Sep 2006
/politics/permalink Who wants to be a politican.

This is the result of watching too much Insiders and spending too much time with aj.

With the pathetic choices available to us this coming election, I thought it’d be a good idea to try a reality tv program to pick a politician. I haven’t quite figured out if I’m trying to find a federal Labor leader or a QLD Liberal leader.

The basic idea would be to have a test each week, with an studio audience voting off the worst performer (using a worm, of course).

Tests could include:

• A characterture test, get the political cartoonists to do a quick sketch, and see which one has the least flair.
• How convincing a “I do not recall.” rendition is.
• Baby kissing, the entrant to make the least babies cries wins.
• Prop handling; how quickly can a politician raise an appropriate prop (think giant two cent coin or a monkey)
• Verbal barbs, we don’t want any more lame stand-offs in front of the cameras.

Of course, only the Chaser guys could pull this off.

Dec 2004
/politics/permalink ARIAA threaten to sue the International Red Cross

From Wired via The Register:

The recording industry will ask the International Red Cross to freeze a trust fund allegedly controlled by the owners of Sharman Networks, an Australian software company.

…

It would be incredibly disappointing if we had to sue them

How about just incredible? I’ve made up my mind to never buy a CD again. Long live allofmp3.com. Yes, it is only a few days till Christmas.

Sep 2004
/politics/permalink Y'want salt rubbed in that ?

A small exhibit at the MoB of political cartoons by Sean Leahy. There’s a lot of wit, and some impressive drawing skills, the highlight for me were a few pages from his scrapbook. I was very disappointed with the size of the exhibit.

Sep 2004
/politics/permalink Talking with Terrorists

There’s been a lot of heat generated by a South Australian senate hopeful requesting that Australia sit down with the alleged JI head and talk peace, apparently talking to murderers is just not the done thing. Except that it has been done before, with numerous terror organisations, like the IRA, the Tamul Tigers, the Palestinians, the ETA, not all with great success, but the point is that it was OK to talk to those terrorist organisations, but not the current crop? Although it’s a bit of a stretch to call the Solomon Island militiamen terrorists, they’re still murderers, and we were talking to them. Prosecute the premeditated murderers of innocent people to the full extent of the law, but don’t lose the possibility of persuading those contemplating these barbaric acts from doing so.

Sep 2004
/politics/permalink Patent law reforms needed to boost biotech: ALRC

Interesting stuff: Australian Law Reform Commission media release Sourced from Government media Releases which is strangely empty of attacks on Labor given that the campaign is now official..

Aug 2004
/politics/permalink AUSFTA Senate Hearings

Quotes from Chapter 3 - Intellectual Property: “3.1 Chapter 17 of the AUSFTA, the Intellectual Property (IP) Chapter, is the largest chapter in the AUSFTA in content and substance. ” “3.16 DFAT has been dismissive of such arguments. Although conceding that extension of the copyright term ‘is the single biggest concession that Australia made in the negotiations’18, representatives from DFAT have stressed the positive aspects of the extension.” So it’s the largest part of the agreement, it’s the biggest concession we’ve made, and how much has it been in the media? It seems to me that every other industry was just a side issue, and that copyright was the big deal. I do agree that harmonization of laws between major trading partners is a good thing, but harmonization means a lot more than just having the term of copyright be the same length, it means having the same tests for original work, and similar rights of fair use for consumers. The thrust of the argument from DFAT seems to be that TPMs are there to stop piracy, not legitimate uses of material, and that we should all stop whining as they’ll take of these implementation issues over the next two years; basically it’s all very hazy and we’ll just have to wait and see. On the patents issue, the hearing doesn’t see the FTA as changing patent laws at all. We’ll just have to see. What really does worry me about all of this, is a bunch of non lawyer types debating massive changes to law.

Jul 2004
/politics/permalink The Political Compass

Everyone else was taking it, so, baaa:
Economic Left/Right: -1.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -3.08 I might see if I can collate everyone’s scores..