Wednesday, 16 December 2009

The Day Democracy Died

So... on Tuesday, the 15th of December, 2009, democracy was killed in Australia. A democracy exists to represent the desires of the majority of the people in a nation. Regardless how it is implemented (as a representative democracy where you vote for someone to represent you), or some other way, the POINT is to represent the people and their desires. This no longer is the case. Not by a long shot. The communications minister, Stephen Conroy, has decided to unilaterally ignore not just expert reports on the dangers of compulsory filtering (discussed here in a sydney morning herald article), but more importantly, the desires of the people of Australia: 95% of people responding say NO to the filtering, but... go ahead it shall. I am not going to get into the sideshow of child porn and who controls the list of filtered sites, and that it's easy enough to get around. It's the principle of democracy simply failing miserably. We can argue that the people voting in this poll are a skewed subset of Australians... but that's just trying to push an agenda anyway - even if it was skewed.. 95% implies its a majority of people that oppose no matter what. It is a sad day to be an Australian. It is a sad day for democracy. It is a sad day for freedom of speech. From this day on there is now an on-line censorship mechanism that, mark my words, future governments will use to not "protect the children" but to censor disagreement with their views. Countries like China do this already. Australia is now following. Good job Conroy! NOT!