Did you know the Australian Government is proposing an internet censorship scheme that goes further than any other democracy in the world?

I've just signed a petition to prevent the scheme that will make the internet up to 87% slower, more expensive, accidentally block up to one in 12 legitimate sites, will miss the vast majority of inappropriate content and is very easily sidestepped. The government of the day may add any 'unwanted' site to a secret blacklist under the scheme.

Our Government should be doing all in its power to take Australia into the 21st century economy, and to protect our children. This proposed internet censorship does neither. Will you join me and take action on the net today to save the net?

Well, it looks like the Liberal Party (the Australian Liberal Party is the most poorly named political party in the world, I think, as they are the opposite of liberal) has lost the federal election. And it seems that John Howard may well have lost his own home seat, the one he's held since 1974, so that even if the Liberal party did win the election, he still wouldn't be a member of Parliament at all, and therefore wouldn't be Prime Minister (apparently, the only Australian Prime Minister to lose his seat at an election was Stanley Bruce, who lost his seat of Flinders when his government/party was voted out in 1929).

I must say, I'm pleased. I'm not the biggest fan of Kevin Rudd or the Labor Party, especially, but I despise John Howard and I have for some time. The joke was that John Howard was so far up George W. Bush's backside he can see Tony Blair's feet. Then, not long after Tony Blair retired, we saw a story on the news about Bush going to get a colonoscopy, and Andrew and I both immediately thought, "Well, they need to get Tony Blair out of there now that he's retired." Now, I guess Bush is going to have to get another, to get John Howard out of there....

It's the card that requires a prime minister to frighten whatever wavering voters still exist back into his tent by warning them that they'll — wait for it — change the country if they change the government.

Federal Health Minister Tony Abbott says workers who are unhappy with their employment should just look for a new job.
[...]
Mr Abbott said the best option for aggrieved workers was to find alternative employment.
 
"That is the best protection. Not going off to some judge, or industrial commission, that might order your employer, who you don't like, and he doesn't like you, to keep you in an unhappy partnership forever," he said on the video.
 
Mr Abbott also said the Industrial Relations Commission has had its powers stunted by the legislation.
 
"I accept that certain protections, in inverted commas, are not what they were, I accept that that has largely gone. I accept that," he said.

This song was written and performed by a collective of musicians, activists and concerned citizens from throughout Australia who have been deeply disheartened by the actions of the Howard Government over the last eleven years. It was not endorsed or paid for by any political party.

Non-Australians won't get the direct references, but suffice it to say that this has been a strange election, with a lot of apparent "oh, yes, well that's our policy, too!" going on. Me-tooism, it's being called...

There was a debate between the current Prime Minister, Mr Howard, and the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Rudd. During the broadcast, they were using a "real time worm" device to show the viewers' approval. There was a huge controversy about the worm, from using it at all to asking who the viewers chosen were to viewers wondering why it appeared to react negatively or positively before the debaters would even start to speak...

Here's Dr Worm in action:

Note to non-Australians: This is a parody of a series of commercials that have been running in Australia for some time now, about violence against women. The Australian Liberal Party is the opposite of "liberal". Last year or so, Mr Howard introduced legislation that was supposed to be "workplace reform" but which led to a tremendous amount of unrest and, according to many reports, people losing their jobs or being very unfairly treated. When Mr Howard sent troops into Iraq, 90%+ of Australians were against it. Mr Howard has gotten caught time and time again in half-truths and outright lies, and has a whole string of broken promises behind him. Mr Howard has steadfastly refused to apologise for... well, anything. He pretty much wouldn't apologise if he shot God in the foot. (No, I don't like Mr Howard; according to current polls, a majority of Australians feel the same way.)

John Howard's cabinet has a new modus operandi. Regular business is dealt with briefly, sometimes between just the Prime Minister and the relevant minister. The rest of the time is spent on political discussion.

(Note: I don't like John Howard. I've never liked John Howard. He has some stuff he does well, but overall, I think he's a bigoted, self-justified, Baby Boomer who wouldn't apologise if he shot God in the foot. I'm gratified to see that the Australian public is finally becoming as disenchanted with him as I've been for so long.)

There's been a lot of talk with the current government (that's John Howard & Co., don't get me started) of making new immigrants take an "Australian Values" test. Now, I can see requiring, say, a requirement for minimal English competence (necessary in many workplaces, for example), but other than that...

Well, there has been a lot of counter-talk as to what, precisely, these "Australian Values" might actually be. This is an extremely diverse and multi-cultural society. What "values" are these that we're going to test potential new citizens on?

Values Australia attempts to answer that question in classic Australian style: by taking the piss.

Prime Minister John Howard has refused to back down from his attack on US presidential hopeful Barack Obama, vowing to do the same again if it's in the nation's best interests.

You can read the article yourself (probably you should), but in a nutshell, Mr Howard decided to say nasty things about a potential candidate for the U.S. Presidency.

That he won't back down doesn't surprise me. John Howard never, never, ever, ever, EVER backs down on ANYTHING and he never, ever, ever apologises, NO MATTER WHAT. To quote a very funny British comedy, "He wouldn't apologise if he shot God in the foot."

Totally apart from John Howard being immovably stubborn to the point of cutting off other people's noses to spite their faces, I'm wonder what the hell he's doing.

Since when it is the place of the Prime Minister of Australia to make comments on the elections of other nations? I mean, we know John is best mates with George W. Bush, so maybe George put him up to it (hey, you never know; George might have made it into some sort of dare and told John that Tony Blair would be his best-best friend if John didn't do it, and John was so scared that George would stop being his bestest mate that he did it).

Basically, Howard has made it crystal clear that his alliance is not with the United States as he's always claimed, it's with George W. Bush. What's going to happen if someone John Howard doesn't personally approve of gets into office? All bets are off on alliances and trade deals?

I dunno, it just really kinda pisses me off. I've never liked John Howard, never voted for him, intend to vote against him in the next election, etc., but he seems to have gone right off the rails on this one. It'll be interesting to see what other forays into American politics he feels the right to make.

NOT that I think Americans give a flying farthingale what John Howard thinks. Most of them don't even have a clue who John Howard even IS...

From the article: "Dr Michael McKinley, an international relations expert from the Australian National University, described the Prime Minister's comments as stupid [...]"

Yeah. I think I'd pretty much agree with that. And it seems that most people on both sides of the Pacific do, as well.

Today I fulfilled my civic duty and went and voted. It was a state election. Looks like our local member (Heather McTaggart) is out of office now, and the premier (Steve Bracks) was re-elected.

Not really all that exciting, from a voter's point of view. I wasn't that vested in the election, particularly, didn't care much about Heather one way or the other, not a fan of Steve Bracks but have seen and can imagine worse, so, eh, politics as usual. It does please me to be voting in Australian elections, though. Reminds me that I'm a fair dinkum Aussie.

On a side note, Andrew, his father, one of his brothers, and that brother's wife were all working the election as election officials. My father-in-law has been doing it for a while and is well-trained and can do managerial type things, and this was Greg and Robyn's second year, but it was the first year Andrew did it. The pay's not bad for a (long) day's work, and I think Andrew kinda had fun at it. I expect him to do it again next time around, as a matter of fact.

Voting is, in fact, mandatory, although they can't control what you write on the ballot papers, obviously (so, really, showing up to vote is mandatory). Apparently, a few people drew some attractive doodles (and didn't tick any of the boxes) and a few told the election officials off in rude ways (one even wrote the letters in the boxes where you're supposed to number your choices).

So, well, everyone here did their civic duty today. Next time I vote, I think I might draw a smiley face somewhere on the ballot (once I make sure that it won't invalidate the thing).

"And I ask you this question. Does anyone here today seriously doubt that if the American President ticked off on Kyoto tomorrow, John Howard would do it on Thursday? In fact he’d probably use the same pen." - Kim Beazley, Leader of the Opposition

When I first came to Australia in 1999, I started to watch television, trying to absorb the culture and current events. I noticed pretty quickly that there was this tall, somewhat stout man who kept appearing on television all the bloody time, giving opinions on bloody everything. We're talking sound bite city here. I found it rather annoying, actually.

Finally I asked Andrew, "Who the hell is Kim Beazley, and why is he always on the news?"

Turns out he was the Leader of the Opposition which was then (as now) the Labour Party.

Anyway, he eventually lost the leadership and they got in Simon Crean, a man more bland than boiled cabbage and more boring than John Howard (our illustrious Prime Minister), and that's saying quite a lot.

Then he was out and the upstart, smart-mouthed Mark Latham managed to get the leadership of the Labour Party. Mark had a very colorful way with words, and once referred to the opposition's front bench as "a conga line of suckholes" and called John Howard an "arse licker". I have to say I didn't think all that much of him as a politician, but I liked the way he said stuff. Pretty entertaining.

Well, Mark has recently resigned, mostly due to health issues (he's got some sort of painful disease that flares up when he's too stressed, so, yeah, I think politics isn't a good career for him if he wants to stay out of the hospital).

And guess who's the new leader of the Labour Party? Kim Beazley.

A conga line of suckholes, indeed.

Well, the Liberal Party (why on earth they're called that, I have no idea, since they're not liberal nor are they particularly progressive) won yesterday's election, which means we've got John Howard as the Prime Minister for at least three more years.

I didn't vote for him. Andrew didn't vote for him. Actually, a lot of people didn't vote for him, but enough people did that he's back in office.

I must admit, I'm still trying to work out the intracacies of the Australian system, as it's mostly based on the Parlimentary system (with which I'm only slightly familiar), but with elements of the American system blended in here and there. (I just ask a lot of question about how things work, and eventually I'll figure it out; it's kind of like learning cricket, I guess, and no, I haven't got that quite worked out yet, either.)

Our extremely irritating local member (representative for the electorate) also got re-elected. This guy completely annoys me. I wouldn't have cared much about him one way or the other except that he sends out far too much paper spam, and I'm damned tired of seeing his doofy grin. I can't imagine how much money he spent to send out all those letters and flyers and fridge magnets and other junk he's sent us in the last year or so...

Anyway, election's over, mostly nothing has changed. Bleah.

A lobbyist on his way home from work in Canberra traffic comes to a dead halt in a long line of banked up traffic, and thinks to himself "Wow, this seems worse than usual."

He notices a cop walking between the lines of stopped cars, so he rolls down his window and asks, "Officer, what's the hold-up?"

The cop replies, "The Prime Minister is depressed with the way opinion polls are going, so he stopped his limo and is sitting in the middle of the road threatening to douse himself with petrol and set himself on fire. He says no one believes his stories about why we went to war in Iraq, or the connection between Saddam and al-Qaeda, or that his tax cuts will help anyone except his wealthy friends, or that he won't retire half way through his next term to let Peter Costello in. So we're taking up a collection for him."

The lobbyist asks, "How much have you got so far?"

The officer replies, "About 20 litres, but a lot of people are still siphoning."

John Howard has been extremely stubborn regarding the issue of asylum seekers in Australia. In order to "save face" after the international debacle that was "The Tampa Affair", the Howard government made arrangements with some other island nations to take the asylum seekers and house them -- at Australia's expense -- while Australia processed the asylum claims. This way, John Howard could maintain his hardline attitude about asylum seekers and the government couldn't be accused of violating various international treaties and basically just being heartless and stubborn (although you can still accuse them of that if you want; many people do).

Anyway, it seems that now:

The Australian Government has paid $4.3 million to keep open a camp on Manus Island that has held a single asylum seeker for the past six months.
 
The cost to the Australian taxpayer of keeping open the detention centre on the Papua New Guinea island, is running at $716,666 a month, according to figures supplied to the The Age by the Department of Immigration and Multicultural Affairs.
[...]
This puts the monthly bill to the Australian taxpayer for his upkeep at $216,666.
 
In contrast, it costs an average of $4800 a month to keep an asylum seeker in detention in Australia.

Well, well. The party that opposes the current Prime Minister has got a new leader, i.e., a new person who will run against the Prime Minister (it's taken me a while to figure out how this stuff works, and I'm still not entirely up to speed, but basically the parties choose their own leaders, and the leader is then the one who runs in an election, and they can kick someone out of the position of leader if they need to).

Anyway, I really, REALLY dislike John Howard for many, many reasons. I would have voted against him no matter who was running, but I'm actually quite amused by the bloke who has been made Leader of the Opposition.

It's Mark Latham, a guy not too much older than I am, from a very working class background. He's a guy who really, really speaks his mind. Not too long ago, he called the Prime Minister an arse licker, and when he was called on it, he said he was just using the language that the people in his district would use, and that he was their representative, so that's all. He also doesn't like John Howard (as if you couldn't guess that).

Well, when I heard the name Mark Latham I kept thinking, "Why do I know that name?" I couldn't place it. He's from Sydney, so it's not because he's a local guy. Finally it hit me, the "arse licker" comment, which I thought at the time was bloody hilarious (and rude, but it's how I feel about John Howard, too). When I finally put two and two together I was just howling with laughter.

I am SO going to vote for this guy. I mean, I would have voted for the strongest opposition anyway, that's how much I dislike John Howard, but I'm pretty damned amused that it's actually Mark Latham. Any politician who calls the Prime Minister an "arse licker" gets my vote. If nothing else, the guy speaks his mind (a refreshing quality in a politician).