread protests).

Yet there are many talented Australians doing great work in Open Source. Thanks perhaps to its proximity to high-tech government and defense users, Canberra has produced many of the best known names in Linux and other free software projects - including Andrew Tridgell, Nick Piggin, and many others - and remains a hotbed of hardcore kernel hackers. In Victoria there are active Open Source representative groups and many intelligent supporters. However none of this has influenced public policy as much as one might hope.

Yes, much more activism and lobbying is going to be required to eject Microjunk from the default purchasing roster, and from the IT mindset. But I am not sure things are so much better in the US - perhaps the mindless M$-centric view has simply been all-too-successfully exported. Just one more indignity ensuing from a decade of Conservative rule. The destruction wrought by the Howard Government was a major factor in my belief that the country was hopelessly regressing, and my decision to leave Australia for a more progressive and much less US-centric society. If they ever get rid of that government, and restore egalitarian policies, maybe I'll go back.

There are bigger, badder, uglier, richer, more powerful thugs in business and givernment than there ever were in any union.

Yes, they banded together and formed the Labor Party.

And it is Labor (and government for that matter) you idiot.

If you're going to bore us with your minority-view political opinions, at least learn to spell.

ALP: Truth overboard... 27 lies and counting

johnhowardlies.com

Actually, I'm not an authority and nor do I pretend to be. Any of the above points I made could have been written by anyone who bothered to do some research.

But I would like to apologise to the Labor party for misspelling their name. It's not the first time, and I'm sure it won't be the last. Thanks to you, I now know why (http://www.alp.org.au/about/history.html).

In reference to your discussion of factions within the ALP, regardless of their motivation in decision making, they all MUST follow the party decision, which is referenced in Section C of their constitution (which I also looked up just to confirm, thanks again for the self-education prompt).

One of the other posters already pointed out your remarks being incorrect about the preferences deals, so it hardly seems as if I'm that far out of line, eh?

Yes I agree the legislation was imperfect, and I do not understand the rationale behind this insane clause to allow for politic spamming, it's truly disheartening that politicians would do something so blatantly weaselly. It's not unexpected, but sometimes I wish they'd be a little more subtle in protecting their interests.

As to your assertion that the "labour party" supported this legislation, I found the following statement on the record:
http://www.alp.org.au/media/1203/20006527.html

The relevant section being:
It is clear that this legislation will not stop spam outright, but it is an important step in addressing the problem. Therefore, in addition to monitoring the operation of the Act, Labor will maintain pressure on the Howard Government to ensure that appropriate attention is given to other solutions.

My understanding is that the Australian Labor Party was not happy with the legislation at the time, and that their ammendments were not fully adopted, but they voted for it anyway, because they felt this legislation was better than no legislation.

It's just how it works when you aren't in Government.

"During the early years of the ALP, the Party was referred to by various titles differing from colony to colony. It was at the 1908 Interstate (federal) Conference that the name "Australian Labour Party" was adopted. In its shortened form the Party was frequently referred to as both 'Labor' and 'Labour', however the former spelling was adopted from 1912 onwards, due to the influence of the American labor movement." More here.

It's the Australian Labor Party you insensitive clod!

So did anyone see any mention of IP law, DMCA, or any such provisions in the Herald-Scum article? No. Because there is little or no debate on this issue in Australia, save the occasional opinion piece in the newspaper, to be read by the AB demographic only.

In fairness to the Labor Party, they have mentioned these things in the attachment to their press release yesterday, which provides some remarkably non-commital statements such as 'examining options for broadening fair use' etc etc. Typical politician stuff.

I wouldn't bother....

No-one reads it.
Same as the Labour Party Website
(honestly it was the first time I loaded both!)

The incumbent Liberal party (which is actually very conservative) uses IIS. The opposition Labor party (which is slightly less conservative) uses Apache.

The Greens (progressive) use Apache on Linux for all their websites (including the one I built) and have a pro-F/OSS policy in general.

Yes, this is shameless self-promotion.

The debate over the use of open-source software is underway, with the ALP adopting a strong pro open-source policy.

It will be interesting to see if they actually do anything about it when the conservatives finally get dumped.

Actually, I think the Australians are more American than British... look how they spell labor...

Australian Labor Party

• Legislation they cannot realistically enforce. Banning Internet gambling, attempting Internet censorship, making web caching illegal, making PlayStation mods illegal. Censorship laws have so far been a complete failure, with people circumventing them. Internet censorship is said to have cost $2.5 million, while providing no benefit. It's genuinely frightening that the people writing these laws have no knowledge of what they are trying to control.

• Partially privatising the previously Government-owned telco (49% so far) for political purposes, which has made them give clear priority to profit and share price over service. Access to affordable telecommunications in rural areas is getting gradually worse (though the private sector is helping). They restrict their broadband net access to 3Gb/month after selling it as unlimited, while ensuring they are the only available broadband provider for many Australians. They were force to give other carriers access to their DSL network, so they now sell wholesale network access at $69/month, while selling broadband DSL net access to consumers at $70/month (line + access + equipment), and placing limits on the service. Just today, they are refusing to give any rebate to a broadband customer who had a 13 day outage. Somehow the government don't see any of this as a problem, and still plan to sell the rest of Telstra.

• Various laws with no regard for the privacy of citizens, like allowing spies to crack systems, and remotely tap and alter data.

For what it's worth, even Microsoft realise they are hopeless. Hopefully they'll be voted out at the next election (probably later this year?), and this insanity will end.

• Legislation they cannot realistically enforce. Banning Internet gambling, attempting Internet censorship, making web caching illegal, making PlayStation mods illegal. Censorship laws have so far been a complete failure, with people circumventing them. Internet censorship is said to have cost $2.5 million, while providing no benefit. It's genuinely frightening that the people writing these laws have no knowledge of what they are trying to control.

• Partially privatising the previously Government-owned telco (49% so far) for political purposes, which has made them give clear priority to profit and share price over service. Access to affordable telecommunications in rural areas is getting gradually worse (though the private sector is helping). They restrict their broadband net access to 3Gb/month after selling it as unlimited, while ensuring they are the only available broadband provider for many Australians. They were force to give other carriers access to their DSL network, so they now sell wholesale network access at $69/month, while selling broadband DSL net access to consumers at $70/month (line + access + equipment), and placing limits on the service. Just today, they are refusing to give any rebate to a broadband customer who had a 13 day outage. Somehow the government don't see any of this as a problem, and still plan to sell the rest of Telstra.

• Various laws with no regard for the privacy of citizens, like allowing spies to crack systems, and remotely tap and alter data.

For what it's worth, even Microsoft realise they are hopeless. Hopefully they'll be voted out at the next election (probably later this year?), and this insanity will end.

• Legislation they cannot realistically enforce. Banning Internet gambling, attempting Internet censorship, making web caching illegal, making PlayStation mods illegal. Censorship laws have so far been a complete failure, with people circumventing them. Internet censorship is said to have cost $2.5 million, while providing no benefit. It's genuinely frightening that the people writing these laws have no knowledge of what they are trying to control.

• Partially privatising the previously Government-owned telco (49% so far) for political purposes, which has made them give clear priority to profit and share price over service. Access to affordable telecommunications in rural areas is getting gradually worse (though the private sector is helping). They restrict their broadband net access to 3Gb/month after selling it as unlimited, while ensuring they are the only available broadband provider for many Australians. They were force to give other carriers access to their DSL network, so they now sell wholesale network access at $69/month, while selling broadband DSL net access to consumers at $70/month (line + access + equipment), and placing limits on the service. Just today, they are refusing to give any rebate to a broadband customer who had a 13 day outage. Somehow the government don't see any of this as a problem, and still plan to sell the rest of Telstra.

• Various laws with no regard for the privacy of citizens, like allowing spies to crack systems, and remotely tap and alter data.

For what it's worth, even Microsoft realise they are hopeless. Hopefully they'll be voted out at the next election (probably later this year?), and this insanity will end.

In the US, when speaking of the Labour Party in Oz, we use the "u", because it's their party, after all. I should think that the Canadians would likewise omit the "u" when discussing our department.

Not in my country matey... if you were to check, the Australian Labor Party drops the "u" from their name, due to the influence of the American labour/labor movement in the early 1900s - Australians still spell it "labour" in common English, as do the Canadians, I assume, from this absurd thread.

"Colour" or "color"... does it matter as long as the point is made clearly?

M@T

Here's my suggestions as to who to contact if you want to: (I'm going to give you websites, not email address - you'll have to click through. I really don't want to instigate the /.-ing of my government :) )

You can find email addresses for ministers on this page. The Prime Minister's page is here. The Leader of the Opposition's page is here. The email address of every member of the House of reps is here. Senate addresses here. Be careful please :)
If nothing else, they're not all of the party in power...

Ministers in the government:
Hon John Howard MP, Prime Minister of Australia.
Senator the Hon Richard Alston, Minister for Communications, Information Technology and the Arts.

Shadow ministers (ie in opposition - not of the party currently in government!):
Hon Kim Beazley MP, Leader of the Opposition.
Hon Bob McMullan MP, Shadow Minister for Industry and Technology.
Senator the Hon Kate Lundy, Shadow Minister Assisting the Shadow Minister for Industry and Technology on Information Technology.

Some web pages for Australian political parties: the currently governing party (strictly, the party with a majority in the federal House of Representatives) is the Liberal Party of Australia. The party in Opposition (next greatest in numbers) is the Australian Labor Party. The party with the balance of power in the Senate is the Australian Democrats.