Internet uprising overturns (South) Australian censorship law
Only yesterday I wrote about the South Australian government’s plan to limit political free speech and today I get to write about how they’re giving up on it. If only the federal government would be this efficient!
In all probability, the South Australian government’s turnaround is due to the fact that there’s an election there next month, and they don’t want to completely destroy their supporter base when there’s so little time to go. The federal government can trust people to forget about internet filtering by the end of the year — and indeed, it seems vocal objections have died down — but the South Australian one didn’t have that much time.
Of course, a success is a success, and SA’s attorney-general announcing he’ll retrospectively repeal the law is probably a success (unless he changes his mind after the election and doesn’t repeal it after all).
Something particularly amusing to come out of this is the attorney-general’s insistence that a man named Aaron Fornarino doesn’t exist, and is merely a sock puppet internet account of the Liberal Party. Sock puppets like him are exactly why South Australian Labor felt this law was so necessary — the Liberals were disseminating propaganda whilst posing as ordinary citizens, oh noes!!
Except that Aaron Fornarino does exist… and lives in the attorney-general’s electorate… 500m from his office.
When asked how he could be so sure Fornarino didn’t exist, the attorney-general’s response was, hilariously, “Because I’ve been the member for the area for 20 years, I’ve lived here for longer. I have the up-to-date electoral roll and I just know West Croydon people very well.”
Yeah… evidently.
At any rate, it’s good to finally have an example of a government caving in to public pressure instead of devoting huge amounts of energy to resisting it. It’d be good if the Rudd and Brumby Governments would take note.
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