Last month the Pirate Party Australia, along with hundreds of other organisations and individuals, made a submission to the Joint Parliamentary Committee’s Inquiry into potential reforms of National Security Legislation. I co-authored the Pirate Party Australia submission and wrote around half of it.

When the submissions were published there was ( Read more... )

I strongly encourage signing the petition to the Australian Senate from Pirate Party Australia regarding the Joint Parliamentary Committee on Intelligence and Security’s Inquiry into potential reforms of National Security Legislation. Sign this if you can’t make a submission to the inquiry, although I strongly urge all Australians to do so, or if ( Read more... )

Last week the complete unredacted diplomatic cables obtained by WikiLeaks last year were revealed to the world following a series of events involving WikiLeaks, the Guardian and possibly others. There has been much finger pointing regarding who is to ultimately blame for this, which is essentially pointless. The deed is done and the information ( Read more... )

Australian blogger Mike Stuchbery, a vocal critic of ACCESS Ministries‘ school chaplaincy program, has been gagged by the evangelical religious group.

On the 15th of June Mr. Stuchbery posted an article about a graphic novel, Man Hunters published by ACCESS Publishing International, a division of ACCESS Ministries. The original article included ( Read more... )

Six months ago Victoria went to the polls and elected a Liberal-National Coalition government, led by Ted Baillieu, with a (slim) majority in both houses of parliament. After more than a decade of Labor government, this was not entirely unexpected. Due to electoral reforms made by the previous Labor government, there will be another three and a ( Read more... )

Yesterday’s Patch Monday podcast from Stilgherrian dealt with the plan for Australia to sign the Council of Europe’s Convention on Cybercrime.

This treaty deals with a number of matters, some of which are just designed to address issue which are already illegal, such as child pornography and pædophilia, just with a technological slant. Some of it ( Read more... )

The Australian government is now on track to possibly branding the national plant (this acacia contains less than 0.02% alkaloids and it is currently unknown whether or not it is possible to derive psychoactive compounds from it), along with thousands of other native plants, illegal. This is apparently part of a move to create uniform anti-drug ( Read more... )

Ross Fitzgerald has an interesting piece in The Australian today on the current state of censorship in Australia; in particular regarding the four inquiries into the classification system. It is definitely worth reading.

Australia’s current laws governing censorship and classification are archaic and byzantine; more often reflecting the views of ( Read more... )