Darkness at Noon

Opposition Communications Spokesman Nick Minchin has received legal advice to say that an ISP-level Internet filtering plan would require legislation (how else would you enforce it?).

The good thing about that is that the Opposition oppose the plan, the Greens oppose the plan and Nick Xenophon:

previously indicated he may support a filter that blocks online gambling websites but in a phone interview today he withdrew all support, saying “the more evidence that’s come out, the more questions there are on this”

Fingers crossed.

There was a time, not so long ago, when I’d see big layoffs and my inner Keating would say “the reality is that jobs like textiles and clothing, as well as many other manufacturing jobs should be offshored”.

The logic been that in a global economy each country must utilise it’s “competitive advantage”. In Australia that means utilising our high eduction standards with high tech / bio tech jobs and in Indonesia/China that means manufacturing as their competitive advantage is cheap labour.

At this point I must make it very clear that I am appauled by the wages and conditions experienced by manufacturing (and other) workers in majority world countries. However, if workers in these countries were paid a reasonable living wage (which they aren’t at the moment) they would still have lower labour costs providing an incentive to manufacture in those countries. Wages in Australia are high. This is a good thing but it means that we can’t take advantage of the manufacturing industry.

I’d also like to point out that loosing your job is a horrible thing. There are issues of financial stability, not to mention pride. Jobs are extraordinarily important and I’m always deeply saddened when jobs are lost.

But all this is beside the point. I don’t think the reality of “competitive advantage” when it comes to hi tech jobs exists anymore. Moreover, you can’t run a country where the only jobs available are in the biotech industry. Call centre jobs are going offshore, as are IT jobs – both of which you would have once thought would never leave. As the education standards in countries like India and China continue to improve the opportunities to exploit a highly trained, yet quite cheap workforce becomes apparent.

I’m rethinking my position. I’m not big on Nation States but I do think we need to regionalise more particularly in the face of climate change. We can’t be shipping things across the globe as much and we need non-service industry jobs that you don’t need a university education to do.

Do we go back to an era of protectionism? That’s not the answer either and it generally harms the majority world. When European farm goods are heavily subsidised their cost becomes lower than primary products produced in the majority world who then import these goods from Europe.

Similarly less trade protections means more jobs going off sure.

It’s difficult and we will need to be a lot more strategic.

I don’t know where the workers at Pacific Brands are going to find a new job. For most it is too late to retrain and they (understandably) don’t want to work at Coles.

I’ve been meaning to blog on the Pirate Bay Trial for a few days now… still not sure what I want to say about it though.

Firstly, I think it’s pretty exciting to note that I found out that the trial was finally happening via Twitter, when Pontus Madsen of Little Gamers fame twitted about it. I’m pretty well in love with twitter at the moment (you can follow me at http://twitter.com/goonanism). In fact I’m twitting about a lot of things I would have once blogged about.

I’m also now following Peter S Kolmisoppi and anakata from The Pirate Bay on Twitter. Aint life grand.

But I digress.

I like the Pirate Bay. I think copyright, at least in its current form, is hugely problematic. TPB is great because they open up some space for discussion around these issues outside the narrow confines of ‘you’re stealing’. Too often the debate is rather narrowly defined. I also like that they are prepared to put themselves out there and test the legality of the charges against them. Most people just accept their take down notices.

On the second day of the trial (which is due to finish March 4) half the charges were dropped but the serious charges of assisting copyright infringement continue.

I’ve no idea if they will win as I have no idea about Swedish law.

Anyway, I’ll be watching with great interest.

…and so the scheme expands already. Today’s Crikey reports:

The BSA currently prohibits both Refused Classification material and X 18+ material, meaning content depicting actual sex is treated in a manner similar to criminal content such as child pornography. The BSA also bans R 18+ material (including simulated sex) if there is no age-based restriction. This clumsy regime means material that is available in your average newsagent, let alone the local adult shop, is banned online and will technically be blocked under the ALP censorship trial. The Australian Communications and Media Authority maintains a secret blacklist which it describes as “the worst of the worst” in terms of child pornography and other criminal material. It is this list that will be used in the trial, although it will extended beyond that to other filtering techniques such as key-word-based blocking. Given that the current regime also prohibits much of the petabytes of porn freely available on the internet, the idea of effectively filtering via a list is nonsensical.

The ban also perpetuates the Ruddock-era ban on alleged terrorist books imposed by the Howard Government as part of its national security-based attack on civil liberties. Academics using the internet to research terrorism-related materials may be blocked if filtering is imposed.

Key-word-based blocking is never a good idea.

So I’ve been slowly working my way though the Electoral Reform Green Paper – Donations, Funding and Expenditure. Talk about some dry reading. It really is difficult to read more than about 10 pages at a time without falling asleep.

However the only time I actually woke up a little was when I was reading the section on Canada’s electoral system:

Canada has the strictest regulation of the selected countries and is based on an approach of encouraging small donations from a large number of donors. The scheme aims to limit funding going into political parties and also caps expenditure by political parties. It is also the only one of the selected countries that provides public funding on a quarterly basis in addition to public funding for elections on the basis of reimbursement of political parties and candidates subject to proof of their expenditure. In 2007‑08, Elections Canada provided approximately C$28.2 million in public funding in this way.

Bans apply to donations from corporations, unions, associations and groups. Caps apply to donations to, and expenditure by, political parties and candidates. Specifically, donors are allowed to give up to C$1,100 in a calendar year to political parties and candidates, while expenditure limits are set according to the number of voters in each electorate. At the 2006 Canadian election, the expenditure limit averaged C$81,159 across electorates. Donors cannot make cash donations above C$20 and must obtain receipts for donations above that amount.

Canada requires political parties and candidates to lodge annual returns detailing their receipts within four months of an election. The returns are made public within a year of the election.

The outcome of the Canadian approach – which can be described as imposing systemic caps on the overall political finance system – is that the amount of money flowing into, as well as being spent by, political parties in Canada has been significantly reduced.

Now that’s a system to aspire to.

It’s important to remember that the regulations of a system will shape it. What I like about this system is that it reduces overall political expenditure and forces political parties to engage with their grass roots more.

I was curious, and it turns out this is one of the things they are up to: BastardWatch

From the website:

This site is an initiative by the Australian Democrats to hold the parties of government accountable to you. The site is by the people for the people. You are our eyes and ears. With your help we will ’speak truth to power’. We’ll keep the powerful on their toes 24/7 and expose their acts of political dishonesty on bastardwatch.com.au

The Australian Democrats have a proud record of campaigning on issues other parties ignore and of making a difference.

They’ve also got a website: http://www.newdemocrats.org.au/

One thing that grabs my attention every year when it comes to reporting on Political Donations, is the attention paid to the donations made by unions to the ALP.

All political donations should be banned, elections should be publicly funded and there should be caps on the amount that can be spent on an election. But if we are to have donations to political parties, I’m far less concerned about donations made by Unions than I am by donations made by business.

Unions are democratically run membership-based organisations. They have a democratic mandate. People are members of Unions because they represent the professional and industrial interests of their members. Business, represent the economic interests of a select few and do not have a democratic mandate.

The ALP war-chest should have been beefed up by the Your Rights at Work campaign. It was a representation of the genuine belief of a huge number of Australians that Workchoices went too far. It is the job of Unions to represent the beliefs of their members, all 1.8 million of them. God forbid, the electorate might feel strongly on an issue and want to affect the political outcome.

The debate about donations needs to be balanced with an understanding that the general public need to be able to influence and shape the policies of the government of the day. It is when you can buy influence for a select few that democracy is eroded. Therefore contributions to political parties from businesses which represent the very narrow economic interests of a small handful of people need to be under much greater scrutiny from the public than those donations made by unions.

(Disclaimer: I work for an ALP-affiliated Union)

I’ve just done a quick media round up of who is talking about the recently disclosed donations. It’s only 24 hrs since they were released but I can’t imagine much more being written about it. Again, there is very little opinion on it. I used to do a press release every year but they were never picked up so I gave up.

Here’s what people are saying:

• Casino billionaire bankrolls Labor (The Age)
• Big property developers help line the pockets of ALP (The Age)
• Gunns donated to Libs after mill approval (The Australian)
• Donation disclosures reveal ALP’s Chinese business community links (ABC Online)
• ALP cash blitzes Palmer’s donation (Goldcoast.com.au)
• Fury over Greens gift (The Mercury)
• ACT Labor hits $1.2 million jackpot (Canberra Times)
• Ethanol firm gave $300,000 to Labor (Canberra Times)
• Big property developers help line the pockets of ALP (WA Today)
• Surge in donations couldn’t buy a win for Howard (Crikey.com.au)

I’ll be updating the Lobbyocracy Wiki with this info over the next day or so – feel free to chip in!

(from Vimeo via Somebody Think of the Children.

Mark Newton, Jim Wallace, and Clowns (not Jim Wallace, actual Clowns) from Geordie Guy on Vimeo.

I’ve put up some of the donations for the National branch of the major parties (Greens, ALP, Liberals, Nationals).

Here’s a list of a a few things I’ve noticed:

• The Liberals are still accepting Tobacco Money
• The disclosure threshold is STILL $10,500 and the period for disclosure is still FAR too long (with up to 20 months between donating and it becoming public)
• John Curtin House’s donations to the ALP were really high this year – presumably due to the federal election. What is more concerning though is that JCH is just a front for the ALP and where the money JCH raised come from is still unclear. It is safe to assume that there are some big donations disguised here.
• eBay made large donations to both the ALP and the Liberals
• Once again, Gunns aren’t shy with the donations to the Libs.
• Tenix, the Defence contractor which signed up Peter Reith straight after he left Parliament have donated to the Libs again
• Goldman Sachs JB Were donated to both major parties. They were one of the global coordinators for the T3 float, assisting the Howard federal government in gaining a windfall of over the $15.5 billion from the T3 Telstra share sale which will earn Goldman Sachs JB Were over $100 million once the sale is complete.
• Manildra Group of Companies were big donors again. They are a prominent Ethanol producer. Am I right in recalling something about Rudd forcing all petrol to be 10% ethanol soon? Could be making that one up.
• Defence Contractors Kellogg Brown and Rootinvolved in both Iraq and Afganistan donated to both parties.

Please drop in a lobbyocracy.org and have a look around yourself. Feel free to join a few dots.