Attorney-General's hamfisted attempt to censor internet make SA look foolish

At the behest of Attorney-General Mr Michael Atkinson the South Australian Parliament has amended s116 of the Electoral Act to require that all comments made on the internet during state elections are accompanied by the maker's name and address(not post office box). Even though both major (and perhaps most minor parties) supported the move it has many of the trademarks of Mr Atkinson's hamfistedness.

The Advertiser's website Adelaide Now has led the chorus of protest , quite properly highlighting the appalling insensitivity of Mr Atkinson's comment that the Adelaide Now website was "not just a sewer of criminal defamation" but also "a sewer of identity theft and fraud". For video of his media conference see here .

Of other media comment Hendrik Gout on the InDaily website makes the point that while the Attorney has the power to pursue those who fall foul of his amendments the Labor Party is still able to accept anonymous donations.

The comparisons with China have already been made and no doubt will continue to be. How embarrassing to be a South Australian.

Update 3 February

AG Atkinson has backed down.

South Australia's Attorney-General Michael Atkinson admits he misjudged public opinion on the state's attempt to curb political comment on the internet.

Mr Atkinson says he will repeal a law which would have meant that anyone posting comment or blogs during an election period would have had to give their real name and postcode.

Opponents had branded the law an attack on freedom of speech, and Mr Atkinson says he listened to community concerns in his decision to overturn it.

Better late - and where freedom of expression is at issue a day is too late - than never.
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Brief mentions #2

# Mr Rudd for two terms?


On last night's 7.30 Report Communications Minister Senator Helen Coonan, apart from fluffing her dates, appeared to suggest that Mr Rudd is seeking two terms:

Well, Kerry, anyone who knows the vaguest thing about this sort of technology knows that you start much before three months after an announcement. This has been going on pretty well since about 19... Sorry, 2005, and has been rolled out and been planned. Kevin Rudd popped up opportunistically out of the ground with a fantasy plan that's not going to be delivered, not only - forget 2009 - 2013? How many terms does Kevin Rudd think he's going to have in government? Seriously, I mean, that's not a broadband plan. If you're going to have to wait till 2013 to get broadband, you're not going to be able to do much with it.

Is this an emerging Coalition strategy: effectively admit that Labor will win the impending election but plan to limit them to one term?

# Excoriating stuff: Minister uses four syllable word on TV

On tonight's 7.30 Report Industrial relations Minister Joe Hockey said, apropos of some criticism levelled at him for criticising the bona fides of some union funded rersearchers "yet somehow I'm excoriated for my pointing out that these academics have had long-standing involvements with the union movement." In case people didn't know what he was talking about, his next sentence reverted to cliche: "I mean, what's good for the goose is good for the gander".

# Premier urged to " talk like rest of us" as he seeks new speechwriter and touches forelock to English royalty:

Interesting piece in Today's Advertiser/ Adelaide Now about Premier Rann being urged to stop sounding like Alexander Downer. Another article discusses Mr Rann's quest for a new speechwriter :

Applicants need the usual triumvirate of experience, exceptional writing skills and "a very sound understanding of government affairs, parliamentary and political processes".

A knowledge of the correct way to emphasise "the $6 billion air warfare destroyer contract" and "the state's mining boom" will, of course, be presumed.

But considering the raw material with which the applicant has to work, we make no apologies for suggesting one more essential quality. Soul.

For only a person with soul can look to a future of sustained economic growth for all South Australians.

Only a person with soul can appreciate this "all-time high in jobs, an equal all-time low in unemployment and an all-time high in private sector investment".

And only a person with soul can introduce the Treasurer to a room filled with Budget-hungry journalists and cause even the most battle-hardened cynic to shed a tear and applaud his fiscal brilliance.

If you have soul, if you can hear Mr Rann's dulcet tones shaping the future, please apply to Michele Virgo at virgo.michele@dpc.sa.gov.au. Think not what your state can do for you, but what you can do for Mr Rann.

Mr Rann has also been touching his forelock, or its contemporary equivalent, to the Duke of Kent , who is visiting SA (and slumming it by flying Qantas if this photo is accurate). HRH is here primarily to open an the Australian branch of The Royal Institution of Great Britain.

State government rejects call for anti corruption commission

Not surprisingly the state government has rejected calls by federal Labor MP Rod Sawford that SA should have an anti- crime and corruption commission similar to those in some other (though not all) states.

What is surprising is that Mr Sawford is of the same political hue as the state government..

The local media haven't exactly been forthcoming with the story. Only the ABC (see link above) and The Independent Weekly of the MSM seem to have reported it. It's not on the latter's website, but the latest print issue does have a page 2 story "Labor MP slams SA Govt", with, unusually for the paper, no byline. Surely whoever wrote the story doesn't fear retribution?

Mr Sawford's speech in which he made the contentious remarks is here.
The relevant section is:

The wider electorate has turned off the political process. It no longer believes the government. It no longer believes the media. It is holding the power of its vote until election day and refusing to seriously indicate what it is really thinking.

On the topic of governance, leadership and the ineffective media in this country, I would like to put on the public record a view of what I believe is happening in my own state. I have said some of these words in the Main Committee previously, but they are worth repeating in the context of this address-in-reply. No matter where you look in South Australia , politics, business, unions, education, health, public transport infrastructure, governance and leadership are all too often seriously compromised. It is a dynamic that has dogged my state for the last 30 years—and it has dogged Victoria too. The tripartite relationships between the top end of town—and the corporate world—the media, particularly the commercial media, and the executive government are too often clouded in questionable goings-on. State governments in South Australia have had a far too comfortable and accommodating relationship with the top end of town. Who could forget the State Bank fiasco of the late 1980s which shamed all political parties and the media?

During the Liberal term from 1993 to 2002 we endured the folly of waste of taxpayers’ money on a national wine centre, overspending on the Hindmarsh Stadium and the botched sale of the TAB. During the current government’s term it is going to happen again. A sum of $55 million—mostly taxpayers’ money—has been allocated to build a grandstand in Adelaide’s parklands to be used for car racing and horseracing. The grandstand—or ‘the stand for the grand’—was originally planned to be four storeys high, 248 metres long and 10.8 metres wide. Despite taxpayers paying for this monstrosity, there will not be one public seat. It is a facility for government and the corporate world. The cost of the project will just grow and grow. The arrogance and the contempt for the taxpayer so implicit in this funding beggar belief. Any government should realise that getting into bed with the car racing fraternity is not what it is cracked up to be. Adelaide once had a formula one grand prix. Claims of its so-called economic benefits were always greatly exaggerated. This very fact has been stated by the Victorian independent watchdog, which has said that the cost of holding the grand prix in Melbourne is $6.7 million. The Victorian state Auditor-General, Des Pearson, released a report on 23 May that found many studies justifying the use of taxpayers’ dollars for major events are inadequate. You bet they are. South Australia is no exception. The Clipsal V8 car race in South Australia will eventually tell a similar story.

Another matter is the all too comfortable, ‘nudge, nudge, wink, wink’, cosy relationships that state governments have had with the media. Although wrong, it is at least understandable that the media would protect its income stream and the people who provide the advertising revenue. Nevertheless, it far too often compromises the fourth estate in South Australia and it shows. In fact, respected journalists over the years have told me of their frustration at the lack of resources for investigative journalism and overzealous editorial control. The national media’s complaints about the prohibition on information release are largely correct. However, you cannot think that the very same media would be as selective in what it chose to make available. The next question to ask is: would it be done on an ethical basis? Governments protect themselves. High-profile business and media personnel are strategically appointed to government boards and paid handsomely for their time, participation and support of government. Whether these individuals recognise it or not, they are badly compromised.

I have always believed that the sale of the TAB in South Australia demanded a royal commission. I think the same about Cheltenham Racecourse and the Victoria Park development—a parklands monstrosity. However, the likelihood of that happening is probably pretty small. Have a listen to this: the lobbyist for the South Australian Jockey Club, promoting the sale of the Cheltenham Racecourse—the best stormwater retention site in the western suburbs—and the Victoria Park development is appointed by the government to give advice on stormwater management. South Australia, like Western Australia and Victoria, needs the establishment of an anticorruption and crime commission to be monitored by the federal government and—(Time expired)

As Mr Sawford pointed out, he's retiring from parliament , so no doubt his remarks will be disparaged by he and his party colleagues, but there's plenty of food for thought here.

New Labor leader (and deputy)

As expected, and as I and almost everyone else with the slightest interest in Australian politics foreshadowed yesterday, Kevin Rudd was today elected leader of the ALP with Julia Gillard as his deputy.

He's already said that his front bench, the composition of which he'll announce later this week, will have some new blood.

It will take a few days to separate the grain of leadership substance from the chaff of media hype ("dream team" etc). Mr Howard has already gone on the attack, beating the drums of union control of the ALP and Mr R's inexperience. No doubt we'll be hearing more of this litany.

Labor's lest than perfectest day

Matt Price's column in today's Australian is a very erudite and witty, albeit all too true, take on the ALP's current difficulties:

The themes of Much Ado About Nothing are disguise, deceit and infidelity as two long-time adversaries, Bennedick and Beatrice, wind up in love. Which would pretty much sum up any Dream-Team ascension - Rudd and Julia Gillard have spent most of their parliamentary careers eyeing each other suspiciously across Labor's poisonous divide.

Thoughts of which prompt a return to Shakespeare:

Men were deceivers ever,
One foot in sea and one on shore,
To one thing constant never.

Four hundred years old, still the perfectest description of caucus you're likely to hear.

Culture of complaint against public broadcasters continues

UPDATE 6 November: Matt Price's article referred to below is now online here.

ORIGINAL POST (unchanged except for one typo corrected)
"Aunty and co face Neo-Connie's wrath".This is the title of Matt Price's column in today's Weekend Australian. To read it (and like most of Matt's stuff it's worth reading) you'll need to go to page 20 as, unlike most if not all his other pieces, this isn't online. I won't speculate why.

"Aunty" is of course the ABC, about whose current travails Matt has written previously, such as here.. "Neo-Connie" is NSW Senator Concetta Fierravanti-Wells , aka, as he puts it "Connie to her pals, neo-Connie to detractors", who "chooses to patrol the public broadcasters for signs of far-Left bias. Which, in neo-Connie's eyes, are everywhere".

He also has a critical thing or two to say about Victorian Senator Michael Ronaldson aka "neo_Ronnie", who "is less dedicated culture warrior than knockabout bully to whom broadcaster bashing is more sport than religion" .

The two Senators used the recent Senate estimates hearing to quiz, harangue, berate - call it what you will - the managing directors of the ABC and SBS about alleged left wing bias. Matt gives some examples of their lines of questioning and comments about the increasingly abrasive tone they used. The committee chairman (also a Liberal) "was plainly embarrassed and to his great credit intervened to chide his ultra-aggressive colleagues".

He continues

As taxpayer-funded outfits, ABC and SBS should be answerable to senators scrutinising government. If people such as neo-Connie feel compelled to complain about nudity on SBS, it's a small price to pay for public funding.

But the bullying is out of control. John Howard has stacked the board that chose [Mark] Scott as the man to lead the ABC into the complex, ever-changing digital era. On Monday's performance [at the Senate estimates hearing], he'll do a good job. The appointment of an editorial director to guard against partiality is contentious and bureaucratic and won't stem criticism of the ABC. But you'd think government senators would at least give Scott a settling-in period. Instead, neo-Ronnie and Connie roundly mocked and scorned the ABC chief, who stoutly defended the corporation against their generally absurd, overblown attacks.

It's easy for a senator with a tramscript and a chauffeur to sit on their air conditioned ar*e and blithely lambast a war corespondent for using the term militant instead of terrorist during a live interview, often conducted in a battle zone. Scott ignored the snide comments and insults, lauding the professional judgment of his reporters and explaining how 65 radio stations running live around the clock will produce an array of content, not all of it necessarily adhering to a bureaucratic formula.

Wait for the futile nitpicking to increase as Labor and the minor parties mirror the Liberals' tactic of bombarding the ABC, in particular, with complaints...No good can come of this, and the obsessive, unreasonable antics of neo-Con and neo-Ron will eventually backfire on unreasonable critics of ABC and SBS.

Unless I'm wrong, audiences and voters much prefer the flawed public broadcasters to pissant, pedantic politicians. And by the time Labor and those far left-wing leftists eventually win office, nuisances such as neo-Connie and neo-Ronnie will have written the rule book for egregious political interference.

Alternative Prime Minister?

Just when I thought that Kim Beazley was starting to look and sound like an alternative PM he has made a fool of himself again. No, not over his assertion that the IR issue was the main reason why the Labor government was returned in Queensland (even though Laurie Oakes in The Bulletin has taken him to task for this), but over his idea (demand?) that everyone coming to Australia should have to sign on to an unspecified list of "Australian values".

Not only does this have all the indicia of policy made up on the run (as his predecessor was apt to do) but, as Matt Price in The Australian put it so pithily:

Having criticised Howard for dog-whistling on Muslim-bashing all these years, some Labor MPs are worried Beazley is sticking two fingers underneath his tongue and blowing hard.


One of the worried MPs, judging from her comments on last night's ABC TV Lateline, would be Julia Gillard . Only the transcript of her interrogation by Tony Jones is available: a video would show how she just managed to maintain her poker face for the duration of a longish interview.

Come on, Kim : you need to do better than this.