Rubénerd!

People have already discussed this issue to death already, but Gillard's comments have been festering in my brain like a... thing that festers.

Julia Gillard is Uncle Fester?

I'm going to take a controversial stance here. When Julia Gillard billed the proposed compulsory internet filter in Australia as a "moral issue", she was right. The problem is, despite numerous campaigns by organisations like the EFA, the misinformed still believe that this filter will not only be effective, but is necessary to maintain moral hygiene.

I've always asserted that the latter is irrelevant because the former simply isn't true. Even if it were this deeply important issue and we were all in favour of curbing our civil liberties, technologically it wouldn't be effective. Anyone who's used the internet for more than five minutes knows this.

Right right right... the right is the bight. Bird bird bird... the bird is the word.

Now Conroy claims they don't intend to filter P2P or channels other than the regular tubes. Right there, he's not only admitting the shortcomings of his policies and that ultimately its going to be useless, but he exposes it for what it is: a token effort to appease the religious right.

Its a morale issue too... it makes me depressed

It is a moral issue Ms Gillard, its about treating the Australian public like adults, not sacrificing their rights, and not putting the country at a further disadvantage to the rest of the world technologically.

Political history has taught us that sacrificing rights is easy, winning them back is like trying to make diamonds by putting quartz under your bed. I did this for many years, and all I ended up with were a couple of heavy shoeboxes.

I suppose nothing has changed since August after all. Which is a right royal bummer.

With the Australian federal elections less than a week away, I decided to plot on a handy table the positions of the leading two parties and their leaders that matter to me. This way I can make a more informed decision, and ultimately help others.

By my definition, plan is shorthand for comprehensive plan. This means they've made them public, debated them and have a clear direction backed up with these trifling things called "facts". If they do have a good plan but it contradicts something else they stand for, I reduce it to a nah.

Candidate for Prime Minister	Julia Gillard	Tony Abbott
Political party	Labor	The Coalition
Position (officially)	Centre left	Centre right
Position (probably)	Centre right	Far right
What to do	Nothing!	Go backwards!
Grown up immigration position	Nah	Nah
Plan for IT, communications	Nah	Nah
Plan for public transport	Nah	Nah
Plan for higher education	Nah	Nah
Plan for environment, energy	Nah	Science-what?
Supports equal marriage rights	Nah	Nah
Represent us well globally	Nah	Nah
No juvenile attack attacks	Nah	Nah
Returned any of my emails	Nah	Nah
Has double letters in name	Yup	Yup
Stepped over	Rudd	Turnbull
Would make a good laksa	Maybe?	What's Asia?

I'll be voting for the Greens, but I must be frank and admit it's mostly because the two biggest parties are such a joke now. I watched two of their debates. I've been watching the news. If I hear one more mention of so-called "boat people", I'll scream.

Ideally I'd like Labor to get back in, but with a much reduced mandate to govern. Let them know we're not happy with their performance, and we only kept them in because they scare us less than someone who'd like to set women's causes and progress back 50 years.

Then again that's just me. This whole mandatory internet filter talk made me come this close to voting for Liberal for the first time, no joke! Eh, I'm depressed, I'm off for a coffee. Wait, I'm already at a coffee shop. Time for another one then.

Decided to archive this news graphic here for posterity, might be funny to look back on in a few years. Was lifted from the ABC News website on the 25th, I'm assuming as a product of a publicly funded company I have permission to use it here, or barring that there's some fair use clause in there somewhere.

Sheesh, I feel as though I need to drop economics as my minor and take legal studies instead. Copyright is perhaps one of the few things more broken than DRM and my old sandals.

I predicted recently that having Julia Gillard as our new PM wasn't going to affect the party's plan for a mandatory internet filter, but that I wanted to be proven wrong.

zdnetaustralia: Conroy confims that the filter is still going ahead, despite a change of leader. http://bit.ly/dfEdou

First time I'm right about something, and it's not something I wanted. Sh*t.

A case of another leader who started with a lot of promise but failed to deliver like so many other politicians, so they were replaced. Which of course is the politically correct way to say said person didn't fulfill the desires of some faction. So who do we have now?

Late last night a cabinet reshuffle ousting thingy (they're valid political terms, look them up) former Aussie Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has been replaced with Julia Gillard. No, that's me in front of Parliament House, not Julia Gillard, sheesh get your glasses checked.

Position on internet filtering?

Because this is a tech blog (or at least it's supposed to be) I'm more interested to hear what happens to Mr If You Are Against The Mandatory Filter You're A Pedophile Senator Conroy's position. My very good friend and all around awesome guy talkingduck informs me that he could be replaced by Kate Lundly, patron senator of IT and open source. Sounds great, almost too great, so I'm hedging my bets that it won't happen. I hope I'm wrong.

What I'd love to see is a person put in charge who not only recognises the need for open standards, but a transparent bidding process for government IT contracts and who understands that a mandatory internet filter is a futile exercise that will hurt Australia's standing in the world. Oh and it'd be great if she took the NBN seriously, and if she pledged to make all government documents open and available in standard formats, or if not her then someone she puts in charge. We'll have to wait and see.

Positions on other whatnot?

As for other issues, Kevin Rudd talked the talk when it came to asylum seekers, emissions trading and the environment, but failed to follow up on any of them. Preliminary chatter on Twitter by my Aussie friends suggests she won't be changing much of the party's policies, bummer. Ah democracy, its such a productive exercise.

One bit of good news is she's an atheist, like me. I have no problem with people of any faith being the leaders of countries provided they don't let their influence their policy decisions, and Tony Abbott and Kevin Rudd unabashedly proved they couldn't in that recent embarrassing debate. If anything only addressing Christian voters was an insult to people of all other faiths and not just heathens like me.

Not sure when the Governor General will be swearing her in on behalf of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and all that. I suppose in these circumstances I can see where having a separate head of state and head of government is a good thing, sort of, kinda, maybe.

The Aussie government seems to be going ahead with their plans for their MySchool website that will publish school marks and rankings. In an interview on Lateline I just watched, Julia Gillard assured us all league tables would not be generated. Unfortunately, she's wrong.

I think what she meant to say was the Australian Government would not be generating league tables. As Alex and I discussed on Twitter, put enough statistics and information online and someone will come along and make a mashup of it. As soon as this MySchool site goes online, it won't be a question of if league tables are generated with the published data by third parties, but when.

I really wonder sometimes if politicians in governments such as Australia's have any idea of the implications of their policies. Sometimes their actions make me wonder!