In which Puddlesofun posts every day for a week. Part 7.

Well, I haven't done a political rant yet. I'll skip over the whole police powers at APEC thing, and how they've been given laws that let them do whatever they want and get away with it, and how they've told all the inmates at Parramatta periodic detention centre they can have the weekend off, because we need all of that cellspace for hippies. It's been pretty well covered. Here's some other stuff, that I haven't seen much about in the media (although I don't watch TV, so who knows):

Did you know that Peter Costello has introduced legislation making people legally liable for profits lost as a result of boycotts? Which is to say, if I were to convince a bunch of people that, say, they shouldn't buy a particular brand of snack because I'd found out it's actually made out of crushed third-world baby skulls, the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission could sue me on behalf of SkullSnax Inc for any profits that they lost because of this. They could also sue any journalist who's report helped publicise my campaign.

So, you can have freedom of speech, if you're very rich.

Or, actually, not even then. Reporters without Borders recently rated Australia 35th in its press freedom index, lagging behind Ghana, South Korea and Bolivia. The NSW courts for instance have issued more than 1000 suppression orders in recent years, our Freedom of Information laws are a joke, and journalists can be prosecuted and jailed for refusing to reveal their sources.

We've never had any protections on freedom of speech in this country, but neither has any government gone as far out of its way to suppress it. It may be a pipedream, but I'd quite like some. Am I alone in this?

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Also, thanks for reading my schedule of daily ramblings, which I started on a whim and has been quite a lot of fun. Some interesting conversations have come of it. 'till next time...





O! the cheese!

Etc,

I wanted to take my Dad out, because he's a pretty good dad mostly, to see C.W. Stoneking. But apparently everyone likes the old-time blues this week, so it was sold out. Curse you, hipsters of Sydney! You are tearing my family apart!

And apparently I have blah disease, where I'm all up in my LJ going blah blah blah, and everyone is like, "I am so sick of that guy posting!" except the one person who is at work with nothing to do and is waiting for just anything at all to happen on the internet, and then I'm like all "blah blah blah," and they're like "phew! I almost had to do work during that 30 second period, but then they get bored again. Blah. Blah blah blah.