Australian Government Backing Down On Censorship 116
Combat Wombat sends the news that the government in Australia has begun waffling on whether country-wide Internet censorship will be mandatory. "The Rudd Government has indicated that it may back away from its mandatory Internet filtering plan. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy today told a Senate estimates committee that the filtering scheme could be implemented by a voluntary industry code. ... [The shadow communications minister] said he had never heard of a voluntary mandatory system. ... Senator Conroy's statement is a departure from the internet filtering policy Labor took into the October 2007 election to make it mandatory for ISPs to block offensive and illegal content." The censorship plan, which has been called "worse than Iran," was bypassed even before trials started. A minister's defection may have effectively blocked any chance of implementation.
!victory (Score:5, Insightful)
Keeping back dumb censorship plans, in otherwise democratic countries, is an eternal struggle.
Re:!victory (Score:5, Insightful)
Agreed. There was no need for it in the first place. Sometimes politics is like when you dangle a person over a cliff, but then pull them back up and act like the hero.
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Re:!victory (Score:5, Funny)
Re:!victory (Score:4, Insightful)
Good analogy...note that Obama considers himself a moderate - and his actions generally match. People are drowning 15ft. away on both sides of the sandbar he's on and he's not willing to use more than 10ft. of rope, even on those who voted for him.
Don't mod me Flamebait, I expected more of him too, But here we are and there's the ACTA agreement [wikipedia.org] - a textbook example of corruption ("Corporate Lobbying" as they call it nowadays) and policy laundering; Guantanamo acting as a handy distraction while other "secret" prisons [wikipedia.org] remain open, an Iraq deadline that he only used 10ft. of rope on, the list goes on...
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Guantanamo acting as a handy distraction while other "secret" prisons [wikipedia.org] remain open
I guess as long as we can get links like that, it's fair to say that freedom of speech is still alive.
Thanks for the info, it's infuriating, but I'd better be mad than be ignorant.
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Re:!victory (Score:5, Insightful)
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An appropriate response would be to issue letters of marque and treat them like the pirates of old but I suspect that if we actually did this it wouldn't go over very well.
Now if people start talking bounties in hard dollar figures, red passports, expense accounts, and access to the identification production facilities of certain U.S. agencies along with letters of marque...
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The main reson this whole ldea was pushed by the aus govt was to keep the religious right senator Fielding happy, he and several other independant senators hold the balance of power. This has not worked, he has blocked several items of govt legislation, so perhaps they dont care anymore.
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Agreed. There was no need for it in the first place.
Yeah, cause if there was a need for it, it would've been just fine. No censorship without a pretty good reason, that's what I always say.
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Okay, I'll bite. Why do you think a non-expanding government is a fundamental human right? Remember, a dictatorship is one of the smallest governments imaginable.
I'd wager that his definition of 'expanding government' has nothing to do with the number of public servants employed, and everything to do with what powers the government grants itself.
Already voluntary (Score:2)
Filtering is already voluntary.
Ask yourself this "Why not just drop the proposal?"
obviously something else is in the works.
I laugh at politics (Score:4, Interesting)
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Make no mistake, this was all about lining the pockets of the companies that were involved, nothing else.
How could they not know this would fail? Fiasco was written all over it.
Canada had the gun registry that failed miserably [wikipedia.org]. It was supposed to cost about $120mil, but ended up costing the (now poor) tax payers $2 billion. Yep. 2. Billion.
My question is - who got paid...someone did...a lot. Every man, woman and child alive today would have to register two guns for this money to be recuperated.
The sam
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"Yep. 2. Billion."
I'd be pissed about such obvious pork too, IIRC it cost Australia less than that to buy back (at a fair price) every semi-auto and pump action in the country and crush them.
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Make no mistake, this was all about lining the pockets of the companies that were involved, nothing else.
How could they not know this would fail? Fiasco was written all over it.
Fiasco, they make routers, right?
Re:I laugh at politics (Score:5, Interesting)
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My 1970's self, of course. Now get of my lawn!
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the average slashdotter is pretty gullible when it comes to machiavellian politics.
Here is some recommended reading [amazon.com] for Slashdotters who have not read The Prince [wikipedia.org] or any other works of Machiavelli.
Could someone invite that guy over to Germany? (Score:3, Insightful)
So he could tell their government how good incompetently implemented filtering mechanisms worked for them? Maybe, just maybe, they could learn a thing or two.
Re:Could someone invite that guy over to Germany? (Score:5, Funny)
Tell you what, on behalf of a vast majority of Australians I invite you to keep him.
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If we lock him up in Germany, I'm sure the average politician IQ in both countries would suddenly increase dramatically.
Say what you want, but he at least had the smarts to realize when he makes a huge blunder. The German government didn't achive that evolution step yet.
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[quote]New Zealanders moving to Australia increase the IQ of both countries![/quote] - Robert Muldoon, former New Zealand Prime Minister.
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That's theoretically possible, assuming 100 = worldwide mean and the IQ of a country is its mean or median IQ, if NZmeanIQ > movingPeopleMeanIQ > AUmeanIQ. But he's a politician, so by Occam's razor, he's probably just dumb.
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Who didn't see this coming? (Score:5, Insightful)
I knew it would happen.
Things that live under rocks on the floor of the Pacific Ocean knew it would happen.
Something like this won't get off the ground as long as there are people willing to fight against it, and we've got no shortage of those around here.
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Re:Who didn't see this coming? (Score:5, Insightful)
You knew it would happen.
I knew it would happen.
Things that live under rocks on the floor of the Pacific Ocean knew it would happen.
Something like this won't get off the ground as long as there are people willing to fight against it, and we've got no shortage of those around here.
Not really.. It has been very close to getting through, even recently there was a TV show about it and it gave a definite impression of an idea which is unpopular but will go through.
Remember it was (I think still is?) actually implemented on several small ISPs, and I won't be happy until I hear a definitive no; watered down filtering isn't a victory, an opt-out clause isn't a victory, and it could still well end up that way.
Also I don't know about "people willing to fight it" being the real reason. In the TV show debate about the internet filter (and in mainstream online news forums) the audience were largely in favor of censorship, but it was the glaring impracticality that swung it slightly in the opposition's favor.
Maybe the debate audience was a biased sample, but there really wasn't (and isn't) the fierce opposition to the filter that would make a senator do a U-turn.
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Yes, there _are_ filtering ISP's, a friend of mine runs one... if you don't want filtering, go elsewhere.
Brilliant idea for schools.
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The day public mass media reports anything even close to reality will be a cold one in hell.
Don't assume that a "TV show debate" represents anything even close to reality.
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And don't forget that only TV and down market newspapers ever "think of the children" in our world so bereft of scaremongering. Though I am surprised that disreputable semi underground political parties prefer the idea of murdering or mutilating people of different skin colour in preference to "thinking of the children". Maybe it just reflects the backward cultural leanings of their memberships that they haven't cottoned onto this hot topic and used this particular fear as a recruiting banner.
The whole thin
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The particular debate refered to was the SBS show insight. This is of a much higher standard than the average TV debate show. It even had Network engineer Mark Newton, one of the leading opponents of the scheme there, and he managed to get this main points accross. Conroy did not look happy at having to respond to well informed crticism.
Re:Who didn't see this coming? (Score:4, Funny)
Citation required. How many were polled, what was the species make up and how many were just sheltering from predators when the clipboard people came to call and were just answering the questions to avoid drawing the "outsider" tag and being forced outside?
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None of the things living under rocks on the floor of the Pacific Ocean that I asked said they didn't know about it 'til I told them.
This is a good example of how opt-in and opt-out are "technically the same"...
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"Things that live under rocks on the floor of the Pacific Ocean knew it would happen"
Citation required. How many were polled, what was the species make up and how many were just sheltering from predators when the clipboard people came to call and were just answering the questions to avoid drawing the "outsider" tag and being forced outside?
Here's a citation for it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cthulhu [wikipedia.org]
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Something like this won't get off the ground as long as there are people willing to fight against it, and we've got no shortage of those around here.
Just because there is a lot of vocal opposition to some proposal, doesn't mean it doesn't stand a chance of passing. There is a lot of unpopular legislation in many countries that get passed despite significant protests. For example, the DMCA in the USA, and the Australian free trade agreement that gave us DMCA-like crap of our own to live with.
Besides, the article doesn't say for sure whether the plan would be dropped. Conroy basically just said the legislation wouldn't be needed if the ISPs just agreed
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Bad summary: no minister's defection (Score:4, Informative)
The summary says "A minister's defection may have effectively blocked any chance of implementation."
But that link refers to Senator Nick Xenophon. He is an independent senator, not a Minister in the government.
Re:Bad summary: no minister's defection (Score:5, Informative)
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If it wasn't for the honesty of my member it would be difficult to distinguish between them.
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We got that, but he's not a Minister. It was probably the submitter confusing Member and Minister. People who confuse their Member and their Minister are in for some trouble.
My member's hard ... to confuse.
Balance of Power (Score:5, Interesting)
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no worries - bring it on. I am fairly confident that should they attempt the double-dissolution election at this point in time, especially considering the wonderful debt that they have just announced in the annual budget, that it would end up the exact same way as the last time. Namely, Labour out on their arse.
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I say bring it on for the opposite reason. I am very happy with the actions of the govt, they have done a good job in protecting us from the more disasterous effects of the financial meltdown.
With a bit of luck a double dissolution would rid us of scum like fielding, who only got in on labour preferences.
I think it would be fielding out on his arse not the govt.
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You jest. Our opposition doesn't deserve another chance for a few years yet. And they too would have had a deficit budget this time.
Yeah, great... try that in the UK (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm really pleased to read this story, but sadly I think the only reason this "backing down" has come about is because the politicians in question were so bare-faced and blunt with the proposals in the first place. I suspect that has a lot to do with the character and nature of Australians in general. I may get criticised for stereotyping, but most Australians of my acquaintance take pride in the blunt honesty prevalent in their culture, so I don't think I'm out of line.
Unfortunately this culture of an honest (if ineffective and ill-considered) approach to government implementation of web-filtering - and indeed of all privacy-crushing legislation - is rather rarer elsewhere. I'd love to see our ministers "back down" from the measures being artfully and insidiously emplaced under the auspices of all sorts of other harmless- or necessary-sounding legislation, but I just don't see it happening.
I'm not saying Australia is the land of enlightenment and open government or anything, but somehow the top-coat of bullshit and whitewash over there seems to be somewhat shallower on the whole.
Good on yer, Oz. Now please, expose some of the hypocrisy and skullduggery going on in the rest of the developed world for what it is - an ingrained attempt at tightening power and control over the voting public.
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As for your theory, well, I dunno really. Our low population density tends to give us a slightly different attitude to waste and security issues. It really is possible to walk away from your problems here. Its different from the UK where people are crammed in a lot more and have to live with their mistakes. Also we make our living from mining, basically. We dig stuff up and flog it to the Japanese and Chinese who sell it right back to us with a million percent markup. Eventually the s
Re:Yeah, great... try that in the UK (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm another Australian.
Unfortunately it's mere incompetence. They actually want to have all the fun "security" bells and whistles you have in the UK, they're just hopeless at getting it through without being noticed. Our politicians are no less sneaky and dishonest than anywhere else, but perhaps the apparatus to hide such intentions isn't as well developed here. We don't have that grand tradition of bill riders as in the US or the UK in our legislative conventions, so far.
The tradition we do have is assigning problematic (read: politically ambitious) ministers to a complicated technology-based portfolio where they can make fools of themselves while their rivals go on to bungling something else. The opposition did something good for a change and appointed the politically astute Nick Minchin as shadow minister and he's been ripping truck-sized holes in Senator Conroy's plans from day one.
The fatal mistake Conroy made was not to make sure this couldn't be done by bypassing legislation and farming it out to a statutory body beyond the reach of public opinion. And even that body is incompetent at censorship, so it's truly is a case of don't ascribe to malice what is adequately explained by idiocy.
What bothers me most is how difficult it was to get the story out in the media, its been relegated to tech pages and my efforts to raise the alarm among my non-techy friends met with disinterest. This isn't going to go away, they will try it again.
Re:Yeah, great... try that in the UK (Score:5, Insightful)
> I suspect that has a lot to do with the character and nature of Australians in general.
> I may get criticised for stereotyping, but most Australians of my acquaintance take
> pride in the blunt honesty prevalent in their culture, so I don't think I'm out of line.
Speaking as an Australian, I'd say that it's not because the honourable minister is blunt and straight forward, it's just that he's a bloody idiot.
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Speaking as an Australian, I'd say that it's not because the honourable minister is blunt and straight forward, it's just that he's a bloody idiot.
How true. If being blunt and straightforward disqualified Australians from anything, none of them would have any work.
Oh, and you're all bloody idiots, too, so I'm not sure what my point is, exactly.
Signed,
The blunt, straightforward Canadian idiot in the glass house across the water. 8^)
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It's traditional for our communications ministers to be incompetent. Name one in the past few decades who hasn't been.
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My personal experience in living in a culture where people are blunt and open is that it makes it easier to hide the deceitful and machiavellic under a "loud" apparently blunt and open exterior.
Some of the most devious people I know are also the most loud and insistent in their affirmations of friendship towards others.
Not dead yet! (Score:5, Informative)
Trials are still being underway involving 4 tiny ISPs, one medium ISP, one Christadelphian ISP and one large ISP majority owned by Singtel [zdnet.com.au].
There is no engineering, vendor neutral specification giving trial design criteria or testing methodology as the basis for the trials. There is no requirement for the ISPs to disclose which method of censorship they selected. The ISPs have been supported to the tune of $AU300,000 but there is still a $AU887,000 consultancy contract for the testing and reporting of on a system to block up to 10,000 URLs. The IWF annual report lists between 1100-1300 sites blocked by their system. Rumour has it that much of the testing in the small ISPs is using equipment from the same censorware vendor [watchdog.net.nz] but this is not confirmed as several censorware vendors have been lobbying for the windfalls. Watchdog, using the NetClean [netclean.com] system was involved in some separate testing undertaken by another ISP, Exetel [computerworld.com.au]. The Exetel trial received a great deal of criticism in the Australian internet community [whirlpool.net.au] and Exetel customers [exetel.com.au]. The trial has not been cancelled and neither has the testing consultancy.
Any assumption that the scheme will disappear is premature.
A list of 1000s of banned films and publications is still in existence. [somebodyth...ildren.com] The censorship regime has become more and more repressive over the last 10 years. Realistically the entire basis of censorship needs serious review. It is managed by more than one government authority under several different pieces of legislation. The proposed censorship of the internet is under the control of the telecommunications authority which is yet another government authority.
You would have to try very hard to find a more incompetent approach to anything to do with IT, networking or civil liberties all in the same package.
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Nice try, mate.
My comment about Optus/Singtel related entirely to the fact that Singtel is the Singapore government owned telco and Singapore certainly has no scruples about censorship which means that Optus participation may have a different corporate goal.
To be fair, Telstra, Internode and iiNet [zdnet.com.au] are on record as objecting to this proposal and all have refused to be sucked into this debacle and are not participating. Telstra's public comments have been generally
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My comment about Optus/Singtel related entirely to the fact that Singtel is the Singapore government owned telco and Singapore certainly has no scruples about censorship which means that Optus participation may have a different corporate goal.
I'm not in the telecoms industry, but let's just take a look at the relationship between Optus and the Singapore government, based on public information - Optus is a wholly owned subsidiary of Singtel; Singtel is to Singapore what Telstra is to Australia; the majority shareholder in Singtel is Temasek Holdings, the Singapore Government's domestic investment arm/sovereign wealth fund.
Are you seriously contending that the Singapore government would reach through these many layers and order Optus' executives t
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Methinks the xenophobia is strong with this one.
Far more likely is that Optus cuts a deal with Conroy to give the trial an air of legitimacy in exchange for concessions elsewhere, particularly against Telstra (c.f. recent competition rulings making further competition concessions).
I've no doubt that Optus would find any inroads into Telstra's death grip on it's networks valuable. So would all the other ISPs in Australia. Any advances to competition in the Telcos could only make the industry better.
Far from being xenophobic, a realistic assessment would be that the upper levels of management in Optus and Singtel could have a culture that is significantly different in relation to civil liberties in general, not necessarily limited to the proposed censorship. Optus management have n
YAY (Score:3, Insightful)
Rarrrr! (Score:3, Informative)
They are not backing down... (Score:1)
They are not backing down...as the summary sais "...it MAY...". Big difference between "It has" and "It may".
We still have to fight this, but (Score:2)
Their evil backroom deals with the left and the right of Australian.
I still want to know if you get a pop up saying your IP has been passed onto a state or federal task force on the first attempt?
Start shredding cd's, dvds like an East German spy with a pile of files in the late 1980's or a US embassy worker in Iran
Or a "not found" and your IP is log
Bad shadow minister? (Score:2)
Is it just me or is the shadow minister lacking some knowledge of common government policy.
Surely that'd be the kind of thing we get in the UK, and I'm sure other nations do, where the government goes "There is a problem and we think the industry should volunteer to solve it. If it doesn't then we'll mandate a fix." It's entirely voluntary to create the solution, but not volunteering leaves you with the option of be
A better government solution (Score:4, Insightful)
would be a positive filter. Instead of trying to filter the entire internet for everyone, create a Government Certified Safe Internet that lists web sites deemed "appropriate for children" by a new bureaucracy, and make it available to anyone's private filter on a voluntary basis. Require all government internet terminals available to children (e.g. libraries) to subscribe to the filter. Yes, there are already private companies that offer this service, but the constituents driving this evidently trust a giant government bureaucracy more than they trust a somewhat smaller corporate bureaucracy.
There will still be a market for private filter companies because they can offer different censoring standards to parents. It could actually be a good thing to have a voluntary censoring standard backed by general consensus. Private filters could start with the government database as a baseline, then add sites that "really should have been approved" or subtract sites that "my kid(s) can't handle". (For instance, my daughter had nightmares about "ducks biting her" after an incident involving a goose. She was not allowed to view "Jurassic Park" until she was much older, even though it was appropriate for the other kids.)
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"PC filtering software" is not very flexible at all. It ties you to a monopoly OS, and doesn't support filtering gateways (HTTP proxies). Ideally, users should be able to customized the approved list by adding/deleting entries. I would suggest publishing the approved list via secure DNS.
Never officially announced policy (Score:3, Insightful)
Hang on a sec!
Labour never announced this policy beforehand, or at least not in the form it came up as. The core announcement they made was that they would abolish the former conservative government's near-useless web filter software scheme and "investigate options" for parents to choose blocking at an ISP level. (Which several ISPs already provided as a viable commercial service for those who wanted it.) It was only afterwards, when a significant majority was won in the lower house and a sway-able majority in the Senate that they pushed a policy of compulsory industry-wide filtering.
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No, Beazley announced a Labor policy of mandatory ISP-level filtering in March 2006. I remember writing to the party and saying "kiss goodbye to my vote forever".
http://www.efa.org.au/censorship/mandatory-isp-blocking/ [efa.org.au]
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Thanks ... I'm so sick of hearing the misconception that mandatory filtering was a labour "promise" at the election. Quite the opposite. They "promised" any filtering scheme would be optional at the individual subscriber level (opt-out, but optional none-the-less) and it was only 6 months after being elected that they suddenly came up with mandatory. (And coincidentally, Senator Nutjob Fielding passed a raft of legislation the next week, inexplicably reversing his position on several issues).
Thus mand
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Mod this man informative!
voluntary mandatory system (Score:2)
he had never heard of a voluntary mandatory system...
That's because he's Australian. Here in the US, filing you tax forms is "Voluntary, but not optional". I swear I wish I were making this up...
The check for the "real reason" ... (Score:2)
... to see if an information controlling measure is intended to empower citizens or to manipulate the choices of citizens by controlling what they can know is as follows:
a) Is it a mechanism where people are allowed to opt-in (for example, forcing ISPs to make available to their clients page blocking software which they can install on their home computers) or is it a default mechanism or worse, one from which the users cannot opt-out
b) How is the list of blocked sites supervised? Is it open for all to check
It's just a waste of money... (Score:2)
When money is short in far more important areas... like food and education!
I often wonder why we should worry about some kids looking at smut on the net, when everyday they see war and death and violence (and bloody victims) all over in the news AT PRIME TIME!!!
It just makes my mind boggle...
I do think that like terrorism, the "protect the kids" is being used just as an excuse for harder and more restrictive laws all over the world.
O.o
Somebody think of the parents (Score:1)
As an Australian citizen and having listened to Conroy speak in a number of public forums, my concerns over his filtering scheme have shifted dramatically.
Originally I was concerned that the proposal was what most people still seem to think it is: mandatory filtering at ISP level of a government-defined blacklist.
Conroy has made it clear a number of times that what he is trying to implement is quite different.
There is, and has been for 8 years, an existing process whereby Australians can request classificat
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Try to get those numbers on big media.
"So where the bloody hell are you?" (Score:1)
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I think its only a matter of time before he is dumped from the role, as he would be a large liability for Rudd moving into the next election.
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Re:Fuck You (Score:2)
Thanks, we in OZ have enough self righteous arseholes already, please please stay right where you are.
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Real Aussies say prawn. Only fools buy that "chuck another shrimp on the barbie" Paul Hogan crap.