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Fred Nile says no 'perving' on net porn in his office |
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Written by Smh.com.au | Rick Feneley
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Friday, 03 September 2010 11:27 |
Debbie may have done Dallas, but Fred swears he never did. ''I've heard of the title, but I've never seen it,'' the Reverend Fred Nile vowed yesterday when asked if he had watched Debbie Does Dallas.
In fact, he insisted, he had never seen a moment of hardcore porn in his life. And nor had his three staff spent any time ''sitting there perving''. But he had asked them to conduct research into the porn industry.
This may explain why the three computers in his NSW parliamentary office, according to a routine internal audit, have accessed adult sites a reported 200,000 times in six months, although Mr Nile suspects hackers and he is calling in the federal police.
Australian Sex Party president Fiona Patten reckons all this is curious. She refers to Mr Nile's very successful tour in the mid-1980s when he and the British morals campaigner Mary Whitehouse lobbied the states to ban films with an X-classification. Media reports documented them showing a sample to premiers or attorneys-general, Ms Patten said. Brian Burke, then West Australian premier, had complained it ''put him off his lunch''.
''One by one,'' she said, ''the state premiers fell to the moralistic rhetoric and the sample films that Reverend Nile showed them. Unless he turned his head away during the viewing, he has some explaining to do about this. Either he has lied about his claim to seeing X-rated material or he has banned a genre of films that he has not even had the courage to watch.''
Mr Nile, the Christian Democratic Party leader, has not responded to Ms Patten's remarks. But at his news conference yesterday he explained his need for the research. It was part of his campaign against pornography, including support for the federal Labor government's proposed internet filter.
Such a filter, he said, should be imposed on all computers at state parliament.
This might interfere with his research. But it might have saved Paul McLeay, the Labor minister who resigned on Wednesday when, thanks to the same IT audit, he admitted using adult and gambling websites .
In question time yesterday, the Labor frontbench looked a little windy without Mr McLeay, the fourth minister to go under Kristina Keneally's premiership.
Two rows behind, on the backbench, Mr McLeay no doubt felt the draught. He has not revealed what websites he visited but, if he was pondering a bet yesterday, Centrebet had the Coalition at $1.08 and Labor at $7.40 for the state election.
Source: Smh.com.au
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Slim pickings for libertarians |
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Written by The Punch | Nigel Bowen
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Friday, 20 August 2010 18:03 |
Whoever loses tomorrow, one thing is certain – this election will not be a victory for any major political party’s true believers. Coalition and Labor partisans have spent the last month gulping down political-DNA-corroding Kool-Aid in their increasingly desperate attempts to pimp themselves out to disengaged bogans address the legitimate concerns of those salt-of-the-earth, hearts-of-gold, marginal-seat-dwelling, mainstream Australians who embody all that is pure and noble in this great nation.
How many inner-city ALP activists letterboxing on cold winter nights have been haunted by that image of the PM and Member for Lindsay scanning the horizon on a navy vessel off Darwin, looking as if they might at any moment rush to a gun turret to strafe an incoming boat packed to the gunwales with queue-jumping reffos? And how many small-business owners brooding about a recalcitrant employee have spluttered on their Penfolds Grange at a Liberal fundraising dinner, pondering how the party of capital lost its bottle when it came to smashing the unions?
But let’s also spare a thought for the Greens’ disillusioned libertarian voters. It was always a somewhat awkward embrace, but for years those bridling at the interference of church and state into who they marry, what they watch, how they choose to get intoxicated, or when they die felt the Greens had their backs.
Now, as even the most casual observer of politics is likely to have deduced from the dearth of ‘BOB BROWN TO SET UP FREE HEROIN DISPENSARY AT GATES OF CATHOLIC GIRLS SCHOOL’ headlines during this campaign, the Greens have tiptoed away from what, in the good old days, used to be invariably described as their ‘radical social policies’. Indeed Dr Clive Hamilton, who contested the Higgins by-election for the Greens last year, is amongst the nation’s most vociferous and erudite critics of libertarianism.
So where do those disillusioned with the social conservatism of the major parties who used to vote Green go now? In some seats at least, they have two choices come Saturday: the Secular Party or the Australian Sex Party. The former seems to have little chance of having any impact, the latter just might. Formed by longtime lobbyists for Australia’s adult industry, Robbie Swan and Fiona Patten, the Sex Party has had sufficient funds to mount a reasonably professional campaign and has fielded several candidates – notably comedian Austen Tayshus, running against Tony Abbott in the seat of Warringah – colourful enough to generate media attention.
Very few voters would embrace the Australian Sex Party’s policy platform — minimal censorship, unambiguously legal abortion, drug decriminalisation, support for euthanasia and gay marriage — in its entirety. But many voters, from across the political spectrum, are likely to find themselves supporting at least one of its policies with the kind of passion they’ve long since ceased to experience in relation to the big parties.
Swan was encouraged to form what became the Australian Sex Party by his friend Don Chipp, shortly before the anti-censorship campaigner died in 2006. Swan says Chipp, who founded the Democrats after finding himself too liberal for the Liberals, told him: “I know you want to start a political party, and the Democrats have had it, so you should do your own thing. I’ll give you a few words of advice. The first thing you’ve gotta give it a name that no-one forgets. And make sure to stay true to your core issues, which are censorship and personal freedom. In the years ahead, Labor and Liberal will desert that whole area because they’re being increasingly infiltrated by church and morals groups and the Greens will probably go the same way as they get bigger and start to take on those kind of trappings. For the next twenty years Australia is going to need a really strong civil liberties party.”
A party that stays true to its core issues? The Australian Sex Party’s backroom boys really should run that past a focus group of swinging voters out in marginal seat-land to see if there’s any chance it could fly.
Nigel Bowen is writing an article on the Australian Sex Party’s campaign, to be published in the October-November edition of GQ.
Source: The Punch
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Conroy: Too early for filter last rites |
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Wednesday, 18 August 2010 17:34 |
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With the Greens and Coalition having said they will kill Labor's proposed mandatory internet filter – regardless of Saturday's poll – simple Senate mathematics tells you the controversial plan is destined to whither and fade to a distant memory.
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Sex Party preferences come from high rollers |
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Tuesday, 17 August 2010 17:19 |
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HEMP Party suggests members should vote SEX Party!
‘All we need now is a Rock’n’Roll party!’ joked the HEMP Party President Michael Balderstone yesterday, whilst launching the HEMP Party’s ‘How to Vote’ Card to an enthusiastic crowd at the Nimbin Hemp Embassy.
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Aussie Sex Party Unveils Sex Education, National Drug Policies |
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Monday, 16 August 2010 16:38 |
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BRISBANE—Australia's newest and most controversial political party [ever], the Australian Sex Party, has released policy statements on the issues of sex education and drug use. The release of these policies comes as the party ratchets up its campaign to get several of its members elected to office in the upcoming August 21 federal elections.
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Conroy, Family First isolated on Oz internet filter |
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Monday, 16 August 2010 16:35 |
Clear blue water seems now to be opening up between the incumbent Australian Labor Government and other parties standing in the forthcoming election on the issue of cybersafety.
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Abbott defends anti-Semitic content |
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Thursday, 12 August 2010 18:54 |
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Prime Ministerial hopeful Tony Abbott has stood by a Mackay city councillor standing for the Liberal seat of Dawson who wrote an article linking Jews to the crucifiction.
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