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Do I own it, or what?

By: Tateru Nino

Dear Australian judiciary,

If I were to buy a cement mixer, I could turn it into an artwork. I could modify it to act as a washing machine, if I wanted.

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The early vote

By: Tateru Nino

I’ve seen elections where the voters were bored or apathetic. I’ve seen them looking put-out and inconvenienced. Today was the first Australian election where I’ve seen the voters really looking keen.

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I grew up under a 14 year gerrymander, where less than 30% of the vote kept the ruling party in power. Where bulldozers moved out at 3AM to demolish National Heritage sites, so that the land could be sold “for the sum of one dollar” to political cronies. Where police would direct traffic around cranes that were hoisting gaming tables into illegal casinos in the middle of the city centre for all to see.

And yet, I have not been more ashamed of our political process than this current election campaign.

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A few weeks ago, I was walking the couple of kilometres from home to the mechanic to collect the car. On the way, I wound up walking for a short ways behind a couple of teenage high-school girls, maybe 13, if I’m any judge of these things. One was telling the other about how to trade pornography online without being tripped up by filtering software or school administrators checking network logs.

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Australia’s not-quite-fledgling National Broadband Network which focuses on fibre-to-the-home isn’t actually the first network of its kind in Australia.

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Nick Ross at ABC’s “The Drum” has this to say on the Australian Mandatory Internet Filter:

“Championed by Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, the $30million+ filter is being sold by Labor as an internet block for child pornography, bestiality and extreme pornography with ‘wide ranging support from the Australian public’ and ‘only minimal opposition against’.

But after a new, lengthy investigation it transpires that virtually none of this is true.”

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A media eclipse

By: Tateru Nino

As you might or might not be aware Australia has a new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, as we come up to the next general election.

Under the Westminster System, you don’t really vote for a government, per se. You vote for representatives, and then the representatives pick and choose who gets to be the government.

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Senator Stephen Conroy, speaking at the launch of National Cyber Security Awareness Day, made a truly woeful slip.

I must hasten to remind you that Conroy is the Australian Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. Why? Because his fumbling prose about the Web is essentially the equivalent of calling a modern military assault rifle “a thunderstick”.

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You might think that  the departure of long-serving South Australian Attorney General, Michael Atkinson, would pave a clear path for establishing the long-sought R-rating for games in Australia, right?

Well, it might not exactly be as simple as all that.

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