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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."
The vast majority of Australians think the Internet needs filtering.
Citation needed. Because as an Australian the only time I hear about internet filtering is here at slashdot. I'd be surprised if the vast majority of Australians know about the government's plans, let alone have an opinion on them.
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.
Actually Kevin Rudd's plan to censor the internet is opposed by 80-90% of Australians the polls that I've seen, it's that unpopular. Rudd is quite conservative/religious and even though most Australian's aren't, the small religious population voted for him and he needs to repay the favour, by targetting porn
Why the religious just leave everyone else the hell alone