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It's Official, Australia Needs a Space Agency
Dante_J writes "In the final report published by the Australian Senate inquiry into 'The Current State of Australia's Space Science & Industry Sector' entitled 'Lost in Space? Setting a new direction for Australia's space science and industry sector,' it calls for the formation of a 'Space Industry Advisory Council' to oversee the creation of a fully-fledged Australian Space Agency. Of the top 20 GDP nations, Australia is the only one without a Space Agency, which impacts on many aspects of ordinary life, not to mention Research and Engineering endeavors. Every satellite operated by Australia is owned by another party and the costs of this alone are comparable to that of a Space Agency. The report is a tidy piece that drew upon submissions form Andy Thomas, and an impressive collection of Australian Academics and Space Science entities frustrated by successive generations of government apathy. While this report is welcome, lethargic Government action in a climate of competing concerns is not expected to stem the flow of Space Science brain drain out of Australia any time soon."
Australia is not alone either. I think there is a "race to the bottom" between the US, UK, and Australia as far as this goes anyways.
I live in Brazil and there's a law being discussed to do almost the same thing they are doing in Australia. I might be wrong, but it seems to me there's a general race towards government control of the net (wich has been widely discussed here before).
Any life is made up of a single moment, the moment in which a man finds out, once and for all, who he is.
It's been seeing a bit of press. Both the ABC and Sydney Morning Herald have had articles. The issue set a record in the ABC's comments section. It was the first time a story with any serious number of comments (100+) had not received a single dissenting comment. Every single commenter was against the filtering proposal. Also see the No Clean Feed website.
I think the "vast majority" of Australians you refer to is a bit of an overreaction. You're making sweeping generalisations based off of nothing. It's true that there are a lot of conservatives over here, but there are also a lot of die-hard civil rights groups.
In fact, just yesterday, a "Sex Party" has announced that they are running for parliament. I am not kidding. They are focusing on freedoms such as net neutrality, no censorship on the net, more liberal attitudes towards sex and sexuality (including gay marriage) and those sorts of things.
Of course, your assertions about people not caring about censorship are going to be very well tested, now that Senator Fielding has decided he wants all pornography banned by the filter.
They may be able to ban child porn and pro-terrorist sites without much of a fight. Maybe even racial hatred websites. However... things change when you get between millions of men and their (non-child) porn.
I hope Fielding's move proves the decisive error in this campaign and results in the long-overdue nail in the coffin of this festering turd of a bill.
Even after they put all that money into a lunar mission, Australia still has a better cricket team.
Genesis 1:32 And God typed
actual the greens and some independents including Fielding have the balance of power in the senate.
The greens are against the bill and all of the sentors not in the oposition would have to suport this
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