Election 2010: Australian Sex Party positions

In the lead up to the August 21 Federal Election Computerworld Australia provides you with the ICT-related policy positions of a range of parties appearing on your ballot paper. Here, we speak to the Australian Sex Party's National President, and Senate candidate, Fiona Patten.

The National Broadband Network: It’s not enough or soon enough. The government really has to pull it’s finger out on this. I’m somewhat concerned over who will own the infrastructure (once it is completed) as it will be such an important part of our lives. We see it as a great and necessary infrastructure project, which not only helps us in business but also environmentally. (As well as potential consumer price increases once it is privatised) my concern would be access issues (parts of the NBN may be withdrawn if they are shown to be unprofitable).

Mandatory ISP-level Filter: We are absolutely opposed to it no uncertain terms. Certainly, when you consider the proposal, it is all about adult content. And I just think it is an anathema for Australians to have a government that keeps a secret blacklist. I don’t buy any of the arguments at all (about protecting children online) and there are far better ways to do it.

Data retention: Absolutely frightening. I thought a blacklist on the internet was bad, but this proposal is just taking us back to the dark ages. The thought that private companies would be required by the government to hold and store information about their customers to this degree is juts Orwellian. We need to look at security measures online and we need to fund organisations to do that. But, private companys, ISPs, holding personal information at the behest of government is not any form of a solution.

Education: The Australian Sex Party doesn’t have the resources to develop in-depth polices on education or the economics of computer rollouts (in secondary schools). We would certainly think it was a good thing, but we don’t have specific polices in that area.

Censorship: The different ranges of censorship for different types of technology [means] we need a total overhaul of the way we deal with classification and censorship in Australia. Currently how we censor a book is different to how we censor a film and how we censor a computer game which is different to how we censor the web. We need a total overhaul of that.

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