The Blacktown Greens have announced that they are opposed to the Government’s internet filtering plan after concerns from local youth that the Greens weren’t committed either way.
NSW Greens MLC and lead NSW Senate candidate for the upcoming Federal Election spoke at a recent protest against the plan.
“The internet is an exciting vehicle which enables children to explore the world and accrue knowledge. The best seatbelt a parent can provide for their children’s internet journey is to closely supervise and educate their kids about its risks,”
Ms Rhiannon said.
“The government’s proposal to filter the internet will provide parents with a false sense of security and erode free speech.
“A filter is not the answer for concerned families. It’s been shown to be ineffective and fraught with technical difficulties. And it will do little to prevent the dissemination of child pornography, which is mostly done via file sharing not on websites.
“The best gift we can hand children is the knowledge and power to help manage the way they negotiate the net, now and into the future.
“Australian children don’t want to grow up in a world where their government controls an internet ‘blacklist.’ Handing Big Brother the power to determine what sites we can access is the thin edge of the wedge.
“My federal Greens colleagues will oppose the filter legislation when it comes before Senate,”
Ms Rhiannon said.
Greens Senator and spokesperson for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy Scott Ludlam has also spoken out against the filter and supported the “Great Australian Internet Blackout Against Censorship”
I am proud to be part of this week-long national action – The Great Australian Internet Blackout. The government’s plan will not protect children, will do nothing to crack down on criminal activity online, and sets a dangerous precedent of centralised net censorship. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy should start paying attention to the almost universal condemnation of this scheme and pursue alternatives rather than pushing ahead with the mandatory filter
A couple of Federal elections ago the Liberal party with the connivance of the yellow News Ltd rags created a smear campaign against The Greens which suggested that the Greens were soft on illegal drugs.
In the current Tasmanian state election, the ALP has taken a leaf out of the Liberal’s book. Crikey reports
Tasmanian Labor is on the ropes.
They’ve resorted to the politics of the lowest common denominator: fear. And it has backfired on them.
When Labor loses government on Saturday, which looks inevitable, it might look to a nine-year-old girl from the north-west coast to begin to understand why.
The Labor Party caused Alice Bellamy’s phone to ring at her home in Spreyton. When she answered, an ALP robocall, an automated message, told her that a vote for the Greens would be a vote to legalise heroin in Tasmania. Alice had to ask her mum what heroin was.
That single event, lasting less than a minute, reported on the front page of the Advocate newspaper on Wednesday, represents the nadir of Tasmanian Labor’s appalling campaign for Saturday’s poll.
Labor backed it up with its robocalls warning that the Greens would not only decriminalise heroin but what would give long-serving prisoners at Risdon Prison the vote. Think Port Arthur mass murderer Martin Bryant.
If a journalist had written such a libellous summary, they would have transgressed Tasmania’s electoral laws, yet those laws do nothing to stop this garbage being broadcast over the phone lines, with no identification, no authorisation. In the US, where robocalls are commonplace, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act requires all telephone calls using pre-recorded messages to identify who is initiating the calls and to include a telephone number or address where the initiator can be reached.
The Tasmanian party was besieged by complaints from members, candidates, present and past ministers, aghast that anybody could have regarded this as clever, let alone productive. Premier David Bartlett claimed he knew nothing about it in advance. If that is true, it is an indictment on the way he has allowed the campaign to be managed. He is the bunny who has to wear it.
Tasmanian was a Labor state. That status has been destroyed by the actions of recent governments, by their too cosy relationships with companies such as Gunns and Federal Hotels, their blindfolded attitude to due process, by their failure to adapt to a smarter constituency, and by their ineptitude in this campaign.
Read the full article at Crikey.
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A POPULAR bus service controversially axed last year will be back on board from March 1.
Community pressure has forced Transport Minister David Campbell to reinstate the 755 service between Mt Druitt and Shalvey.
And, there could be more good news for isolated Gasmata Crescent residents at Whalan if safety concerns are resolved this week they will get access to a re-diverted 674 service.
The reversed decision comes three weeks after Mr Campbell met community campaigners.
The 755 will run along its old route but every second trip will be extended to Plumpton Marketplace between 9am and 5pm, Monday to Saturday.
The 755 service will run weekdays between 5am and 10pm, with a half-hourly service between 6am and 8am and hourly during other times.
It will run between 6am and 8pm on Saturdays with a half-hourly service between 9am and 5pm and hourly between 9am and 5pm on Sundays.
The Save Our Bus Service lobby group formed late last year to fight for the 755 service and improved services to Gasmata Crescent.
State MPs Allan Shearan and Richard Amery paid tribute to the residents’ persistence.
Group spokeswoman Debbie Robertson was over the moon about last week’s news.
The extended services to Plumpton were an unexpected surprise but she believed that next year’s state election may have something to do with it.
“It’s proof that people power prevails when the community sticks together,” she said.
“Just because there’s change doesn’t mean you have to accept it, especially when it impacts on so many people’s lives.”
Mrs Robertson also welcomed recommendations mentioned in last week’s Star from a recent independent inquiry into the public transport system.
“It’s about time this is what we’ve been saying all along.”
(By Kylie Stevens – St Marys-Mt Druitt Star)
