Tutorial 7 - Politics and the Internet

Complete today's tasks:What opportunities can you find for political participation via the internet:How many of the following can you achieve while sticking to your political beliefs?

Sign an e-petition.

http://www.unicef.org.uk/campaigns/stop_aids/petition.asp
Over 33 million people are living with HIV but only one in three has access to the treatment they need to stay alive. This is often because the cost of treatment is unaffordable for poor people and the governments of developing countries. This is why I’m joining the push for the patent pool.
Patent pools can lower the cost of life-saving HIV medicines whilst ensuring that companies are rewarded for developing new drugs. I am pushing for a patent pool in which pharmaceutical companies allow generic versions of their drugs to be produced in return for a fair royalty. This will help people around the world access the medicines they need to stay alive.

Respond to a professional blogger at a major news site.

Rocco Bloggo. Sydney Morning Herald (http://blogs.smh.com.au/newsblog/archives/rocco_bloggo/022002.html)

(My Comment)
I heard the new Liberal party leader, Tony Abbott, on the radio yesterday. Despite the constant um's are ah's in his speech, I did (somehow) decode his message. Basically he stated that 'America doesn't have an ETS so why should we'. This pretty much sums up the US-centric Liberal policy of the last ten years. Time we got a new big brother or maybe we could even make a significant decision on our own.

What is Barak Obama up to today?

President Obama plans to speak to Americans via a prime-time address December 1 about new plans for the war in Afghanistan.

http://blogs.america.gov/obama/

Find out who your local, state and federal representatives are.

Local: Aidan McLindon State: Evan Moorhead Federal: Brett Raguse MP

Look up the Queensland or Australian Hansard to find the last time your local member spoke in parliament.

Brett Raguse MP - Australian Labor Party Representative for Forde (26 Nov 2009)

Mr RAGUSE (Forde) (11.47 am)—I acknowledge the comments of the member for Deakin and his firm understanding of some of the issues that face our health system in this country. I rise today to speak on the Health Insurance Amendment (New Zealand Overseas Trained Doctors) Bill 2009. This is a bill that will make 112 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES Thursday, 26 November 2009 CHAMBER working in Australia easier for medical practitioners from New Zealand and improve administrative processes surrounding overseas sourced medical practitioners in general.

Let your local member know what you think about their last speech.
http://www.openaustralia.org/debate/?id=2009-11-26.33.2&c=206#c206

(My Comment)
Good Stuff!

Read the lecture and the readings, pursue a couple of the topics that you find most interesting and then post your blog with your well-considered thoughts about the theory and practice of politics.

I found the lecture interesting in that it opened my eyes to the effect the Internet can have on politics, both here and overseas. Like a lot of things in this course I was ‘kinda’ aware of the effect of the Internet, but this underlined it to me. One point it highlighted is the need for opinion polls, which are used by politicians as justifications for their actions (like the Liberals crossing the floor in the ETS vote, because of emails they had received from people) to be run by official bodies, not as Steve pointed by a non-regulated system of lobbying by a motivated few. This has the potential to impact perceived public opinion by politicians, which can then impact the processes of government.

It also highlighted the immense power that the Internet has in the political process, of which the Obama is cool campaign on YouTube is proof. The girl in that Obama video is a model who I saw hosting another YouTube video about the top 10 sexy female computer game characters about three days ago. These days not only can you not believe everything you read, but also everything you see.

+ adam asks: What do you think of the Australian Government's plans to censor the internet (the so-called "Clean Feed")???

Clean Feed involves the Australian Federal Government plan to force Internet Service Providers [ISPs] to censor the Internet for all Australians. This plan will waste tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and slow down Internet access. I think it is wrong. The responsibility to censor the Internet should lay with parents not the government. Because paedophilia is illegal, sites that show such content are usually found and shut down quickly. Because of this child pornography has been forced underground using technologies such as peer to peer networking. Therefore Clean Feed won’t make any difference to combating Internet child pornography.

What place does censorship have in a democracy?

I don’t believe it has any place in a democracy. Fundamental features of democracy are participation, contestation and civil liberties. Participation is our right to participate in governance. Contestation is the electoral process. Civil Liberties are our human rights etc. I mention these because all these factors rely on government transparency to function effectively. Introduce censorship into any of these areas and the democratic process breaks down. There are places where censorship is appropriate, for example the rating of movies, television etc. But this is to protect children. When the government takes it upon itself to decide what we can view as adults, it is setting off a slippery precedent. Today it is pornography the government believes we need to be protected from. What about tomorrow? Perhaps the government will decide we need to be protected from information that isn’t in their best interest to reveal. When we allow the government to censor what we can see, the potential for misuse in too high (and attractive) by a government that is doing its best to retain power.