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Australian “progressives” advocate internet censorship
by Scott Gilbreath ~ December 11th, 2008
In Australia, as in Canada, “liberals”, far more than conservatives, promote restrictions on free expression and the free flow of information.
The Australian left isn’t saying much about it, so it falls to the libertarians at Britain’s spiked to spread the news: The proposed scheme to impose compulsory filtering on Australia’s internet originated with “progressive” Clive Hamilton and the Australia Institute.
The Australia Institute is a think tank established by Hamilton in 1994 to lobby for increased government regulation over market forces. It ‘participate(s) forcefully in public debates’, with the express aim of developing policy initiatives which ‘reassert the place of ethics’ by prioritising ‘justice, equity and sustainability’ over economic efficiency.
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Hamilton and the Australia Institute began their campaign for internet censorship back in 2003, with a deliberately targeted media splash, based on some rather spurious research supposedly documenting the evil effects of porn on Australian youth (for more detail see here).This is all written up on the Electronic Frontiers Australia website (see here and here), but has remained largely unmentioned by the major ‘left’ blogs in Australia, which have tended to oppose the censorship scheme anaemically, at best.
Agitation for internet censorship made little progress under the Liberal Party government of former Prime Minister John Howard. After last year’s victory of the “far more moralistic and authoritarian” Australian Labor Party under Kevin Rudd, however, the campaign moved into high gear. Mandatory ISP-level filtering is now moving toward implementation.
This Saturday, 13 December, rallies against internet censorship are scheduled for Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Hobart, Adelaide, and Perth. Click here or here for more information.
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December 11th, 2008 at 10:20 PM
Hi,
Thanks very much for mentioning the rallies tomorrow. It looks like they are going to be quite big – it’s not just the usual political activists who are turning out.
December 12th, 2008 at 06:52 PM
[...] AUSSIE “progressives” advocate internet censorship …. (novascotiascott, [...]
December 16th, 2008 at 03:36 PM
Thanks for passing along the info. I’m conducting a survey on my blog about this: http://www.covenanteyes.com/blog/2008/12/10/sex-and-politics-australias-new-political-party-takes-on-the-mandatory-internet-filter/
It’s a post about the Australian Sex Party as well. The debate rages on!