

Australian political activist targeted by opposition party's lawyers - obtino
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BTYfzipCMAAKOu3.jpg:large

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throwaway_yy2Di
_" My ISP contacted me on Wednesday afternoon to let me know that the federal
opposition party's lawyers were demanding my personal details. Despite this
being a personal project not paid for or endorsed by anyone, I gave them
permission to hand over my name, address, and phone number so that the site
could stay up."_

Is political speech regulated in Australia? If you have an influential website
like this, are you required to register publicly to prove compliance with,
e.g. campaign spending limits?

I read there's a blackout on political ads, but it doesn't apply to web ads:

[http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/09/04/no-media-
black...](http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2013/09/04/no-media-blackout-web)

~~~
jacques_chester
You _are_ required to give the name and location of the person authorising
political comment.

The blogs I host, for example, place authorisation on their lead authors.

eg: [http://larvatusprodeo.net/about-larvatus-prodeo/electoral-
co...](http://larvatusprodeo.net/about-larvatus-prodeo/electoral-comment/)

------
joshthewanderer
Direct link to the site:
[http://dontbeafuckingidiot.com/](http://dontbeafuckingidiot.com/) Link to the
statement that's a bit clearer:
[http://dontbeafuckingidiot.com/MediaStatement.pdf](http://dontbeafuckingidiot.com/MediaStatement.pdf)

------
40
Seeing lots of people I know posting this on Facebook made me very
uncomfortable. It feels the far-left and far-right crazies (we all know the
type) breaking into the mainstream.

It's desperate, disrespectful and just plain inaccurate.

The problem with something like this spreading on social media is its only
going to polarize our country taking us further towards the toxic political
environment of the US.

Let's take a look at some of the claims:

* Gay Marriage

“GAY MARRIAGE WITH LOVE & RAINBOWS AND SHIT vs. ARCHAIC DISCRIMINATORY
FUCKWITAGE Tony Abbott is a bigot. Fuck him and his hateful, backwards,
repressed nasty fuckery. If two people are in love who the fuck are you to
tell them it's not 'valid'. Fuck you.”

Gay marriage was defined as between a man and a woman with bipartisan support
in 2004.1 Both party platforms opposed gay marriage until this year 2011, when
the ALP said they would allow a conscience vote. Our old prime minister Julia
Gillard, an athiest, from the ALP party personally opposed gay marriage. Kevin
Rudd, current prime-minster only changed his position in support of gay
marriage in May 2013. Tony Abbott has a lesbian sister, his daughters support
gay marriage and his wife is open to the idea.2 So the fact is the ALP is not
for gay marriage. They are only for a conscience vote and only very recently.
The LNP conducts conscience votes inside their caucus and choose their
position as a party as a whole.

Gay marriage is a nuanced issue in every country. It is not black and white.
Most Australians are religious 3 and if that is what you have been brought up
to believe its going to take time to work through it. If this is bigoted to
you, have some balls and go call every religious person a bigot, don't single
out one Australian.

If someone supports a civil union bill which provides equal rights to hetero
and homo but is sensitive to the use of the term 'marriage' for some strange
religious reason, are they the same as someone who believes being gay is a
lifestyle choice. If this is still bigoted, go label that group as bigots -
just watch out because they might be a decent person voting for your party
because of another issue.

It's better to bring people with you on this issue than to call them bigots.

* Climate Change

“SAVING THE FUCKING PLANET vs. TOTALLY FUCKING THE PLANET Abbott fucked
Turnbull on the basis of climate change being "crap”, he's a climate-denying,
self-serving, short-sighted, right wing tool and he will actively fuck up your
children's future. Do you want to look back in 20 years time and remember that
you voted for the guy that was against saving the planet? You'd be like one of
those dipshits that opposed women voting.“

In Oct 2009 Abbott said "the argument is absolute crap… However, the politics
of this are tough for us. 80% of people believe climate change is a real and
present danger”, then in Dec 2009 said he had used “a bit of hyperbole” at
that meeting rather than it being his “considered position”.

In Nov 2009 Abbott said “we should take reasonable precautions against
credible threats”.

The issue is how proportionate should our response to climate change be - and
this has always been Abbott's point. There are opinions throughout the
spectrum on this issue, it is certainly not black and white. What kind of
increase in cost of living are people acceptable with, how much debt should we
incur to invest in new enviro-friendly energy sources, what spending wil we
forgoe because of the drop in revenue from reducing our use in coal, how less
internationally competitive are we willing to be as a result of exporting to
countries without a price on carbon.

Most importantly, how much do we want to economically handicap ourselves
before the US, China and Russia act.

ALP is now for an ETS. LNP is for direct investment in renewable technologies
whilst we wait for the rest of the world to act. It is a reasonable debate to
be had.

* Economy

PRETTY FUCKING GOOD ECONOMIC MANAGEMENT vs. IGNORANT ARSE-BACKWARDS ECONOMIC
POLICY THAT WILL FUCK US ALL FOR A LONG TIME Even the motherfucking right wing
Economist reckon's Labor's economic policy is a much better idea than
slashing, cutting, and burning our economy. Keynesian stimulus bitches, it
works.

There was plenty of waste with stimulus. The ALP's argument is that as long as
we didn't go into recession they did the right thing. The fact is our net debt
was 0% and will now peak at about 13%. Both parties are now in agreement that
we have to make cuts to spending to reduce our structural deficit. The LNP is
simply arguing that the ALP could have spent less. When people see unpopular
cuts to programs like the ALP cutting university funding to put into high
schools, it is right to ask the question: would we have to make this choice if
we used less stimulus money. There are arguments from credible professors that
the stimulus actually caused higher unemployment, given that our low
Australian dollar and strong demand for exports from China actually kept us
out of recession rather than the stimulus spending. 4 If the author feels its
so obvious, he might have been better to mention the complex counter arguments
and illustrate how obviously false they are rather than “Keynesian stimulus
bitches, it works.”. But that would probably require an understanding of
economics, some careful thought and research, and wouldn't fit in with his
diatribe. Despite your entitled moaning about cost of living pressures (while
you sip imported beers looking at wall-sized plasmas in your McMansions) shit
is pretty good. You vote for Abbott and you'll find out pretty fucking quickly
what austerity results in and feels like.

LNP is not doing austerity. This is just a scare tactic from the ALP. All LNP
costings are out today, no-one would consider it austerity and its simply
spending 6bn less than ALP which is not much at all. Macro-economics is not a
household budget and our debt levels are fucking negligible. Seriously, wake
the fuck up and stop being a credulous cock.“

Debt will peak at 13% and is unlikely to be paid off in our life times. The
number of consecutive surpluses we would need is huge. Considering at each
election each party wants to promise bigger and better than the other party,
to have a government with the fiscal discipline to actually reduce our debt
faster than we grow it is unlikely to happen. They just wouldn't be popular
enough. A bit of debt is fine, but you only get to run it up once. The LNP has
been attacking the ALP because they fervently promised surpluses by this
2012-13, but instead produced a $30bn deficit. Both parties agree that debt is
an issue and a return to surplus soon is neccessary. The LNP has slightly more
cuts than the ALP. Again the author is not on steady enough ground to make
claims with such hyperbole.

* Ramblings

Also, despite all of Labor's faults and instability, they do actually give a
shit about people and communities and, usually at least, create policy that's
informed by evidence instead of ideology.

You can read this as the LNP doesn't give a shit about people and communities.
It's just not neccessary. It sounds so desperate. I could list plenty of pros
and cons for each party but its just not worth it.

So you could just take it as a joke, but the way he finishes it makes it sound
like he believes everything he has written, and then appeals for you to vote
for the ALP. It doesn't come across as satire, or comedy.

The comedy is in the way he captures what would be written by a biased
obnoxious bleeding-heart Labor party voter after everything the party has been
through. I don't think he realized this though :P

Normally you could ignore something like this or but seeing how popular its
got is alarming. Yes, free speech and all that, but I would prefer this to be
removed from Facebook, and something equally popular and vulgar from the LNP
be removed if it came about.

------
Jgrubb
I'm totally ignorant of Australian politics (can you believe it?? An American
who doesn't know the major parties involved in a foreign election??), but this
sounds basically like a comparison between the Republican and Democrat parties
here. The joke here is that it's all lip service and they both do and act
almost the exact same way once elected. Is that the case elsewhere?

~~~
shirro
Not really. Both major parties in Australia still stand for something. They
share a lot of common ground on many issues which does make some people feel
there is a lack of choice but often these are issues where there is some
option which is clearly more pragmatic or reasonable to both. Neither are
going to stray far from the US alliance for instance.

The Liberals were sometimes more progressive in the past but now are more
firmly a conservative party and have conservative economic and social policies
within the context of the Australian system where people would be sensitive to
dismantling public health care or education beyond certain limits.

The ALP fundamentally exists to give a fair go to working Australians. In the
past that might have been through socialism but these days it more through an
efficient market economy (they were responsible for several big macroeconomic
reforms) while still ensuring protection for employees and safety nets for
health and education.

Economies and governments have reasonable optimum settings and experts like
economists to advise and both parties will benefit their constituencies
through wealth creation. The ALP perhaps would share a bit of the wealth down
and the Libs would direct it more up. Either are prepared to tax and spend on
their own constituency to buy votes up to a point. The point being that we are
still a AAA rated economy with much lower public debt to GDP than many others.

Like the US, Australia goes through election cycles and parties fortunes
change. The conservatives are due for government and have the benefit of
overwhelming media support (Murdoch owns nearly all the press) and lack of
discipline within the ALP. The thing that strikes me about the Libs is that
their policies seem very underdone. They haven't costed them. They seem poorly
reviewed. There is stuff like the Internet filter backflip. I wonder if by
Abbott trying to channel GWB style anti-intellectualism to gain popular votes
he hasn't done his party a bit of a disservice in other areas. Time will tell.

------
famo
Wow, those statements on dontbeafuckingidiot.com almost reach Charlie Brooker
levels of awesome.

------
jacques_chester
I used to be in student politics. There is always an overzealous dipshit who
zooms off to play the hard man who makes you look like ... well ... a pack of
pricks.

More. _More_ like a pack of pricks.

However, intimidation is a serious charge. The site owner should contact the
police. The police would be within their powers to obtain telco phone logs to
see who made the relevant call.

------
devx
I wonder if that Internet filter they've just added to their platform policy
will be used to censor websites like that. My guess? _Definitely_.

It may be why they even decided at the last minute to introduce that, to stop
this sort of activism from happening at future elections.

~~~
nwh
They've withdrawn that, claiming it was "poorly worded". It's apparently an
opt-in filter now.

[http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-05/no-internet-filter-
say...](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2013-09-05/no-internet-filter-says-
turnbull/4939156)

Though in reality we still have the AMCA filter, which has been used badly in
the past.

~~~
lessnonymous
I love that both Turnbull (who will be the internet minister) and Abbott (who
will be prime minister) are both back pedalling saying they didn't have time
to read it properly.

IT'S THEIR FUCKING POLICY.

[https://twitter.com/TurnbullMalcolm/status/37555537509050777...](https://twitter.com/TurnbullMalcolm/status/375555375090507776)

~~~
femto
Isn't that the idea of releasing policy so close to the election: not giving
people time to read it properly?

~~~
toyg
No, it's just about having something you can point to when a pesky journalist
is making too many questions: "oh, it's all in the manifesto|whitepaper,
please look it up". Those docs are written by unpaid interns and forgotten a
minute after ballot boxes close.

