I found out about this issue today through this entry on mgk. The South Australian government has decided that all political commentary during an election campaign must be accompanied with the writer’s real name and postcode. This legislation appears particularly aimed at banning “anonymous” commentary on the Internet, and was passed with the full support of the Opposition. Their spokeswoman did admit it’d be too hard to enforce if they tried to identify political Twitterers and Facebookers, but apparently that was their only concern.
The legislation is absurd. As both weez and the Opposition spokeswoman point out, it is unenforceable. The South Australian government cannot possibly monitor all bloggers in South Australia to confirm that every time they write something about the election campaign, they’ve attached their full name and post code. That’s assuming they give up on Twitter and Facebook, because seriously, they’re dreaming if they think it’s possible to monitor Twitter and Facebook.
So then it would seem the intended purpose is simply to punish people who piss them off. Having a really broad law and enforcing it selectively seems to be one of governments’ favourite tactics, since it means they can get pretty much anyone who annoys them somehow. You know, like how they got Al Capone for tax evasion. Governments want to be able to do that.
There’s no reason why political commentary must be accompanied by the full name and post code of the commentator. This seems obvious. How on earth can a point be invalidated by the identity of the one who made it? If a point is good, it’s good regardless of who made it, and regardless of whether you know who made it. Wanting to “protect” people from “anonymous” political analysis is not a motivation — there is no need to protect people from that.
The true reason for this legislation must be to inconvenience people who want to influence the political landscape of South Australia in the lead-up to the election. Either they might be inconvenienced by having to release this information in the first place, or else they might be inconvenienced by how this information will be used — to take revenge on them somehow for saying mean things, presumably. And of course, no one will be prosecuted for supporting any mainstream party — Labor, the Nationals, the Liberals, and maybe even the Greens are going to have their supporters protected. To do anything else would be to alienate voters.
So what is this — is it that in South Australia, politics is now to be considered the dominion of a select few who rattle off the correct ideas? That everyone else should live in fear? I mean why else would the South Australian government care who says what? I think the fact that the Opposition is totally behind this measure is also insightful — it shows that the Opposition considers itself so identical to the government that it can also benefit from legislation like this.
Media like newspapers and TV can already be controlled through the steep cost of entry — only the wealthiest businesspeople can promote their opinions through those. But since the Internet is truly democratic — a realm where everyone’s opinions can be heard — it seems that fearful governments want it stifled. If they weren’t afraid, why would they bother?