Monday 30th June 1997
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Hawke, not surprisingly, has got himself invited to Hong Kong for the hand over ceremony to China and has taken the opportunity to call Ms Hanson "an accident of politics".
Not surprising that Hawke did not comment on the damage caused to our relationship with China by Channel 9's Sunday program yesterday... as an astute politician who gave Packer the media power he enjoys today he doesn't want to "damage the relationship".
Where would the Australian government take our unregulated Internet?
Media Release
29th June 1997
For immediate release.
The report released late last week by the Senate Committee on Community Standards proposes to turn the Australian Internet into a children's playpen.
Ignoring the submissions of Internet experts and users, the Committee's majority report is a clear attempt to inflict its personal moral agenda on a medium that by its very nature defies traditional interventionist regulation.
Minority reports by the two Labor members of the Committee and Democrat Senator Stott Despoja rejected the most outrageous recommendations but accepted the remainder.
"This is the kind of draconian censorship we have come to expect from this Committee", Mr. Kimberley Heitman, Chair of online user group Electronic Frontiers Australia said.
"The majority report is effectively an attempt to ban all material unsuitable for minors from the Australian Internet. This will have all sorts of unintended consequences - limiting the availability of safe sex information, preventing discussion of women's health issues, and even censoring artistic material", Mr Heitman said.
Neither the privacy nor the civil liberties of Internet users are even mentioned in the recommendations.
The Senate Committee decision was delivered only hours before the United States Supreme Court upheld freedom of speech in the United States by striking down the Communications Decency Act as unconstitutional.
"The Committee's report suggests that the Senators have once again failed to grasp the global nature of the Net. Being so far out of step with the United States and the rest of the world, all their proposals can achieve is to hinder the growth and development of the Internet in Australia", Mr. Heitman said. "The information industry in Australia is in a delicate stage of growth and should not be subjected to such burdensome regulation. Their proposals to limit access to information based on age are also unworkable", Mr. Heitman continued, "and they clearly have no grasp at all of the technology involved. EFA supports today's call by the Australian Computer Society for the abolition of this Committee and its replacement with a committee with more positive terms of reference."
"The industry is outraged by the costs of classifying Internet material by Canberra censors at upwards of $25 per Web page, guilty or not, fines of $100,000 for service providers, guilty or not, and police paid to surf the Net and pry into discussion groups looking for "adult" material", he said.
"It's time for the Australian government to drop its paternalistic approach to censorship issues in this country. Australians are quite capable of making their own judgements - and there are more effective ways for parents and teachers to protect children from unsuitable material anyway", Mr. Heitman concluded.
Au$25 to classify every web page on the Internet in Australia... goodbye, goodnight Australia as the only benefactors will be those who can afford to pay... and we know who they are!
Pauline Hanson's One Nation Official home page.Now it is well known that he is in the back-pocket of the likes of Packer and Murdoch because of their well placed lobbyists and their media power.
"We have always understood that it is difficult to review the cross-media rules in isolation because they clearly impact on people's positions in terms of foreign ownership," Alston said on Channel 7's Face to Face programme yesterday.
"So in the course of discussions that I have been having, inevitably people have been concentrating on cross media but also the extent to which they affect foreign ownership and I think we therefore will need to have regard to both areas of ownership.
"Virtually all the people who have a stake have been telling us for very many months that they thought the cross-media rules were quite ineffective and inappropriate in an age of new technology."
But see above what they would do to restrict the use of that new technology by those who do not have buckets of money....
Alston continues, "They understood very much why they were introduced by Paul Keating back in '87, which was specifically to advantage the Murdoch and Packer groups and disadvantage the Herald and Weekly Times groups."
And this time the winners are the same in the media ownership changes under consideration by the current government or, you better believe it, Murdoch and Packer's buffoons would be swinging from the proverbial chandeliers like a bunch of ranting baboons complaining about injustices in the sickening media duopoly of today.
Why not call a plebiscite - not on a Goods and Services Tax but on media ownership - and add a question about whether Packer and Murdoch should be forced to relinquish a large portion of their media empires.
I can guarantee you now that the Australian public would vote "yes" on that one - but who cares about the Australian voter?
The textile, clothing and footwear industry are up in arms over the Productivity Commission's draft report on the industry to be released today that recommends tariffs be cut to 5% by 2008.
Industry and union spokesmen said that 50,000 jobs would be lost and the industry itself "consigned to the dustbin".
Yesterday a major Australian clothing manufacturer closed down after 50 years in Australia moving their operation to Malaysia because of staff costs. It was revealed that the production costs of a t-shirt in Malaysia was Au$1.80 compared to Au$18 in Australia because of salaries paid to workers in Australia.
The president of the Council of Textile and Fashion Industries said, "The commission seems to argue that 100,000 workers don't matter but 20 cents on a pair of briefs does."
Australia's complacent middle and lower class better wake up because the road that the government is taking us down right now will erode their chance of EVER having a half-decent job and any type of lifestyle in the future. The edges of employment in this global economy are starting fray, but like a river bank when the edge starts to fray the collapse of the bank follows soon after.
Now what was it that Pauline Hanson said on tariffs in Australia?
Further interesting comment on unemployment from aus.politics...
Why do the Government not give us the true unemployment figures?
Every person 55 and over in most places has been put on the mature age
pension after 6 months on unemployment benefits.
People who declare 61 minutes or more work a week on their unemployment
forms are not counted as unemployed.
People in "work schemes" or forced into training at TAFE courses or
whatever are made to sign a form that they are employed by the CES on
consequently not on the unemployment figures.
In January they moved the goal posts again to artificially reduce the
unemployment figures. People now who have applied for a job and had an
interview, but not yet heard back from the interview if they have been
accepted or declined are also not counted now.
The TRUE unemployment rate in Australia is at least twice of what the
official figures are. Taking into account these statistics and the moving
of the goal posts you can really start to see how the unemployment has
risen under the present government. The .3% rise from 8.5% to 8.8% under
the Howard government is probably at least a 1% rise in real terms.
Now none of this is taking into account what they always mention
"seasonally adjusted".
You must just wonder how they apply this seasonal adjustment, and change
the formula on seasonal adjustment to reduce the figures even further. How
about they give us the unemployment figures without any "seasonal
adjustment".
Dear Sir,
This is Tirto. I am now in Jakarta.
There is a short article at on
Australia's Asian Immigrants that may perhaps interest One Nation.
Have a nice day,
best regards
"Harimau does not advocate the idea that the Chinese Citizens of Australia or for that matter other countries such as Indonesia
or Malaysia, should be subjected to imprisonment or harsh treatment. Control and assimilation are the key factors. Left alone
to propagate as they like, the Chinese propensity to inflict damage is immense. They are like the fire element, useful when small
but destructive when large. "
You say:
Subject: Australia's Asian Immigrants
Tirto.
"Chinese everywhere have always been a very difficult race to assimilate. Indonesia had a near disaster in 1965 from its Chinese citizens. They chose to champion People's Republic of China's ideologies and policies then. If it was not for President Suharto, the Malays of Indonesia would have lost totally their country. As evidence of Indonesia being always wary of the Chinese, even to this day , the ban on the use of Chinese language in publications and on company signboards stays. Now that
China has opened its doors, the Chinese threat, once again has become very real.
Subject: HOPE SHE DIES
Dear E.V. Chung,
Considering that only 1 in 3 Chinese people in Hong-Kong
speak English, you must be complemented on your Fluent use of the English
language. I am sure that many people would be interested to know in which
teaching institution you mastered the language.
I am a Pauline Hanson supporter and what Pauline stands for, so do I.
Australia is my Country, and I wish this Country to prosper and Succeed.
Mr. E.V. Chung where do you fit in.
I assume your Country of birth is China, if this is so, I do suggest that
you return to your place of origin, because you are not required hear, and
you are giving your people a bad name.
I have meet with many people from, and in China, Taiwan and Singapore, as
luck would have it, I have never meet with any person like your self with
such Pointed Tongue.
If you talk like that of Pauline you are also saying the same about me.
How about going home, and try talking like that in your own Country. In
most probability, you would end up with a piece of lead behind your ear.
Pauline is probable the only genuine member of Parliament we have in
Australia, So what is your problem mate. And how is she affecting you? Do
you have a sensible solution to the problems of this Country steadily going
to the wall? Bad language and death wishes, will not achieve anything.
Alfred Bubb.
Subject: Launch of One Nation at Adelaide
I was at the One Nation launch in Adelaide in order to hear for myself what
this woman is saying. This, it seems, is enough to cause the tolerant
liberal-minded politically-correct in our society to turn out in droves to
prevent other law-abiding citizens from hearing a different point of view. I
had with me, my wife, a blind girl in her twenties and an amazing lady in her
seventies who all wished to exercise their democratic right to experience
"the case for the defence" first hand. We were subjected to verbal abuse,
the foulest of obscenities, our path was physically blocked, we were pushed
and shoved, we were kicked in the shins and attempts were made to trip us.
This last action, in that crush, could have been lethal and I consider that it
amounted to an attempt at grievous bodily harm. Fortunately no significant
injury occurred, but bruises and sore shins were with us for days. Our police
force were present in numbers but totally failed to prevent this assault or
to keep the public thoroughfare open.
The scene was repeated a number of
times as people tried to gain entrance to the venue. At least at the time of
our arrival, some 20 minutes before the start time on our tickets, no clear
passage through the barricades erected by the authorities was open and we
were forced to clamber over the top. This "running of the gauntlet" was
largely created by the police who directed us into the main mass of
protesters when we enquired about the way in. We could more easily and safely
have climbed the barrier at the edge of the crowd. We assumed that a break in
the barricade was available to us in front of the main doors but on clearing
this obstacle we found that it was continuous. We were left with the
impression that the police were doing all they could to discourage people
from attending the meeting. It was reported in the local press that some
ticket-holders were actually turned away at the door, by police, after having
made their way through that disgusting crowd. One older Gent inside the venue
was even covered with spittle!
Having now heard for myself the ideas of Pauline Hanson, and seen for myself
the behaviour of many who disagree(?) with her, as well as having read the
lunatic arguments put up by the powers-that-be and the chattering classes,
(I love that term- it's so descriptive)I can only hope that the lady has the
"cohones" to keep up the fight and give us a real choice at the next
election.
Rick Pagano
Have a great day.
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