They just put their own political skins ahead of good government and passed a law that they knew was flawed. There's been no mention of the touted amendments to fix it, as there is a federal election looming and if either side of politics proposes an amendment, the other will take the opportunity to manufacture a scare campaign and score political points.
Actually they voted on the promise from the Libs that the amendments they proposed would be revisited in 2019, just to make Australia safe over Christmas. Which is somehow even more boneheaded than unanimously agreeing.
Labor had a series of sensible amendments that would have diminished the opportunity for any government to abuse this silly legislation. I think trying to equate both parties is disingenuous and wilfully ignores a mountain of context.
I can't believe someone actually bought that line. It's an obvious soundbite to make people ignore what they did, just like when they say "we did it for the children."
We don't need to "reserve judgement until then". We already know they don't plan on repealing the bill in any meaningful way. They also gave up on creating a new interim bill because "the police wouldn't have access to these powers over summer", which is an even worse excuse than the one that they don't have access for Christmas. These excuses all sound made-up, and like they weren't even trying.
Labor did make Liberals compromise on one thing - not allowing the anti-corruption agency access to this power. I guess they gladly "fell on their sword" for that one, huh? This is such a joke, I can't believe people actually take their excuses at face value. There must be bigger partisanship in Australia than I thought, which make people ignore this.
Also, 99% of the public comments were against this bill, and Labor ignored that, too. But, ultimately, if Labor did actually believe they were "keeping people safer over Christmas" with this bill which had no debate and was passed at night, then that just shows extreme weakness to compromising.
Will they pass any bill the other parties want to pass as long as they threaten Labor with accusations of "not wanting to keep people safe"? Is that how weak of a party they are, that they can't find real arguments against what that is a baseless accusation meant to cause misdirection?
One more thing, Australia just became the first western country to allow encryption backdoors, something all security experts have been warning is a very bad, terrible idea, that will both destroy the security of the systems in which those backdoors exist and hurt the tech economy. Even if you believe that Labor's action was genuine, does that really not sound like something you would want your party to "fall on its sword" over?
But again, their excuses make no sense, especially in the light of them actually fighting Liberals on disallowing the powers to be used against politicians.
> Other than political suicide over an issue that 99.99% of Aussies couldn't formulate a coherent argument around, what could Labor have done?
So "99.99% of Aussies" don't care that their software industry (or at least, security-related stuff) gets destroyed, and Australian engineers etc become unemployable?
It just passed the Senate. But even if it hadn't passed, the problem was that Labor (to non-Aussies: the opposition) voted for it unanimously. Only two MPs voted against it in the House of Representatives (Andrew Wilkie [Independent] and Adam Bandt [Greens]).
This is, at best, a very fringe issue for the voting public. That's sad, and I'm disappointed that it's turned out this way, but seriously, it is the only sane position for Labor to take right now. You can't affect much change from the cross bench and Labor are poised to win in a landslide. Politically it makes no sense to make this an issue. You know it and I know it. Other than political suicide over an issue that 99.99% of Aussies couldn't formulate a coherent argument around, what could Labor have done? And be realistic in your rebuttal. Dying on their sword only to potentially lose the coming election is idiotic, and irrational, regardless of what we, the tech literate think about the issue.
For the record, the Greens are the only major party to oppose this overreach. (Major in the sense that they are the 3rd largest party outside of the ALP and the Liberal parties, and larger than the National party.[*])
From the article:
Green Senator Lidia Thorpe described the bill as “terribly flawed” and “problematic”, cited comments in the Richardson review that existing powers were adequate, and criticised the lack of time to consider the government’s amendments.
“Unsurprisingly, the two major parties are in complete lockstep with each other and they are leading us down the road to a surveillance state,” she said.
I had considered that, which points to some serious issues with what dirt on they have on politicians to give them that leverage. I wish I could ignore traffic laws as it would make the morning commute shorter, but the laws on due process are there for a reason.
As for Labor, Bill Shorten may as well be a Liberal, though I would have thought Pilbesek would have been more vocal in questioning whether it was necessary. I suspect the Royal Commission into Union funding plays heavily on the level of Labor opposition.
The Greens at least opposed it, but this legislation is a bigger threat to them along with their supporters. It will be interesting if they start branding activists as terrorists and whether it has a chilling effect on groups with serious numbers like GetUp who are a major thorn in the government's side.
They portray this as being in response to the latest terrorism news, but I suspect its drafting began at least 12 months ago.
The really concerning part is that legislation of this nature often receives bipartisan support in the Australian parliament. I don't recall if it was this bill or a different one, but the opposition released a strongly worded statement saying "we have concerns with this legislation", then voted for it ASAP. A thinner fig leaf of an excuse I have yet to see in politics.
Why would Labor winning change anything? Labor have voted for every single piece of surveillance legislation tendered over the last decade. The AA Bill, metadata retention and more. They voted for it all. They are vehement supporters of surveillance state policies and have voted for it -- repeatedly.
Scomo is a political dead man walking and the news that day was mostly about his failure to get legislation through parliament. Another failure would have highlighted this more, potentially even bought down the government.
Shorten/Labor let it through because they support it and won't look at it next year. We judge them on their actions not their vague promises.
Yes, like most bills passed in the technology space in Australia, the politicians have no idea what they're asking for and its implications, and neither do the ones voting on it.
In application, it may be half-assed anyway. The worst part is that it set precedent for the world to follow.
>There is a bipartisan consensus on security and other matters in Australia.
Unfortunately, in this case, all the experts (and commenters here) seem to be in agreement that security has been significantly weakened by bringing in these laws.
No idealism here mate, we are accusing the Labor party of lying about their motives and reasoning. This bill was bipartisan (shame on both their houses and all that).
Saying they would "die on their sword" is wrong. Nobody would care if they said "we're waiting 6 months because we want time to debate". They do that sort of thing all the time, doesn't raise a blip. This is a fringe issue! Nobody understands or cares about cybersecurity, that is the only reason that they can get something like this passed.
To claim the Liberals would run a scare campaign is one of the most baldfaced lies since "I thank the honorable [opposition] member for their question" in parliamentary Question Time. Scare campaigns don't need to be run based on facts, politics has moved beyond that. If a scare campaign is in the works it will go ahead regardless. Labour are still going to get called soft on crime if the Liberals think it will win them votes.
Have you got a source for this? I read (can’t remebemer where, sorry) that most Greens senators voted against it. From memory, Di Natali and SHY were in the list.
The legislation was waved-through by Labor because there is an election coming up and they were afraid to be labelled as pro terrorists and child molesters.
They voted for it to cover Bill's ass on the last day of parliament and 2 weeks of Dutton and ScoMo getting dumb people scared about Xmas.
The amendments to this stupid act do gut a lot of the stupidities (not completely), so the pressure now is to make this (and the Nauru re-settlement) the only thing that the ALP allows on the first days of parliament next year.
Write to your MPs, the shadow ministers and the cross bench.
Writing to the LNP politicians is a pointless exercise.
I disagree because 1)
Bill Shorten goaded the PM to stay late at parliament and pass the bill “to protect Australians” with no amendments on a vague promise.
2) those with courage resign and sit on the cross bench (as we have seen recently).
This is a pretty misleading comment that ignores much of the context of the vote as well as the different parties that vote for it. It's easy to point to the vote totals of two parties (missing out the Greens and Nationals votes of course, because that doesn't fit the narrative) and skip the months of complaining from the Liberal Party before they demanded an antiquated and expensive (AU$80 million) plebiscite. The Liberal Party was forced by the voters to pass this amendment, and they certainly didn't do it without a fight.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/bill-shorten-says-la...
They just put their own political skins ahead of good government and passed a law that they knew was flawed. There's been no mention of the touted amendments to fix it, as there is a federal election looming and if either side of politics proposes an amendment, the other will take the opportunity to manufacture a scare campaign and score political points.
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