How’s the cheek of the Liberal Party accusing the government of undermining electoral integrity?

Senator Michael Ronaldson, the Shadow Special Minister of State, said that the fact that there were 1.2 million “missing” voters not on the electoral roll was a national disgrace.

[...]

“The failure of Labor to fix this problem shows that they are not serious about the integrity of the electoral roll. The scope for fraud, multiple voting and stolen elections just seems to keep increasing under Labor.

“And it is no wonder that Labor don’t care. In Queensland, Mr Rudd’s home state, the ALP made an art form out of rorting, with several prominent Labor people being found guilty of electoral fraud by the courts.

The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) today admitted that ‘over 1.2 million Australians are missing from the electoral roll’ and that they would be writing to where they think about half that number may be living.”

That’s a pretty serious accusation there, Senator. Are you sure you want to accuse the government of deliberately trying to influence election outcomes? Besides from the fact that it’s extremely unlikely that the AEC’s day-to-day operations would be influenced by the government, how exactly has the Labor government changed the way that the AEC handles the electoral roll since their victory in late 2007?

Senator Ronaldson reckons that there needs to be an overhaul of AEC operations to strengthen our democracy.

“The Rudd Labor government must now act to end this national disgrace. The AEC needs more resources, better data collection and tougher laws – including dramatically higher penalties for those who fail to enrol correctly.

“We also need laws which will make people show ID when they go to vote, to prevent people fraudulently impersonating other people.”

Of course, Senator Ronaldson’s mob had eleven years to end this national disgrace given that the same weaknesses in the system existed during Howard’s reign, but what did the Liberals do instead to strengthen democracy? Not a peep about higher penalties for false enrollments or a need for ID when voting, instead they introduced legislation to disenfranchise first-time youth voters and prisoners in the name of electoral roll integrity. Voters who tend to vote Labor, completely coincidentally.

The Liberal Party recently launched a website that aims to expose alleged examples of Labor government waste. LaborWaste.com is a half-arsed Web1.3 attempt to highlight “examples of Labor Government waste, inefficiency and mismanagement”, and smear Kevin Rudd as a chronic abuser of taxpayer money.

When I first looked at the website last night I noticed a disclaimer line in the footer that said something along the lines of “no taxpayer money is spent on the operation of this website.” This troubled me because the Coalition Labor Waste Committee is made up of Senators and MPs whose salaries are paid by the taxpayer. And the staffers in those Senators’ and MPs’ offices are taxpayer funded. And the material on the website is sourced from “press releases, the parliamentary process and general research” that surely involves the work of those staffers.

So this afternoon I headed back to LaborWaste.com to get a screenshot of the disclaimer line for this post, only to find that it had magically disappeared overnight.

Thank Ceiling Cat for Google cache.

The Editor, John Surname, Ant Rogenous, Keri and Craig discuss:

* Turnbull pegs Nelson for the Liberal leadership — full GrodsCoverage
* Is the ALP pegging itself at the state level?
* TardWatch

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How long will it take the ALP to activate its dormant turnbullfacts.com smear site?

And make sure you check out the now-historical nelsonfacts.com site before it’s archived.

Oh, the hilarity.

The Federal Opposition wants Prime Minister Kevin Rudd to use his upcoming meeting with United States President George W Bush to lobby the US to sign up to the Kyoto Protocol.

Bwah! Ha, ha, ha!

Mr Rudd arrives in Washington this morning… Opposition climate change spokesman Greg Hunt said Mr Rudd should… urge the US to follow Australia’s lead and sign Kyoto.

“When George W Bush came to Sydney they forgot to raise climate change,” he told Channel Seven.

“They” forgot to raise climate change? “They”? Is this “they” the ALP who were then in opposition and completely powerless to implement policy? And Greg Hunt is criticising them for not discussing Kyoto with Bush last year? (Actually, maybe Hunt was at the time all too aware that his joke of a Party were dead in the water come November.)

Is this the Greg Hunt that is a member of the party that was in power for eleven long years and never once put the word on the USA to sign Kyoto despite the close personal relationship between its leader and the US President?

Besides from being a Herculean backflip this is just further repudiation by the Liberal Party of everything that John Howard stood for and his policies driven by personal ideology.

The Editor, John Surname, Ant Rogenous, Jeremy Sear, Wah and Craig discuss the following:

* Blogging
* Kevin Rudd’s first 100 days
* The Liberal Party
* Brendan Nelson
* Interest rates
* Cricket
* The Herald Sun
* David Hicks
* Dick Smith
* Osama Bin Laden
* Prince Harry
* Connex
* Lynne Kosky
* Public transport
* Victorian Labor Party
* Fleshlight
* What is the plural of “penis”?
* Liberal leadership future

** I don’t know why but that bloody “Play now” link is still serving up episode four. I have no solution yet. Something to do with the intertubes broken or something. Just to be safe, use the “Play in popup” link or the “Download” link. **

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In July the new Senate will sit and the Labor government is facing trouble in the Upper House where their 32 Senators are significantly outweighed by the 37 coalition Senators. The five Greens are sure to side with the ALP on most issues, bringing the numbers of the loose “left” coalition up to 37 Senators — an even match with the Libs and the Nats. That leaves two men sharing the balance of power in Australia’s Upper House: South Australian independent Nick Xenophon and Family First’s Steve Fielding. That means that the Pentecostal Church, through Steve Fielding, holds the balance of power in Australian politics on the back of 53,302 Victorian votes. Ain’t democracy grand?

So there’s no doubt that Kevin Rudd and Labor strategists are willing to try almost anything to secure Fielding’s vote in the Senate to ensure the smooth passage of their legislation. But isn’t it a bit rich to simply implement one of Family First’s policies (PDF)?

Family First: FAMILY FIRST believes that, as a first step, we should filter the worst sites at the ISP level

ALP: [ALP] Senator Conroy says it will be mandatory for all internet service providers to provide clean feeds, or ISP filtering, to houses and schools that are free of pornography and inappropriate material.

Family First: FAMILY FIRST proposes a system that allows adults who want pornography to ‘opt in’

ALP: Senator Conroy says anyone wanting uncensored access to the internet will have to opt out of the service.

There is so much wrong with this absurd policy that I don’t know where to start. Most of these things have been covered adequately in other places around the (currently un-censored) intertubes so I might just focus on two things:

1) How dare the government try tell me what I can and can’t look at on the internet? And even if I get on the phone to my ISP and demand to be removed from this ludicrous scheme, how dare they slow down my internet feed even more than it already is because everything needs to get checked against a massive blacklist of “inappropriate” sites?

2) The filter will block arbitrarily chosen websites on a static government blacklist. (Who decides what’s “inappropriate” anyway? Oh, that’s right — the Pentecostal Church.) Despite the fact that no blacklist in the world can ever contain every website that contains a single pornographic image, will the filter block Google to stop kids from clicking on this? Will it block Flickr to stop kids from signing up for a free account and searching for this? Will it block websites that aren’t pornographic but are dangerous to the minds of all sane and free-thinking humans?

Basically the filter will cost massive amounts of money, will slow down everyone’s internet feed, and won’t stop kids from seeing pornography. But it will make Steve Fielding feel all good and righteous and encourage him to return the ALP’s favour sometime later this year.

I hope Steve Fielding enjoys his three years as de facto Prime Minister because in 2010 he and his disgrace of a political party are going to disappear from the Australian political scene forever. They’ll make One Nation look mainstream.

I’ve long banged on about the government’s moral flexibility and hypocrisy when it comes to the issue of the death penalty. They don’t support it in this country, they don’t support other countries executing Australian citizens, but they do support other countries executing their own citizens or deposed leaders.

So I have nothing but praise for the ALP’s announcement that it will be morally consistent in opposing the death penalty across our region, even if that means opposing the execution of the Bali bombers. A gutsy and principled move.

UPDATE (12:30pm): Oh, for fuck’s sake. No sooner had I posted this piece of praise for the ALP…

Federal Labor leader Kevin Rudd has criticised his foreign affairs spokesman Robert McClelland over a speech which was critical of the Government’s approach to the death penalty.

Mr McClelland last night said Prime Minister John Howard supported capital punishment for an Indonesian terrorist, but he pushed for Singapore to spare the life of an Australian drug trafficker in 2005.

Kevin Rudd says terrorists should rot in jail and a Government led by him would only intervene diplomatically to try to save the lives of Australians sentenced to death overseas.

“I think as we approach the fifth anniversary of the Bali bombings I believe that the speech delivered last night was insensitive in terms of its timing,” he said.

“I’ve indicated that to Mr McClelland this morning and he concurs with that judgement.”