Politics – Keep your click pure

Once more South Australia has come to Election Time. You can hear the people cheering throughout our state... Can't you? Well, actually no, you can't. Why? It's like a friend told me “Why vote, it just encourages them”.

I'm a big believer in democracy, in the right of individual determination through the collective. Still, I just can't seem to get enthusiastic about an election that offers little hope of positive change. In South Australia, we have a range of professional politicians who play to the media talking loud without saying anything.

The current administration has made many promises over the last eight years (is it really that short a time, it feels longer), very few of which have come to fruition. Soon enough they will start again.

One of the politicians that has really got under my skin the last few years is Michael Atkinson, Minister for Justice and the Attorney-General. Atkinson has spent a great deal of time trying to censor adult South Australians and restrict their access to such things as the internet, entertainment and anonymous political discourse.

There has been a push to have computer games classified in the same manner as film and literature, which Atkinson has opposed. He has pushed for a law to deny the right to anonymity when making political statements on the internet which he has promised to repeal after the election. It is just another case of our politicians not living in the current age of Information Technology and Exchange.

With the computer game ratings, it's another thing altogether. There has been a push from the gaming community to have an R18+ rating added to allow for some games that are available internationally to be made available in uncensored form in Australia. I don't understand the opposition to this, movies have had it for years and the rules on what is and is not acceptible under these ratings has changed over the decades.

The thing I find funny about the use of ratings and the availability of films with adult clasifications is that once classified it should be up to parents to control the information flow of these materials to their children. When I was younger, my father used to regularly hire R18+ movies for me to watch so long as he deemed the content appropriate. In this regard I was given a pretty wide range as his rule was “Anything but pornography”. This meant that in those formative years I saw a grand selection of films that were deemed unsuitable for my age group. Am I psychopathic, homocidal, suicidal? Do I beat on people (man, woman or child), rape, pillage, etc? The answer is no. I hold a steady job, pay my bills on time, have a credit rating, maintain a household, have a long term relationship, pay my taxes, etc. I am a contributing member of society at large that puts as few stresses on the system as possible. So, where is the damage caused by the movies I have seen and the games I have played?

I firmly believe that the politicians need to grow up a bit and start living in the real world. Each day the media broadcast horrific images of violence, report on all manner of depravity and horror that is far worse than any fiction I have ever encountered. This is not to say we don't need a ratings system at all, just that it should be fair and equal across the board. It wasn't too long ago in our history that banning books was commonplace, burning books, records etc.

Which leads me onto the Clean Feed, the government (federal this time) and their intent to censor the internet in the name of Child safety. I'm all for Child safety, but this plan will do nothing to help and won't even do what is intended. The clean feed will be easily circumvented by those that want to do it. All the clean feed will do is interfere with my right to access information of my choosing. I don't go looking for the stuff the government wants to censor, and as such I don't find it, but I will be penalised for being a citizen.

There are a number of other ways in which children can be made safe whilst using the internet, the first of which is education. Educate the user and the parents. Put the responsibility back onto the parents for maintaining some discipline. Also, there are a range of programs that can be purchased that allow some censorship controls by the user. The government can make a deal with an already established company for this or develop their own and make it available to parents. Makes a hell of a lot more sense than blanket censoring the web for all users in an ill-conceived bludgeoning manner.

Has society broken down because (insert controversial book here) was written? Did a generation listening to (insert radical band here) bring the world to anarchy? Will the world be safer by individual governments attempting to censor the internet? Will paedophilia cease or be diminished by a clean-feed?

The answer is no.

And the thing that really gets me about all of this is supported by the majority. It makes me wonder what my vote really means, if anything at all.

Has our vote become diminished by these professional politicians serving their own ends (I'm not so idealistic that I believe they serve the people although I wish they would)? Is there a way to make them more accountable to the public?

Here's a hypothetical for the figments of my imagination that read this blog:
Would you trust politicians more if all their property was held in trust by the Public Trustee (or other body) whilst they served their term, linking the growth of their personal to the prosperity of the state?