The Cattery

The Cattery

Now I'm Alarmed

21 September 2004
Filed under Politics, Text, The Interweb

A few weeks ago, my brother and I were discussing how nasty the connotations of the word 'family' are these days. We're lucky enough have a very nice, small, happy nuclear family, with the kind of setup that our beloved Prime Minister aspires to for the whole country: dad is the breadwinner, mum works from home and keeps everything nice, kids went all the way through (private) school with good results, blah blah blah. Which is fine for us, and we appreciate the benefits of a stable, happy family life, while noting that our friends who've come from (gasp) 'broken homes', or who have 'mothers who work full time' or who 'went to government schools' seem to have turned out fine.

But when you start getting political parties devoted, on the surface of things, to promoting families as "the foundation of society", while not far below the surface running the gamut of deeply conservative anti-choice, anti-homosexual right-wing Christian bigotry, and when those parties start to receive major party Senate preferences, the word 'family' starts to take on a much more sinister meaning.

In our upcoming election, the Family First Party will receive preferences ahead of the Greens from the Democrats in most states, and from the Labor Party (ALP) in some.* Without going into the vagaries of our Upper House's proportional representation system, this basically means that Family First stands to gain ACTUAL SEATS in the Senate. In the not-unlikely event that no party gains a clear majority, this could result in Family First pursuing legislative change in exchange for their Senate votes. Here's a quote from their "philosophy" that illustrates what might be on their agenda: "Family First will work to achieve Government commitment to establish a Mandatory Filtering Scheme at the ISP Server Level". Freaky. And you can be sure that it's just the beginning.

I'm alarmed, to say the least.

PS. I've written a slightly more pointed article on this subject for the Greens blog.

*For those unfamiliar with the Australian political landscape, the Labor Party (ALP) is our major opposition party, nominally left-wing but actually not really left-wing at all. The Democrats have been the third force in Australian politics since the early 1980s, often holding crucial Senate votes, but have imploded in the most extraordinary way over the last few years, and look likely to lose most of their vote in this election.

Views from the Floor

rach says:

What is a Mandatory Filtering Scheme at the ISP Server Level?

Virginia Murdoch says:

Well, it could mean anything really - but in this case, I suspect they mean that they want to be able to regulate what people look at on the internet - and make internet service providers do the dirty work of actually filtering out the illegal stuff. Only one step away from Big Brother, I reckon.

Anna Trahair says:

Hi Virg. Talk about Big Brother, this is how I keep up with what you are doing. But this Mandatory Filtering Scheme is enough by itself to keep me away from "Family First". There was a very good radio debate about ISP level filtering on the ABC - I think as part of National Science Week.. unfortunately I can't find a link for it. But filtering isn't very effective and would also slow down internet access - plus what should be on the filter list is very subjective. Lists on commercial filters are generally kept secret so nobody knows exactly what is being filtered. On the radio debate, there was some suggestion that there could be method of "opting out", but who wants to send something declaring "Yes I am an adult and I want to look at.. well, whatever I want on the internet" to the government? Why don't these people just put their own "family first" and install a filter on their computer? What.. is what other people do on their computers their business, just like what other people do in their bedrooms their business? Now that's perverted.

Jaycee says:

I'm glad I came across this blog entry. It's reminded me to have a look further into what Family First is. I suspect it's something I want to put towards the bottom of my voting list.

Comments are closed on this entry.

Edit Entry

Categories