Darkness at Noon

The Victorian branch of the Australian Labor Party is a mess of factional branch stacking. This much is pretty well common knowledge. Not surprisingly then, Victoria – where the ALP has been in power for over 10 years – has one of the poorest levels of governmental transparency in Australia. For a state government to not have a lobbyist register in 2009 is criminal (or should be).

This is not to mention the ALP’s meddling in Local Council politics is actually criminal in some cases. One only needs to look at Brimbank City Council to understand just how bad things have become.

So not only is the ALP Government not making the whole of government more accountable, its internal workings are just as bad.

The ALP’s has lost connection to its rank-and-file membership base which is dwindling and has long since simply been ignored by the ALP executive and power brokers. The effects of tightening up party rules around memberships has simply meant that only a small handful understand the system well enough to stack it and they have become the major power brokers. Instead of getting back to basics, it has just concentrated power even further.

To combat this lack of transparency, the ALP are trialing US-style primaries to determine candidates for next year’s state election. The idea is to let Labor voters, rather than just Labor members, the opportunity to determine candidates. How this is going to prevent branch stacking is beyond me. Surely it just opens up an whole new pool of people whose votes can be manipulated.

If the ALP is serious about cleaning up this mess then they ought to firstly make the Victorian Government a lot more transparent and accountable. They must also reform the disclosure laws for local councils in an attempt to expose the current exploitation of this system.

Next it needs to genuinely attempt to reconnect with its base. That is going to be a long haul. I’m not sure what the role of Unions are in this but they are clearly central to both connecting to the base and branch stacking/power broking. What incentive does one have to be a member of the ALP at the moment? You have no influence over policy, not influence over the candidates that are selected and stuff all voting rights in the scheme of things especially when branch stacking is rife.

Running US style primaries just isn’t going to fix this.

(via WSJ Blog)

For details on the En Masse Campaign launch see http://democracyandjustice.org.au

To help Launch the Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice launch its latest campaign: En Masse, we are screening the exciting new documentary on remix culture: RiP: A remix manifesto.

In RiP: A remix manifesto, Web activist and filmmaker Brett Gaylor explores issues of copyright in the information age, mashing up the media landscape of the 20th century and shattering the wall between users and producers. The film features mash-up musician Girl Talk, Creative Commons founder Lawrence Lessig, Brazil’s Minister of Culture Gilberto Gil and pop culture critic Cory Doctorow.

Watch the trailer at: http://blip.tv/file/1329162

Download the flyer at: http://democracyandjustice.org.au/images/enmasseflyer.pdf

When: Tuesday 20th October at 7:30 pm
Where: Horse Bazaar, 397 Little Lonsdale St, Melbourne
Cost: A very reasonable $10 / $5

About our new campaign, En Masse:

The Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice’s En Masse Campaign has three main aims. To Rethink Copyright in our digital age; to Reclaim culture by encouraging people to step outside the current intellectual property regime; and to provide the tools to Redo cultural outputs, remixing them into something new.

Too often, it’s best to just let people speak for themselves:

The Australian Centre for Democracy and Justice, in conjunction with Chinchilla Media are running workshops on Open Source Solutions to Creative Problems, as part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival

Every Tuesday night for the next 3 Tuesdays at the Horse Bazaar.

Yesterday the online activist group Anonymous brought down the Prime Minister’s website, as well as the Australian Communications and Media Authority’s website and attempted to bring down Stephen Conroy’s website using Denial of Server attacks which bombard a website with requests until it breaks. This action was taken in response to the proposed internet filter.

I’m not sure what I think about this.

I find the idea of the filtering the internet abhorrent. It’s an issue close to me heart and it is both ideologically and technically flawed. I deeply resent the way the debate has been carried out by Conroy and I hope that it never gets up. I also support and encourage direct action.

Given these two things, surely I would support the actions of Anonymous but they make me feel uneasy for a few reasons. Firstly, they just come across as a little too anxty. This is inconsistent with my love of punk rock but the whole “we have been watching you” business just doesn’t rub well with me (see below for YouTube video). I think I’d be more comfortable with this if they were just doing it without all the song and dance.

The second thing is that I suspect that Conroy desperately wants to back away from the filter. It’s technically flawed (TOR anyone?) and the administration of it will be a nightmare. The trial will show that the filter is ineffective and slows the internet to an unacceptable level. However, actions such as this only serve to inflame the issue.

I think that, as an activist with both a strong civil libertarian perspective and a great believer in what the internet enables, it is important that the government is kept accountable on this issue. We need to be vigilant and keep the pressure on, but not so much pressure that the government is forced to go ahead with it anyway (which can happen).

I’m uneasy writing this post as well because I believe in the diversity of democracy. I think the Radical Vs Reformist debate in activist circle is troublesome and strongly believe that we need people undertaking a variety of political actions for a variety of reasons whether you support those reasons or not because it enhances our democracy and enables real social change.

What do you think? Is this action constructive in anyway?

Friends, just a very quick note to let you all now that I’ll be on 3CR’s Monday breakfast this Monday morning talking about the Centre’s work at about 7:30.

Listen in to 855 on your AM dial or stream from http://www.3cr.org.au/

Not sure if I’m getting carried away here or not, but the way The Age has reported the rescue of Tim Holding is interesting.

When he was found yesterday, the Age had a story up on their website immediately, complete with video footage of the rescue. This is pretty much what you would expect. However the front page of this morning’s Age had the headline: “Spy Plane Saves Minister” and was an “exclusive” scoop on the fact that the rescue services made use of plane “fitted with secret experimental night surveillance equipment being developed for the Australian Federal Police” (you can read the article here.)

What interesting about this is that I’d expect the front page of the paper to be an article on the rescue of Holding, not on the plane that was used in the search. Moreover, the paper assumed that the reader already knew he had been found and made no real attempt to break the story.

Is this the Age finally shifting to a new media landscape? What are their assumptions that lead them to focusing on their exclusive, rather than the rescue itself? Is it because they had already reported it online and is this something we should come to expect as the Fairfax papers move away from providing free content?

My final thought is that it could be a veiled shot across the bow to “the internet”. The real story here, according to the Age, is that journalists still have sources and can get the scoop that those pesty bloggers can’t. Of course I’m probably getting far too carried away now – it is a thought though (and what are blogs for if they aren’t for telling the whole world about a poorly formed idea).