South Australian Election Results- Analysis

The Australian Sex Party was unable to register a state branch in either South Australia or Tasmania before both state elections on the weekend.

So we threw our weight behind the new computer games party in S.A. - Gamers 4 Croydon.

They fielded a candidate in the electorate of Croydon which just happened to be safe seat of the state’s notorious pro-censorship Attorney General, Michael Atkinson. This guy has vetoed the creation of a new R rated category for computer games for a couple of years through a casting vote when Censorship Ministers have met to discuss the proposal.

We printed 20,000 how to vote cards supporting the gamer’s party and distributed them through adult shops around the state. Many thanks to AAPD’s John Mayall for coordinating this effort. We advised voters to vote away from the stale prudish Labor government. We also contacted our online networks on Facebook and Twitter and let the 3,000 people who visit our website every day know that this election could have a major effect on censorship laws.

Although Atkinson still won the seat he suffered a 14% swing against him and has now announced that he will resign as Attorney General. This is a very good result for all those who champion personal freedom and the right to have adult games for adult gamers. Atkinson’s veto of an R rated games category meant that computer games distributors and classification officers at the Classification Board (CB) both had nowhere to go in trying to classify the many R rated games that were submitted to them over the past 10 years. Sheer weight of numbers meant that many games which were naturally a ‘soft’ R rated game managed to sneak into the MA category as CB officers tried not to appear too censorious by knocking back too many of these high level games presented to them. Especially in terms of violence as it was the sexual themes in the R classification that was always in Atkinson’s sights.

While Atkinson insists he resigned to allow new blood into Labor in S.A. there are many who believe that he was pushed and that his combative ‘high Anglican’ approach to moral issues and his singularly stupid approach to the bikie legislation in S.A. threatened to stain Labor for more than the next term in government. Indeed his attitudes to moral issues were even worse than Catholic and Pentacostal parliamentarians and next to Senator Brian Harradine, he may well have been the worst wowser that the Australian parliaments have ever seen. The sooner he leaves politics altogether the better off we'll all be.

How a faulty fax machine threatens the micro-party alliance

FionaHTV

Photo credit: The Sex Party’s Fiona Patten handing out how-to-vote cards at the 2013 federal election. Photo: AAP

Article by JACKSON STILES

The micro-party alliance enjoyed success at the September federal election, but it now faces threats from electoral reform and a bitter spat that erupted over a dodgy fax machine.
Much has been made of the alliance of pint-sized parties that marched on the ballot box at the September federal election, plundering Senate seats and dashing Liberal hopes of stability in the upper house.

It appears that the big parties won’t stand for it. The Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters has been re-formed to investigate the 2013 election. With only two minor party representatives – a Greens Senator with voting rights and a non-voting Senator from the Democratic Labour Party – it is unlikely to report favourably on the small party successes of late.

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Heroic Uruguay deserves a Nobel peace prize for legalising cannabis

'Uruguay will legalise not only cannabis consumption but, crucially, its production and sale.' Illustration by Satoshi Kambayashi

Article by Simon Jenkins | The Guardian

'Uruguay will legalise not only cannabis consumption but, crucially, its production and sale.' Illustration by Satoshi Kambayashi

The war on the war on drugs is the only war that matters. Uruguay's stance puts the UN and the US to shame
I used to think the United Nations was a harmless talking shop, with tax-free jobs for otherwise unemployed bureaucrats. I now realise it is a force for evil. Its response to a truly significant attempt to combat a global menace – Uruguay's new drug regime – has been to declare that it "violates international law".

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