Apropos of my post on GetUp!, Guy kindly drew my attention to a very interesting debate between Bryan Palmer and Cameron Riley at Ozpolitics.
Cameron wrote, in part:
The Committee on Electoral Matters will end up self-motivated to regulate the internet, no matter how impossible. Politicians – of all stripes – try to control the message, and this is best done through a centralised media. The internet is a great threat to the control of their careful narratives, stories and messages. So whether getup existed or not, I suspect the same outcome will occur, it just would have used the existing justification which was johnhowardlies.com.
At a Brisbane conference on engaging communities, fellow Brisbane blogger and academic Jo Jacobs had this to say, as part of her paper:
Governments have for so long pursued formal management processes to deal with community activism that the perceived relevance of engaging in such activism has waned over time. Similarly, government and private sector driven community engagement strategies – the colonization approach to collaboration and participation – are widely perceived as condescending and untrustworthy. There is, it seems, a marked preference among technology users that governments have a responsibility to ensure the choice of access and participation than to drive the process of participation.
The role of governments must therefore be facilitating, rather than mediating; contributing rather than broadcasting; provocative and responsive, rather than rhetorical.
I couldn’t agree more. Abetz and his goons should keep their hands off internet politics.
Note: Blogger and ANU Economist Andrew Leigh is also enjoying the beautiful Brisbane weather between conference sessions.
Elsewhere: Cameron has more on GetUp! at South Sea Republic.
My point on this got help up in moderation on the other topic, I think because of the title of my post and therefore url which I linked to containing a certain banned word. Probably very bad planning by me. Its fallen off the front page so Ill just link to MP’s post which links to it. Im in agreement with Bryan.
The point about johnhowardlies was that it was anonymous, and in the context of electoral law, political advocacy such as that (at an election) arguably required a nominated author of the material.
While this has not yet had a court determination to my knowledge, I think it is safe to predict that sites (and a slight chance perhaps–individuals) may not be able to continue anonymously, but implied rights of political communication under the constitution cannot be tampered with without a referendum. Any attempt to restrict blogging on political matters at election time, or any other time, should therefore most likely be struck down by the High Court of Australia, excepting perhaps the three day blackout period, if blogs could ever be classified as engaging in ”advertising.”
Such implied rights [per Lange v ABC (1997)] of protection are not absolute, do not confer personal rights, but we can note for example that the common law rules of defamation (state) must conform to the constitution. Any Cth legislation likewise.
I just want to say I used some of my best lines on the timbo discussion piece and reserve the right to use them again.
regulating the internet would have repercussions.
Ever seen a unity ticket of Tm Blair and Chris Sheil or John quiggin and Gary Gravett?
you would if they stick their fingers into this.
http://andrewbartlettonline.blogspot.com/2005/08/e
it is worth considering what the response of most politicians might be to a wave of electronic form letters. I know many MPs genuinely think of email ‘campaigns’ as basically equivalent to spam.