Australian IT Minister Alston Replaced

srouvray writes "The Australian is reporting: In a re-shuffle of the Australian Federal Cabinet, current Communications Minister Richard Alston will be replaced (Alston is going to retire) with Attorney General Darryl Williams. Alston is 'credited' for introducing tough anti-spam laws into parliament... Although it will be interesting to see if Williams will be branded a 'Luddite' as well!"

Comments

hallelujah

[Unominous Coward]

Let's not forget that this is the minister who said that broadband was only for games and porn.

I for one welcome his replacement.

Re:hallelujah

[alien_blueprint]

And *I*, for one, welcome our *new* luddite overlord! :)

Yeah, it's lame, but I'm so happy right now, I just don't care. I didn't think anything could better the news of Doctor Who returning, but here it is!

Actually

[The Tyro]

It sounds to me like he's got his finger on the pulse of the geek community (or at least the /. community).

I, for one, give him +1 insightful.

Aussies don't need spam...

[switched4OSX]

their penises are already big enough (or so I'm told)

Re:Aussies don't need spam...

[marine_recon]

and you would know right? actually they used the products so much that all the people who sent spam to them were able to retire to flordia. hence, no more spam!

Notable Achievements of Alston's

[lks_aus]

• Initially dismissing broadband as a gaming platform
• Calling a country-wide broadband rollout a "costly waste of time"
• Decreeing that consumers should be kept in the dark about their phone line
• Linking the takeup of broadband to pornography
• Allowing his department to spend $4,000,000 on a small and poorly developed website

Re:Notable Achievements of Alston's

[goonerw]

You may want to fix up your links so that they refer to Whirlpool.net.au rather than the non-existant coldfusion pages on Slashdot.

Decreeing that consumers should be kept in the dark about their phone line = http://www.whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm?id=765

Allowing his department to spend $4,000,000 on a small and poorly developed website = http://www.whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm?id=1107

Linking the takeup of broadband to pornography =
http://www.whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm?id=956

Initially dismissing broadband as a gaming platform = http://www.whirlpool.net.au/article.cfm?id=566

Re:Notable Achievements of Alston's

[alien_blueprint]

Now, let's not forget the acceptance of kickbacks from Telstra in the form of a $10,000AU plasma television.

Hoo-fucking-ray

[The Fanta Menace]

At last, the cretin has gone. And despite the media claiming he left of his own accord, everyone in politics knows that he was pushed, due to his own ineptitude.

Of course, Williams is just as much of a wanker, and probably won't fix anything.

Re:Hoo-fucking-ray

[TekPolitik]

despite the media claiming he left of his own accord, everyone in politics knows that he was pushed, due to his own ineptitude.

Not true. Check his bio. He's 61 now. It's not surprising he didn't want to stay in Parliament much longer. Australian politicians (unlike their American counterparts) tend to retire close to the community retirement age, if not earlier.

Often a retiring politician will find outside employment in areas such as public speaking, non-executive board membership, diplomacy, or in the case of Alston he may want to return to the Bar.

Wishlist

[fastdecade]

* Stop the Telstra Bulldozer in it's tracks -- support broadband. Canada proves it's possible in a big country
* Sensible censorship
* Sensible copyright
* Serious commitment to anti-spam
* Keep investing and committing to open source

Alston's policies have left Australia as an international IT joke. So much local telent, and so many opportunities in the Asian and global markets have gone to waste. More importantly, every Australian business and consumer has suffered from the 1950s attitudes of the present Aussie govt. Step into the 80s guys, the economy is not all agriculture and textiles!

Re:Wishlist

[aastanna]

support broadband. Canada proves it's possible in a big country

I don't really know about the situation in Australia, but in Canada we have lots of dark fibre stemming from the dot-com bust. It was put in by companies that have since gone bust, and passed around...I worked at sprint for a while and they have lots. I wouldn't want to see that type of thing funded by a government.

Be thankful

[Anonymous Coward]

After all, the job could of been given to Amanda Vanstone ;)

Re:Be thankful

[bcg]

I would have gladly laid down the Australian IT industry as a sacrifice rather than see her back in immigration.

Do the Disaster Shuffle baby!

[ewe2]

Alston was a communications disaster, presiding over failed Telstra rollouts/privatizations, 3G rollouts, HDTV rollouts; if it rolled, he screwed it up.

OTOH, Williams has possibly been the worst Attorney-General in living memory, and he's being replaced by the most embarrassing Immigration Minister of all time so he can replace Alston! This I gotta see.

Yup, it's the good ol' Disaster Shuffle. Take yer partners for a foot-stomping good time :)

First naming as "World's Biggest Luddite"

[alien_blueprint]

I just submitted this most excellent news item to /., but spent so much time digging up links to his inglorious past that someone beat me to it.

However, I found the original Register article that named Alston as "The World's Biggest Luddite".

An appropriate tribute...

[Goonie]

I hereby propose a new award be named in honor of the retiring Alston - "The Richard Alston Trophy for the most boneheaded government IT policy decision". Any suggestions for the trophy design?

Re:You Beauty!

[DjReagan]

Its taken from the name of the bird. Its generally used in Australia as an insult, roughly translating to idiot and/or fool.
See also, "Gala"

Actually, he got _one_ right

[leonbrooks]

He was objecting to the government paying for a country-wide broadband rollout.

I personally would greatly enjoy 100 megabits to my door, which could be done quite easily for most towns of about 5,000 or more and would obsolete wired telephones on the day, but while I've seen far worse abuses of it, I think spending tax money is not the way to do this.

I say "most" because towns like Wyndham are kind of difficult to get the bandwidth to, and quite a few West Aussie towns are difficult to wire for anything because the ground is too hard (Albany) or too salty (Lancelin).

I also fear what would happen with 100Mb door-to-door when the next CodeRed/Nimda/MSBlast goes off. Someone could suck out your entire hard drive in a few minutes. Perhaps in 5 years when hardly anyone's using MS-Windows any more?

We don't ignore our neighbours!

[leonbrooks]

We give the greedier ones copies of The Bush Tucker Book and invite them to exercise with us on our soil, which they consider to be (and name it thus on their maps) theirs.

Er... oh, you meant the Kiwis...? (-:

Not a good thing.

[Marlor]

Oh dear. This is bad news.

The worst thing you could say about Richard Alston is that he is an incompetent luddite.

Darryl Williams is much worse. He is cunning and intelligent, but with some truly awful political views.

He is well-known for:

trying to destroy the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission

Being the force behind Australia's equivalent of the Patriot Act

Refusing to defend a homosexual judge, despite being bound by his position as Attorney General to act as an advocate and protector for the judiciary

Refusing to accept UN reports on racism in Australia

Lobbying for increased intellectual property rights

Lobbying for laws allowing Australia's spy agency, ASIO, to read domestic emails

Supporting the increase in the rate of phone tapping

And generally trampling on human rights and civil liberties wherever possible.

This is definately not good news.

Re:Not a good thing.

[mister_tim]

Agreed.

While Alston may not be as much of a Luddite in his attitudes towards technology, he certinaly appears to present more of a 'danger' to Australian's rights, given his views on censorship and privacy. Only this year, the Australian Privacy Foundation gave him their Big Brother Award for Lifetime Menace to Privacy.

While this award wasn't linked to Williams' views or actions in relation to technology it still doesn't bode well for us Aussies given his new role.

Re:Not a good thing.

[thirdrock]

Being the force behind Australia's equivalent of the Patriot Act

The ASIO bill was much worse than the Patriot Act. Among other things it
1. Removed habeus corpus from common law.
2. Made refusal to give testimony a crime (5 years)
3. Denial of legal counsel
4. Denial of ANY counsel (incommunicado)
5. Strip search without justification
6. Only avenue of complaint via letter, which you have to give to your interrogators, who will pass it on to the ombudsman (without 'misplacing' it, yeah right ...)

The press goes on about Guantanomo bay, but at least the Americans had to invent a term 'illegal combatant', and it is still being challenged. With the ASIO bill, we signed 'Guantanomo Bay' into law!

Now the Govt. can pick you up off the street hold you incommunicado, without counsel, without any rights under common law, and then imprison you for 5 years even if you don't know anything.

And now we want this nazi motherfucker to be overlording our communications as well, reading our e-mails and listening to our phone calls.Sheesh .... we are so fucked.

Re:Not a good thing.

[Marlor]

I really can't fathom how you could defend Williams for the actions in my post above. I'll respond, even though I have a feeling you are just trolling.

trying to destroy the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission
The first step to having equal rights is non discrimination, being a certain race in Australia can make your life easier, dont belive me, go to your local "dole" queue, and tick the box -i do not wish to disclose my race

The HREOC is in charge of stopping people from being sacked because a boss does not agree with their political views or sexual preference. It is responsible for stopping sexual harassment in the workplace. Most importantly, it is in charge of protecting free speech.

Being the force behind Australia's equivalent of the Patriot Act
Well, we do have to catch up on 1984, but seriously, who watches the watches.. lets wake up.

So, you support a totalitarian state, do you? The ASIO Bill gives unparallelled rights to Australia's spy agency to detain anyone for questioning without having to lay charges (and with no right to having a lawyer present). I hope it isn't abused - but it is certainly a worrying prospect.

Refusing to defend a homosexual judge, despite being bound by his position as Attorney General to act as an advocate and protector for the judiciary
If you wathced the news, you would see that there is more to this, than i can explain here.

What happened is that Justice Kirby was accused of picking up male prostitutes in his Government-supplied car. It was Darryl Williams' job to stand up for him in his duty as Attorney General. He did not. Darryl Williams was criticised on all sides for this. People are now calling for the role of Attorney General to be redefined, since Williams let politics get in the way of his duty. Justice Kirby is still practicing.

Refusing to accept UN reports on racism in Australia
Yes, the UN over sensationalised the reports. Dont believe me, live here for 10 years, read it, then make your decision

I've lived in Australia for 24 years, read the report, and decided that it made some good points. The Australian Government has breached several international agreements in their detention of asylum seekers. Williams refused to answer these specific allegations, instead he dismissed the report entirely.

Lobbying for increased intellectual property rights
I think that was his party decision, and not just his.

No, it was his. If you read the link I point to, it contains a speech by Darryl Williams stating how he feels intellectual property laws have to be tightened.

Lobbying for laws allowing Australia's spy agency, ASIO, to read domestic emails
No, what he lobbied for was access to eschelon.

He attempted to get ASIO's powers increased to allow them to "read unopened domestic emails". Civil liberties groups were up in arms about this at the time.

Supporting the increase in the rate of phone tapping
I agree with this one, AU has the best phone network in the world, and yet we dont use it for high tech crime fighting, what gives ?

What gives is that the rate of phone tapping has been dramatically increasing under Williams' reign as Attorney General. While it would be nice to think that this is all for crime-fighting, the past actions of Australia's surveillance organisations make this seem a little fanciful.

Not everything is as simple as it seems

No, it never is. Your unwavering trust that the Government will only ever use it's increased powers to fight crime and help others is truly simple indeed. Personally, whenever I see any government get increased powers of surveillance, or the ability to detain people without charges, I get a chill up my spine. It would be simple to think that these laws are there to protect us, but what happens when they are abused? If Williams had his way, the Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (or the UN) would not be there to stand up for us.

Not so fast...

[BrokenHalo]

I cordially despise Alston, but given the record of the current Australian Federal Government, I wouldn't hold out too much hope that his replacement will be any more enlightened.

I would suggest that this reshuffle is more to deflect criticism of the heavy-handed way in which Alston has attempted to directly influence editorial and policy and journalism in the Australian Broadcasting Corporation over, for example, the Iraq War II.