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.

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.

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

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.

Who said Australian politics are boring?

Australian Luddite Party

This year, a Luddite party is running for office.

According to bookmakers, it’s likely to win.

For further details visit the Australian Luddite Party‘s website – appropriately decked out in patriotic red, white and blue.

The Australian Labor Party has a thematic slogan for the 2010 election campaign: MOVING FORWARD

Risky, because it’s rather easy to parody…

Moving Forward: the Australian Labor Party slogan for the Federal election of 2010

Moving forward to 1984

A selection from this week’s new crop of election-oriented anti-censorship websites:

MovingAustraliaForward.com + FilterFreePortal.com

This is a great video. I don’t know the speaker, but I like his style.

My only reservation is his advocacy of more ‘anti child-porn’ police. That may be a good idea. It may not. Certainly it should be considered.

The problem is that government agencies of any type tend to create their own work. Drug enforcement agencies need drug arrests to justify their existence. Anti-terrorist squads need terrorism.

We should at least be cautious before giving blanket endorsement to the further expansion of any part of the State that requires crime statistics for its own bureaucratic subsistence.

The ABC reports today:

Gillard backs internet filter

Prime Minister Julia Gillard says she is happy with the policy aim of the Government’s proposed internet filter, but understands there are concerns about it.

The Government plans to introduce a mandatory filter to block sites that contain illegal material.

Ms Gillard says images of child abuse or child pornography should not be accessible on the internet.

But she has acknowledged the concerns raised by critics of the plan.

“I understand that there’s a set of concerns, technical concerns about internet speed, and also concerns that this somehow [moves] into taking away legitimate use of the internet,” she said.

“It’s not my intention that we in any way jeopardise legitimate use of the internet.”

This is a wholly inadequate statement by the Prime Minister.

It amounts to an insult to the hundreds of thousands of Australians who have expressed concern over this issue in recent years.

Ms Gillard acknowledges ‘concerns’ about the Government’s mandatory censorship proposals – but doesn’t articulate a rational response to the concerns or offer a process to resolve public concerns in a reasonable way. That’s appalling.

As a modest consolation prize, I imagine that now Julia Gillard has raised the issue of mandatory Internet censorship, at least some mainstream journalists will see fit to ask her questions on the topic. Let’s hope their questions have a hard edge.

When the British Labour Party was defeated at the last election, it was said by several commentators that Labour’s opponents were favoured by civil libertarians.

After more than a decade of Blair and Brown, few people in Britain who cared about freedom and privacy felt inclined to support Labour any more. They’d had enough.

It was ironic. After all, when Tony Blair’s New Labour defeated the Tories in the late 1990s, the same civil libertarians were generally delighted. But more than a decade of Labour in office wrecked that goodwill.

Has the Australian Labor Party achieved the same corrosive disaster in just one short three-year term that took three whole Parliaments in Britain ? Has the ALP lost the plot on civil liberties?

I think it may have – although I’d still take delight in being proved wrong.

Since the Rudd Government was first elected, hundreds of thousands of Australians have pleaded with the Government to drop its plans for mandatory censorship of the Internet. We have tried everything we know. We’ve destroyed the scheme’s credibility. We’ve suggested workable alternatives. We’ve written letters and articles, lobbied MPs, lobbied the Minister for Communications directly. We’ve dispatched counter-arguments with ease. We’ve flooded the media with emails, tweats and comments.

Now… with an election imminent, the Government led by Julia Gillard is on the brink of giving us no choice.

Proceed with this unpopular and irrational policy, Prime Minister – and many of us will feel forced to campaign against Labor.