Google
 

Aardvark Daily

New Zealand's longest-running online daily news and commentary publication, now in its 25th year. The opinion pieces presented here are not purported to be fact but reasonable effort is made to ensure accuracy.

Content copyright © 1995 - 2019 to Bruce Simpson (aka Aardvark), the logo was kindly created for Aardvark Daily by the folks at aardvark.co.uk



Please visit the sponsor!
Please visit the sponsor!

Do you really want to live in Australia?

18 May 2010

Australia is "the lucky country", or so we're told.

Rich mineral wealth, lower effective tax rates, a warm (usually) benign climate and a population density that's even lower than NZ's makes for a high standard of living and relaxed lifestyle.

Jobs are usually plentiful for those with skills and a good work ethic and compared to NZ, racial tensions are far less obvious.

It's only natural therefore, that every year, tens of thousands of Kiwis decide to jump the ditch for a better life, and that's what many of them find.

However, if you're contemplating a bit of ditch-jumping yourself, you might want to consider some of the negative aspects, especially from the perspective of being an internet user.

That's right, along with some of the world's most poisonous reptiles and arachnids, Australia has some pretty venomous attitudes and laws designed to control the Net and its use.

As one Aussie internet user has just discovered this to his cost.

That guy is Wikileaks founder Julian Assange.

On his return to Australia last week, his passport was taken by Customs officials on the pretense that "it was looking worn". Fair enough, I guess making a passport look tattered is a nice tactic for covering up a counterfeited or altered document so it deserves closer scrutiny.

However, Assange alleges that when his passport was finally returned to him, he was told that it was about to be canceled -- effectively making it impossible for him to leave the country again.

So why would authorities try to stop him from leaving the country?

Well a letter bearing the government's crest has advised Assange that he's being investigated by Australian Federal Police because his Wikileaks site published the list of banned websites associated with the country's internet filtering scheme.

Under Aussie law, it is illegal to publish the list of banned sites so odds are that Assange will face prosecution for his actions.

Things start getting a but murky here though because the media has been told by officials that the passport in question has not been canceled and remains valid.

Has Assange tried to spin this situation up into something more dramatic than it really is? Or is the Federal Government boxing clever by not officially canceling the passport -- perhaps until such time as he might try to leave the country?

The Wikileaks founder has become something of a cyber-folk hero as a result of the publication of the "banned list", especially when it was revealed that a number of the sites on that list appeared to have no link to pornographic or otherwise offensive/illegal material. This disclosure and the law which forbids the list's publication has brought about claims that it's only a matter of time before the Australian government starts censoring the web on the basis of politics.

Whatever the truth of the matter, it's clear that internet freedoms in Australia are under threat and that perhaps, when it comes to lifting the lid on such things, the Aussie government is not above engaging in a little deception to avoid the harsh media spotlight.

Whatever the facts, I suggest that those interested in the current situation in which Julian Assange finds himself should read the SBS Dateline report and watch the excellent video interview I caught on SBS-One (yay for Freeview!) last night.

Does NZ run the risk of eventually developing similar laws and attitudes to internet freedom I wonder?

Is this an unacknowledged part of the "catching up to Australia" goal our government professes to be pursuing perhaps?

Please visit the sponsor!
Please visit the sponsor!

Have your say on this...

PERMALINK to this column

Oh, and don't forget today's sci/tech news headlines


Rank This Aardvark Page

 

Change Font

Sci-Tech headlines

 


Features:

The EZ Battery Reconditioning scam

Beware The Alternative Energy Scammers

The Great "Run Your Car On Water" Scam

 

Recent Columns

High-level idiocy
Bureaucrats are renowned for not having the highest IQ or even a smidgen of commonsense...

Energy for Christmas
As I grow in age, maintaining energy becomes more of a problem...

Welcome, generation snowflake
I read a story on the tabloid site Stuff.co.nz this morning that made me feel more than a little cross...

Aussies get shafted
In what can only be described as an afront to the democratic process, Australia's parliament has...

The Gatwick drone returns?
Almost exactly six years ago, Gatwick airport in the UK was closed by what was reported to be a number of drones menacing the runway area...

Will our tech be any use in the wake of war?
Russia is manufacturing nuclear shelters at a high rate right now and Germany is...

Journalism? I don't think so
I recently tried to browse the news using a smartphone...

Western governments living in fear?
As I've reported in this column, a growing number of Western governments now seem to be increasingly...

Australia is F'd
It seems that Australian politicans have gone mad over censoring and restricting access to the internet...

Why is anyone surprised by this?
I live in a small New Zealand town called Tokoroa...