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Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

digitalrightswatch.org.au

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Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#341

Post by sumedh »

perl4ever wrote: post #87
mdoms wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in Australia for 5 years and my sense is that, as harsh as it sounds, Australia needs to go through an extreme hardship to wake up as a nation. Australia has lived true to its moniker as the Lucky Country - at least two full generations of Australians have never witnessed economic hardship or downturn of any kind. Natural disasters pass the nation by (other than wildfires). Even Covid looked like it was going…

I wonder how much Australia is influenced by people who loathe the US and move from it to Australia because it's far away and yet Anglophone and "western".

If I am not mistaken most of the immigration to Australia is from UK, India and China.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#343

Post by astrange »

user123456780 wrote: post #32
mrslave wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compulsory voting does not imply a politically engaged populace. I believe the majority of voters do not enjoy the requirement to attend on polling day, and treat the whole affair like supporting a football team. Except they care a lot less about the election results than their football team. Mandatory voting probably has the effect of protecting the two major parties more than anything else. There was a surge in min…

Even though people may not be engaged in politics mandatory voting is important. It reduces extremist politics and the constant need to be increasingly divisive. It forces regression to the mean. In non mandatory voting systems the politicians need to motivate people to the polls. The default of the population is apathy so to generate action you appeal to the extremes who are the most likely to act. The more people y…

> But with mandatory voting the apathetic mass (who are most likely to be moderates as they don't really care but generally are reasonable educated people and don't agree with the extremist views) cast almost random votes which smoothes out the skew to the extremes non mandatory voting causes.

Pure moderates aka centrists don't exist. Those people average out to be moderate but they're actually "cross-pressured" - they have crazy beliefs that are inconsistent because they never thought about them.

The one constant is that nobody in real life is a libertarian, even though you always run into them on the internet.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#344

Post by TheSpiceIsLife »

0xdeadb00f wrote: post #273
alliao wrote: post #207

CCP is literally cancer on all citizens living in currently free democracy. They show that it's possible to keep a huge population under control with current tools and technology. Our politicians show public disdain, but fuck are they being seduced. And Australia is just stepping into it step by step while asking it's citizens to trust the government because they seem to be at odds with CCP publicly. As someone who l…

Hey mate. Aussie here. I'm sorry to say that it seems to me no one around here gives a flying fuck about politics let alone anyrhing to do with digital rights. This is a war we've already lost. I blame Murdoch but quite frankly most of the people I talk to are too wrapped up in working to pay their bills and care for their families to care about anything else.

Tasmanian here.

I’m still going to blame Murdoch and the LNP.

We could have had an amazingly well educated, liberal, progressive, and wealthy nation, but the Murdoch media and the LNP usurped the national agenda for their own personal gains and ideology.

We are an apathetic bunch, but that doesn’t give malicious actors the right to take advantage. They’re still responsible to a large degree.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#345

Post by sumedh »

stjohnswarts wrote: post #248
markdown wrote: post #241

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There isn't a bill of rights without exceptions, and a pandemic (public health) is always going to be one of those exceptions. It doesn't help at all during a pandemic.

I don't know dude I just partied all weekend without any issues, no mask, no constraints on where I could go. No mandates. Seems like some places have their ducks in a row. Get vaccinated and live a little bit...

Which place are you talking about?

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#346

Post by astrange »

bradrn wrote: post #93
mdoms wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When it comes to authoritarianism Australians are either extremely apathetic or they are generally in favour of more government intervention in private life. Try having a calm and balanced discussion with an Australian about bicycle helmet laws for a wonderful example.

> Try having a calm and balanced discussion with an Australian about bicycle helmet laws for a wonderful example. As an Australian I’d be curious to know what the argument against them is? (Keeping in mind that most Australians don’t see ‘freedom’ as a terminal goal.)

They're actively harmful because they make it harder to ride a bike, so people don't adopt biking.

https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/2014-5-september-october/g...

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#349

Post by skissane »

cletus wrote: post #276
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Like when the gay marriage issue was decided even the highly conservative former PM Tony Abbott basically came out and said the matter was settled and it's time to move on. Australia recognized same sex marriage in 2017. That was 3 years after after the USA did. I'm not sure I would call Australia as being progressive by that measure.

So, for the record, I 100% support gay marriage and abortion rights. What you have to realize about the US is that the Supreme Court deciding these issues is... controversial. Many view it as undemocratic (although it's worth noting that many of those same people don't feel the same way about the Supreme Court's pro-2nd Amendment interpretations of modern times). We're still seeing the ripple effects of Roe v. Wade b…

> We're still seeing the ripple effects of Roe v. Wade being decided almost 50 years ago.

Abortion is far less of a political and cultural hot potato in Australia than in the US. While no doubt some of that is due to other cultural differences – for whatever reason, conservative Christianity has never been quite as strong an influence in Australia as in the US – I think a big factor is the difference in how abortion was legalised.

In Australia, there is no constitutional right to abortion. And yet abortion is legal nationwide. Its legality was achieved through a gradual process, involving state legislation, and state court decisions – those state court decisions were not based on constitutional law, rather the state courts simply decided to reinterpret the existing criminal laws against abortion to not apply to medical procedures. The federal courts stayed out of it completely, and constitutional rights never came into it, only statutory law – if they wanted to, the state parliaments could have overturned the state court decisions effectively legalising abortion, but they chose not to.

The fact that the process was much more gradual, and had greater democratic legitimacy, has helped make it less of a controversy. And since it happened through a series of state laws and state court decisions, opponents of legal abortion don't have one single highly visible event to focus all their opposition upon, like Roe v Wade is in the US. Almost every American has heard of Roe v Wade – even many non-Americans have – by contrast, few Australians know about the Menhennitt ruling (which de facto legalised abortion in the state of Victoria in 1969) or the Levine ruling (which did the same in New South Wales in 1971). American opponents of legal abortion focus most of their energy on trying to get justices appointed to the Supreme Court who will overturn Roe v Wade – the main purpose of this latest Texas law is to get a case before the Supreme Court which will give those justices an opportunity to do exactly that – its Australian opponents don't have any national focus, which in practice makes them a lot weaker.

It is totally consistent to support legal abortion, but to also think that Roe v Wade was a strategic mistake.

Re: Australia’s new mass surveillance mandate

#350

Post by Swannie »

siquick wrote: post #104
mdoms wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived in Australia for 5 years and my sense is that, as harsh as it sounds, Australia needs to go through an extreme hardship to wake up as a nation. Australia has lived true to its moniker as the Lucky Country - at least two full generations of Australians have never witnessed economic hardship or downturn of any kind. Natural disasters pass the nation by (other than wildfires). Even Covid looked like it was going…

100% agree. It's almost like Wall-E was written about Australia in 50 years time. The irony being that 30% of the population was born outside of Australia with a decent part of that in countries which have experienced recent hard times. https://www.abs.gov.au/media-centre/media-releases/30-austra...

No dual citizens in federal parliament. That 30% are, generally, extremely under-represented in the political system. This is by choice of interpretation of the current federal judiciary (High Court).

At a state level, in many states, rules for dual citizens are more complicated, but result in a similar situation.

I can understand the need for this legislation, but it does tilt the balance in favor of 3rd+ generation Australians (as many 2nd generation Australians can inherit their parent's citizenship).

Yes, if your country of non-Australian citizenship allows you to renounce it, that is recognised in Australian law. But it can be a complex process, with little value unless you have political ambitions (or maybe complex tax issues ;-) ).

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