The Major Minor Party is a play performed by Sydney theatre group Version 1.0. Last week it had its world premiere at the Canberra Theatre. Based around the rise of the Sex Party in Australian politics, the play examines the relationships between our major and minor parties.

It couldn't have come at a more auspicious time. A few kilometres away across Lake Burley Griffin in the federal parliament, the major parties were involved in another form of theatre that related to minor parties.

A few weeks ago the major parties announced a joint deal in which they agreed to double the nomination fees for candidates contesting the next federal election. It will now cost each candidate $2000 to nominate for the Senate and $1000 for the House of Reps.

At exactly the same time as the curtain rose on the Major Minor Party, Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus announced an agreement by Labor and the Coalition to rearrange the funding and disclosure mechanisms concerning donations to political parties in Australia.

They tried to give each other an extra dollar a vote over the $2.70 a vote they now receive at election time and to give successful parties an extra $300,000 allowance for so-called "administrative support". But none of this funding would have gone to the many minor parties who did not elect an MP. Thank goodness Tony Abbott had the sense to agree to scuttle such an inequitable piece of legislation.

Then, only a few days ago, the major parties agreed to rush a law through federal parliament that completely exempted the three government departments that oversee the running of the federal parliament from answering Freedom of Information requests.

MEDICINAL use of cannabis should be permitted in Australia.
In 2013, we should not still be merely discussing this possibility. On Wednesday, a NSW parliamentary committee, chaired by Nationals upper house MP Sarah Mitchell, unanimously recommended that medicinal cannabis be permitted for some people with certain terminal conditions.

At present, 18 states in the US allow medical marijuana and a further 10 are considering it. Apart from providing genuine alternatives to existing medicines, this approach has kick-started a plethora of scientific research on cannabis by an industry that has until recently been cowed from embarking on research projects.

The former head of a specialist team inside WA Police that targeted paedophiles has called on the national royal commission into child abuse to investigate why the unit was shut down.

Before its closure in 1999, the paedophile investigations team had made more than 100 arrests, including priests, and compiled a database with names of 900 known or suspected child sex abusers.

Internal police documents reveal that in its first year the team had identified 15 paedophile networks in WA, prompting a high-level memo from an assistant commissioner to the deputy commissioner.

"These papers demonstrate an extensive network of paedophiles in Western Australia," the 1995 memo read.

Despite the mountain of intelligence and active investigations, the team was axed four years later.

"We were starting to make some inroads and bit by bit were climbing the social levels," former detective Andrew Patterson said. "We had made some good arrests and there were some pretty tantalising leads out there, including a judge."

Mr Patterson, now the ombudsman at a big NSW council, became disillusioned with WA Police, claiming he was "forced out" of the team he created midway through 1994.

"The easy way was to shut it down and to get rid of me," he said. "Who on earth could make a decision to get rid of a team like that, which wasn't costing much by way of resources and was clearly doing good work.

"Why would you close that down unless there was another agenda?"

The State Opposition has backed Mr Patterson's call, saying if there was any "undue pressure" behind the decision it needed to be examined by the promised royal commission.

"Somebody has to answer serious questions about that," shadow child protection minister Sue Ellery said. "The numbers show the unit was so successful, so I can't see why it was closed."

National broadband provider iiNet and its subsidiary Internode have pledged to implement the limited child abuse Internet filtering scheme adopted as policy last week by the Federal Government, noting they had received independent legal advice advising them to comply with a new “compulsory” request by police to do so.

Last week, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy announced the Federal Government would abandon its highly unpopular and controversial mandatory Internet filtering policy in favour of a more limited scheme that will see Australian ISPs forced to block a much smaller list of child abuse sites supplied by international policing agency Interpol. The legal mechanism for the scheme to proceed is Section 313 of the Telecommunications Act, which allows the Australian Federal Police to request assistance from local telcos. Telstra and Optus implemented the scheme in mid-2011; Conroy said last week that it will now be extended to other ISPs.

In mid-2011, a number of ISPs, such as Telstra, Optus, iiNet and Internode, received such requests from the Australian Federal Police to implement such a filtering scheme for the Interpol list. At the time, Telstra and Optus complied with the request and have had their filters working for more than a year with no known public complaints, while a number of other ISPs, such as iiNet and Internode, declined to do so, citing uncertainty about the legality of the request.

However, posting on broadband forum Whirlpool this week, iiNet group chief regulatory officer Steve Dalby noted that the Section 313 notices received in mid-2011 by the ISPs had made it clear the scheme was “voluntary”. New notices issued to ISPs recently, however, he said, had the word “voluntary” removed from their text.

“… the AFP advised us that compliance was voluntary. As a result we declined to participate,” Dalby wrote. “Now it is clearly no longer voluntary and we are obliged to comply, which we will. As you will no doubt have read from the press release, all ISPs will be served notices by the AFP. I’m sure most will take legal advice on the effectiveness of the notifications and act according to that legal advice.”

A new poll shows a majority of Australians support making voluntary euthanasia legal for someone experiencing unrelievable and incurable suffering.

A targeted online survey of more than 1,400 people conducted by the Australia Institute revealed more than 70 per cent believe euthanasia should be permissible.

A total of 17 per cent said they did not know, while 12 per cent were opposed to the idea.

Despite this, multiple attempts to legalise voluntary euthanasia and assisted suicide in recent years have all failed.

Australia Institute executive director Richard Denniss said the numbers supporting legalised euthanasia were down from 75 per cent last year.

He said the biggest drop in support was mostly among young people.

"It's fallen a little bit across the board and interestingly fallen a little bit more amongst young people," he told The World Today.

"The 'don't knows' are a little higher amongst young people, so if anything that in fact reflects the lack of public debate we've had about this issue."

“Living with the stigma of HIV harder than living with the disease”

This quote from ‘Jim’ is one of a number of stories from an innovative Australian crowd sourced campaign that seeks to gather the voices of HIV stigma and resilience called the ENUF campaign.

"HIV is something we must talk about openly, clearly and honestly. Being scared to discuss it reinforces the shame and stigma that currently exists for those living with HIV ” says Sam Venning President of Living Positive Victoria, “This year’s World AIDS Day theme of “HIV is still here” reminds us all that it is only the sustained and combined strategies of government, researchers and community based organisations that will help us end the HIV epidemic."

Living Positive Victoria and the Burnet Institute are co-hosting the official launch of World AIDS Day at Parliament with the Health Minister the Hon. David Davis launching the day in the Parliament gardens on 1 December at 10:30 am.

Two HIV positive speakers will also be featured who will share their stories of living with HIV and emphasise that HIV is still here and that stigma and discrimination still exists across the community.

"I encourage everyone to address stigma and discrimination by reading and signing up to the ENUF campaign. Our voices are ENUF to end HIV stigma and discrimination" says Venning.

For more information on the ENUF campaign and how to get involved visit enuf.org.au