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The real problems started in Australian politics when the christian fundys managed to get a guy into parliament.

Look again.

The 'guy' in question, Senator Steve Fielding might be a Christian but the policies of his party (Family First) have nothing to do with Christianity. A look at the website http://www.familyfirst.org.au/ makes no mention of Christianity and lays out policies that directly conflict with the teachings of Christianity. Even the name 'Family First' is in conflict with Christian teachings. Reading the website you can see that the driver for the party has less to do with faith, and more to do with fear. In other words, these policies are meant to appeal to the subset of the population who view the changes in society as something (a) that can be corrected by government and (b) something to be afraid of.

I am not even on the electoral roll but am considering signing up to give Labor my last preference.

Please reconsider. Family First is even worse.

Could be these guys:

http://www.familyfirst.org.au/
http://www.acl.org.au/

It could just be fundamentalist and totalitarian leanings of Conroy, or it could be orders coming from higher up. The fact that the policy statement was written 5 days before the election and quietly dumped on Labor's website smacks of a backroom deal.

This is totally to do with "Christian nutters", in particular one Senator Steve Fielding from Family First Party (i.e. the Christian Right). Other party site here. He holds the balance of power in the Senate and this is totally about getting his vote so as to enable the sitting government to get their legislation through. There are plenty of press [pdf] releases [pdf] on these sites to demonstrate their position and lobbying [pdf].
Big Media may be lobbying and pushing, but this is nothing to do with what is happening here in Australia with regards to the current push for filtering.

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.

I would prefer to see laws enacted where politicians who are shown to have gained office through deceit are put in stocks in public places and the people are charged 50c a piece of rotten fruit to throw at them.

Unfortunately the rot IS spreading. Australia also now has a growing factional political party bordering on these notions. And don't be fooled by the name (Family First)... they are determined to bring extreme christian religious doctrine into the political process.

Down under we used to have a phrase "only in america...", usually accompanied by a slow shake of the head. However, I haven't heard it used lately, as I think that the US has lost the status of "world leaders of irrational thought".

That was the Family First party:

http://www.familyfirst.org.au/policy/internetfilte ring100904.pdf

Here's a snippet:
"A Newspoll study found that 93% of parents of teenagers would support automatic filtering of
Internet pornography going into homes"

Well duh!

There is normally one of the minor parties that waves the "internet porn" flag at each election, and nothing ever happens, because in the end, its:
1) Very expensive and time consuming to implement
2) Easily bypassed.

I somehow have gotten the impression that the AUS Government is very computer hostile unless it is at the behest of large corporations or pressure groups, could anyone living in AUS give the low-down on some of the problems that plague internet users there?
Sort of right. See the goverment used to own this company called Telecom which provided telecommunications. No one else could, the goverment owned all of the phone lines in the country. Which worked ok.

The goverment finally let other carriers in and in 1992 Optus launched in Australia. In 1997 the goverment sold (I think) 25% of Telecom (now called Telstra) and in 1998 sold enough to give the goverment 51% control (A Brief History of Telstra).

Which is where we are now. Basically Telstra owns most of the lines (because they were paid for by the Australian people) and it costs a fair bit for anyone else to roll out an entire network. But Telstra obviously set the retail and wholesale prices of the lines. And strangely, sometimes, the wholesale prices are more than or equal to the retail. Optus gets around this via thier TV cable services, Alphalink rolled out wireless and iiNet are doing what article says.

There were claims that Telstra blocked the introduction of broadband for it's own benifit and that it has been unfairly competing against other carriers (but I don't think Fair Trade has upheld any of these claims).

In reality the goverement is pushing to sell the rest of Telstra and the Coalition have never quite got enough votes in the Senate to get it thru by themselves. For the last two sales they mad stupid ammendments to appease an independent who calls himself Brian Harradine, who's very into censoring everything, including the net. Thankfully he's going, but Family First managed to get one senator in (and I'm ashamed that it's in my state) and they are a party who... shock horror... want to ramp up net censorship further than what Harradine dreamed he could get.

So the simple answer is it's not that the goverment are actively computer hostile, it's just that thier short sighted plan of selling a monopoly means that they have to be mean to all of us.

I think I might have ranted a bit there, but you should get the general impression of what's happening down here. Oh... and do a search on google for Telstra suck if you need more of an idea... :)

I somehow have gotten the impression that the AUS Government is very computer hostile unless it is at the behest of large corporations or pressure groups, could anyone living in AUS give the low-down on some of the problems that plague internet users there?
Sort of right. See the goverment used to own this company called Telecom which provided telecommunications. No one else could, the goverment owned all of the phone lines in the country. Which worked ok.

The goverment finally let other carriers in and in 1992 Optus launched in Australia. In 1997 the goverment sold (I think) 25% of Telecom (now called Telstra) and in 1998 sold enough to give the goverment 51% control (A Brief History of Telstra).

Which is where we are now. Basically Telstra owns most of the lines (because they were paid for by the Australian people) and it costs a fair bit for anyone else to roll out an entire network. But Telstra obviously set the retail and wholesale prices of the lines. And strangely, sometimes, the wholesale prices are more than or equal to the retail. Optus gets around this via thier TV cable services, Alphalink rolled out wireless and iiNet are doing what article says.

There were claims that Telstra blocked the introduction of broadband for it's own benifit and that it has been unfairly competing against other carriers (but I don't think Fair Trade has upheld any of these claims).

In reality the goverement is pushing to sell the rest of Telstra and the Coalition have never quite got enough votes in the Senate to get it thru by themselves. For the last two sales they mad stupid ammendments to appease an independent who calls himself Brian Harradine, who's very into censoring everything, including the net. Thankfully he's going, but Family First managed to get one senator in (and I'm ashamed that it's in my state) and they are a party who... shock horror... want to ramp up net censorship further than what Harradine dreamed he could get.

So the simple answer is it's not that the goverment are actively computer hostile, it's just that thier short sighted plan of selling a monopoly means that they have to be mean to all of us.

I think I might have ranted a bit there, but you should get the general impression of what's happening down here. Oh... and do a search on google for Telstra suck if you need more of an idea... :)

The recent election campaigns have brought some of the loopier (by Australian standards) political parties out. One in particular that is getting a lot of publicity is Family First, your typical right-wing-christians-are-best nutjobs. Unfortunately, the closeness of the election has also resulted in more cosying up to these fring elements by the major parties to try and get some marginal votes and added legitimacy to their principles.

Additionally, there's been quite a bit of outcry about "internet porn" in the last couple of months, consistent (if somewhat low-key) anti-gaming stories in the media and some big child-porn busts in the last week.

I suspect the combination of all these factors has resulted your standard "make an example" knee-jerk over-the-top reaction from the censors. There'll probably be a few more as well while the smoke clears, but generally, it's atypical for something this harmless to be banned.

stFuck the children.
So have the cops come around to seize your computer yet?

Hey, where's my fridge magnet? I thought Alston had quit, why do we have to have more internet blocking blah blah.

I mean seriously, if the set this thing up, how are we going to catch those those that are actually nonces (I've been watching the Bill)? And why should Christians decide what is and isn't appropriate for a country where less than half the population is christian. And in any case 39.2% are Catholic and 30.4% are Anglican (see nice graphs here). The churches are in Abbott's back pocket anyway.

Fundies like this dont really have much of a say in politics down here
Sure, they probably won't win a lot of seats, so it doesn't really matter. Unless there's a hung parliment (which let's face facts, it's so close it could be) then Family First could become a bit of a problem. Oh... they're only going for the senate... hmmm... they will get killed by the Democrats and Greens... I'm no longer worried... Aww... they've got a geek (sorta) running in Victoria. I might have to vote below the line...

Can't wait till the Jedi population increases (2001 0.37%). Then we can get goverment funded lightsaber grants.

And if you vote for the Australian Democrats, but disagree with Family First be careful, because the Australian Democrats (and all the other parties except the Australian Greens) have preferenced Family First.

To be safe, vote below the line.

More information here: Election 2004 Candidates and Parties

In particular, look under the "Group Voting Ticket" section which contains information on where your preferences will go if you vote above the line.

That's right. It's so the other way round that this woman can become a 'Family First Party Leader'. She doesn't look like anybody would want to have a family with her, and she sure doesn't look like she'll ever enjoy a party!

I know this is noted above, but it is worth restating. Family First are in no way left wing. They are supporting Australia's conservative Government in the upcoming election, and directing their preferences against Australia's main left wing party (under Australia's preferential voting system).

They are socially conservative, being the political arm of one of Australia's largest evangelical groups, and have no real stance on economic issues. Their main aim is to move their evangelism into the political arena, and their political candidates are predominantly drawn from the Christian Right. The party generally agrees with the current conservative government, and they are vehemently opposed to the major left-wing parties in Australian politics (Labor and the Greens).

Luckily, although Australian nominally has a two-thirds Christian population, most people who describe themselves as Christian rarely go to church, and many don't really have any religious beliefs. The average "Christian" Australian only goes to Church for weddings, baptisms and funerals, but describes themself as "Christian" on the census, because they "were baptised that way". Many past Australian Prime Ministers have been atheist, agnostic or followed minor religions (e.g. Alfred Deakin was a "spiritualist"), and very few have professed strong religious convictions.

Politics in Australia have generally been a religion-free zone, apart from a few minor political parties, so the arrival of the cashed-up, conservative Family First party is a real worry. They are currently polling at anywhere from 2-5%, and mainly draw their support from members of Pentecostal chuches.

I really can't see how they could - in any way - be described as left-wing, and I thing the story poster was either: confused, uninformed, or trolling against left-wing Slashdotters. In any case, the story should be corrected. As it is, it implies that Family First have some connection with Labor, when they actually might cost them the election.

Family First Media releases

Now you can correct me if I'm wrong but children do not go in search of child pornography on the internet. The people that do prey on children pose as children in chat rooms to acheive their goals.

How will the blocking of content stop this from occuring?

Shouldn't money be spent no on educating parents and NOT filtering content at the ISP level. It actually doesn't cost much to pose the question to parents .... "Would you leave your child alone with 100+ strangers who you've never met before?"

Please email these people and let them know this.

The head office email is:
admin@familyfirst.org.au

and candadies can be found here

http://familyfirst.org.au/candidates.php/

-=+ Remember George Bush gives us all hope ....
-=+ If he can be President the I can sure get through the day!