New South Wales has the oldest Parliament in Australia.

The State has a lower, government-forming chamber called the Legislative Assembly. It is dominated by the major political parties and runs rather like a smaller version of Australia’s Federal House of Representatives or the British House of Commons.

Reverend Fred Nile, Father of the NSW Legislative Council. Likes well-researched moral crusades

The State of NSW also has a Legislative Council – an upper house akin to the Federal Senate – to which members are elected by a form of proportional representation. Other parties, such as the Greens, are currently represented in the Legislative Council. In fact, there’s a smorgasbord of political flavours in the NSW Upper House, because the quota for success is relatively low. One of the long-standing beneficiaries has been the Reverend Fred Nile and his Christian Democratic Party.

The Reverend Nile has been an MLC since 1981. He’s ‘Father of the House’. In fact, he the longest-serving NSW Parliamentarian.

Views tend to polarize on the subject of Fred Nile. His supporters believe he’s a valiant defender of traditional Christian values. Opponents tend to view him as a moralizing reactionary hypocrite.

Yesterday yet another NSW Government Minister was forced to resign from Premier Keneally’s beleaguered Labor Government.

An audit of Parliament House computer use turned up the fact that Ports Minister Paul McLeay MLA had been accessing gambling and porn sites on his parliamentary computer. Embarrassed, the Minister stood down immediately, even offering to resign from the Labor Party.

Appearing on the ABC‘s popular TV political chat show Q&A on August 30th 2010, former Australian Prime Minister Malcolm Fraser dropped a minor bombshell.

Malcolm Fraser on Q & A

80-year old Fraser was head of the Liberal-National Coalition Government between 1975 and 1983. Deeply unpopular on the Australian left back in the 1970s – especially following the controversial sacking of the Whitlam Labor Government in 1975 by Australia’s Governor General – Fraser has none the less emerged in later life as an elder statesman of quality.

Like Ted Heath in Britain before him, Fraser watched the centre-right party he once led moving much further to the right in the quarter century following his departure.  Like Heath, Fraser has been outspoken in his criticism. This independent stance has made the right-wing of Australian politics nervous, but his genuine liberalism strikes a deep popular chord.

Last night, 49 minutes into the show, Fraser was posed a hostile, partisan question by a young Liberal supporter in the audience.

Fraser gave a rather thoughtful response:

“There is certainly a great yearning amongst both parties for a different approach, a broader approach, one which has some vision for the future of Australia and one which really tackles difficult issues and and is prepared to explain those issues, and not respond to focus groups or today’s polls or to pressure from News Corporation.”

The elderly ex-politician paused. There was a momentary and rather embarrassed silence, followed by a few titters.

It’s an oddity of the human character that brain surgery, a very serious matter, is often the subject of jokes.

Perhaps it’s our way of dealing with the frightening and unthinkable.

The notion of an utter incompetent engaging in something as delicate as tampering with our brains makes us squeamish. What might he do to our minds? Ouch! So we joke about it.

Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy: mash-ups by Bob Whidon

In similar vein, many informed Australians have been making jokes about Senator Stephen Conroy for some years now.

The sniggers began almost as soon as he begame Australia’s Communications Minister, after the Rudd Labor Government was elected to power in 2007. They took off the next year, when it became apparent the Minister was quite insistent on imposing a mandatory internet ‘filter’ on all Australians.

The internet can be viewed as the neuronal structure of a globalizing humanity. It provides the basis for closely interwoven global society. Information streams through the network – information about people, activities, ideas, money and other data. It travels at the speed of light. This is the information flow that binds us together and makes our interconnected world work.

Our generation has grown used to the technology and participated in its growing sophistication. We are alive at a most remarkable time in human history. It’s a time when the mind of humanity is literally coming together, in ‘real time’. We’re still at the beginning of this extraordinary metamorphic process.

This morning I woke up thinking of my old friend Huw Davies, who took his own life in early 1994.

Huw Davies: via PhotoAccess, Canberra

Huw was a talented art photographer and ‘life artist’.

His friends adored him for his kindness, his compassion, his amazing energy and above all for a wonderful sense of humour.

About a year before his death, I had an intense debate with Huw about prospects for humanity. I took the optimist side, arguing we’re not only part of creation, but a special and significant part – for all our faults and weaknesses.

Huw – in blacker mood than I’d  seen him before – countered that humans are more like a lethal virus. I clearly remember him saying that if humans ever truly escape from the bounds of this planet, we’ll screw up the rest of the universe too.

I still can’t agree with Huw about that. Yet 15 years on, it’s hard to adduce much evidence he was wrong. I don’t think Huw believed all humans as intrinsically evil. His point was about the powerful (those most likely to head for the stars).

Perhaps our outward progress is stalled until we develop the wisdom to coexist and co-evolve?

I wish Huw was still around to continue the discussion.

In the last years of his life, Huw Davies developed a style for retouching photos by fingerpainting. The similarity with the painting style of Vincent Van Gogh was obvious. Somewhat later, he became intensely depressed and took his own life, like Vincent before him.

At last – a documentary filmed from WITHIN the Taliban

(Scroll down for a must-see ten minute documentary made by Norwegian filmaker Paul Refsdal, using footage he took recently in Kunar Province, Eastern Afghanistan. Narrated by Alex Thompson, this remarkable insight into the life of Taliban resistance fighters was shown first on Britain’s Channel 4)

Last week, during the latest ritual national mourning  for yet another Australian soldier slain in Afghanistan, Prime Minister Julia Gillard was asked if she’d support a Parliamentary debate on Afghanistan (shorthand for Australia’s continuing military involvement in the occupation of that sovereign nation for the best part of a decade).

She refused to answer.

This is worse than World War Two, when Parliament was not gagged in similar fashion.

Julia Gillard and Bob Hawke, present & past ALP leaders who spoke at the 2010 Labor Party election launch; both notorious Zionist toadies and tag-alongs serving the US war machine

Like the rest of the Canberra Idiocracy, Julia Gillard may well live in a make-believe land – a world in which Australia’s SAS soldiers are valiant righteous heroes and the Taliban all evil villainous baddies. Perhaps she snuggles up on the sofa after a long day, in the arms of her Zionist boyfriend, and watches Cowboys and Indians movies?

Ms Gillard should watch this video too.

It’s the first documentary I’ve seen in nine years that’s filmed  from the perspective of Afghani resistance fighters. This is real journalism – something you rarely see via the shamed and discredited mainstream media.

Bob Ellis: raconteur and political fantacist

The much-loved (and occasionally reviled) veteran Australian journalist Bob Ellis has introduced a new artform into the 2010 Australian election.

Bob has begun reporting conversations that didn’t happen at all – but might well have happened.

This is more fun than chattering about unproveable anonymous ‘leaks’, that have dominated the campaign thus far. When inventing an imaginary conversation that did not happen, an author can put in more detail and even set the ambience. Perhaps this is why fiction was invented?

Here’s my own contribution to the genre…

They sat in a bar frequented by Gen Y, somewhere in Canberra, at the end of a long day. It was one month into the gruelling five-week Federal election campaign. The date was August 13th. One week to go! Time to crack a bottle and take stock.

One of the men was still anxious about the election.

“Lighten up Bruce” said his companion. “Have a drink!”

“I’m worried about Queensland” murmured Bruce.

“Don’t be” said Frank. He exuded confidence. Labor Party operatives such as Bruce wondered where he got it from.

“It’s OK said Frank. We’re putting extra troops in Queensland. Get Up’s marginals campaign will swing it. You’ll see.”

What a News Corp journalist thinks about Australians who remain steadfastly opposed to mandatory internet censorship

The relationship between the journalistic profession and the elusive but still attractive ideal of ‘democracy’ is problematic.

Julia Irwin: all it takes is guts

As long as we live in societies with a vast disparity in wealth, journalists will tend to reflect the interests of the few who are wealthy rather than the many who are not. Someone has to pay their wages, after all.

Partly in recognition of this, public broadcasters were established in countries such as Australia, Britain and the USA. But they have been prone to infiltration, subvertion, intimidation and general complacent lethargy.

Then there’s the small but significant ‘independent’ media. In Australia, it has occasionally shown the gumption to cover stories that the corporate mainstream media and largely-tamed ABC and SBS won’t touch. But undoubtedly independent media cop pressure too from powerful vested interests – and it has to pay its own bills.

Al of which is a preamble to introducing a must-read article by Antony Lowenstein, published in the popular independent Australian blog Crikey.com two days ago… but seen so far by all too few, because it’s behind Crikey’s paywall (paid subscribers only).

In my view, this is the most significant article of the entire election campaign.

It should be headine news – and it would be headine news in a real democracy with a genuine free press. Instead of that, the most effective manipulators of the Australian body politic look like they’ll make it home again, with only a handful of grumblers wise to their shenannigans.

Exclusive new ‘Leak of the Week’ special

Julia Gillard blames Kevin Rudd for a policy designed by “fools, crims and spooks”, according to a source located somewhere in far north Queensland.

Julia Gillard with Cairns blogger Michael Moore: new talent?

Referring to Senator Conroy’s ‘mandatory internet censorship scheme’, Ms Gillard is clearly furious she’s has been set up by “very silly boys” in the Rudd Government.

Julia Gillard & MP Jim Turnour: who's leaking?

My source informs me Gillard knows full well she has to fix this mess before the election – and that the crucial Communications Portfolio must be run by a competent woman if she wins.

“It’s no job for a boy!” the exasperated Gillard is rumoured to have murmured.

In a rare moment of candour, while appearing to relax in tropical foliage surrounded by birdsong and noisy frog mating calls, the new Prime Minister hinted she knows what deep trouble Labor has got itself into over the widely reviled and creepy ‘mandatory internet filter’ policy.

But in a senational new revelation, my source suggests Gillard is still trying to find the testicular fortitude to stand up to the Zionist Lobby, ASIO and powerful mass media interests, all of whom have long regarded the ALP leadership as compliant poodles.

A recent SMH internet censorship opinion poll: Rudd's psephologists told him not to worry

Is the Gillard Government really planning to force Australian ISPs to retain logs detailing individual Internet usage for several years?

It sounds too surreal to be true. Yet this latest push by a Government dragging Australia fast towards Orwellian hell has been a matter of public knowledge – and some debate – for a while. So far, official denials have not been convincing.

Mandatory Data Retention: 10% of the Government's plans are public

Rumours first surfaced months ago of secret meetings convened by the Attorney General’s Department, in which ISPs were consulted about ways to monitor internet usage.

In June, the story made headlines, at least in Australia’s IT  media. The ripple of coverage began on June 11th with Ben Grubb’s article in Zdnet.com.au: Govt wants ISPs to record browsing history. There was a follow-up article in Zdnet by Renai LeMay a few days later: Govt denies it wants web history records. News Corps’ Brett Winterford was considerably more reassuring – see Call for calm over data retention talks – although it’s interesting to note an acerbic debate with Ben Grubb in comments below that article.

By the end of June, Liz Tay was reporting that the Senate Standing Committee on Environment, Communications and the Arts has been given a reference to investigate the adequacy of Australian online privacy protections: see Feds launch online privacy inquiry.

Laurie Oakes: likes a leak

The minor curfuffle over Laurie Oakes’ latest leak revelation – coming fast on the heels of Chris Uhlmann’s leak expose following Oakes’ previously announced leak – has obscured the really big leak which this blog is proud to bring to a breathless Australian public.

It’s a world exclusive.

Chris Uhlmann: ABC leak expert

According to an anonymous Canberra insider, Australian Opposition leader Tony Abbott recently told a top-secret meeting of his election team to avoid discussing the Gillard Government’s Internet censorship plans.

“The Coalition would love to gain extra votes by opposing this irrational, authoritarian and highly unpopular Labor policy – but Abbott’s high-level contacts in the mass media and security agencies told him to shut up and conform” the source explained, on condition of  anonymity.

Abbott apparently urged his colleagues to “get elected!”

[Laurie Joakes and Chris Buhllman are senior member of the highly respected Canberra Press Gallery with virtually unlimited credibility]