news Greens Communications Spokesperson Scott Ludlam has described the Coalition’s new front bench as “technically illiterate”, in a wide-ranging speech in the Senate last week kicking off his campaign to be re-elected in the upcoming Senate by-election in Western Australia and attacking Prime Minister Tony Abbott over various tech-related issues, from Internet piracy to the National Broadband Network.
In early October, the Australian Electoral Commission announced that Ludlam had lost his seat in the September Federal Election, with the Palmer United Party winning a Senate seat, despite the Greens picking up 9.48 percent of the total vote and the PUP only winning 5 percent. A recount awarded Ludlam the seat again, but a decision by the High Court last month on the issue has forced Western Australia back into a new Senate election.
The election is being particularly closely watched by Australia’s digital rights community, due to Ludlam’s role over the past half-decade after he was elected in 2007 increasingly coming to focus on holding powerful government departments and law enforcement bodies, politicians, corporations and other groups to account for increasing privacy rights violations and the encroachment of telecommunications surveillance in the digital age. Ludlam has also been extremely active in the National Broadband Network debate.
In a widely reported speech delivered to a virtually empty Senate chamber that has been shared extensively via social media (watch it here on YouTube), last week Ludlam heavily criticised the current Federal Government and specifically Prime Minister Tony Abbott on a large number of issues.
Ludlam said it was “good to remember” that what he said was the Coalition’s lack of vision on a range of issues — from refugees to the constitution of the economy, to the renewable energy sector and the funding of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, was “temporary”.
“For anyone listening in from outside this almost empty Senate chamber, the truth is that Prime Minister Tony Abbott and this benighted attempt at a government are a temporary phenomenon,” he said. “They will pass, and we need to keep our eyes on the bigger picture. Just as the reign of the dinosaurs was cut short to their great surprise, it may be that the Abbott government will appear as nothing more than a thin, greasy layer in the core sample of future political scientists drilling back into the early years of the 21st century.”
Ludlam particularly highlighted issues of technology policy which have affected and will directly affect Australia’s technology sector, including both corporations and individuals.
Both the current Coalition and the previous Labor administrations have been negotiating with foreign governments on a secretive multinational trade agreement that threatens to extend what many see restrictive intellectual property (IP) laws across the globe and rewrite international rules on its enforcement.
Leaked draft texts of the agreement have previously shown that the intellectual property chapter would have extensive ramifications for users’ freedom of speech rights, right to privacy and due process, and could hinder innovation. The process of the TPP negotiations has been shrouded in secrecy and the full text of drafts of the proposed agreement has never been publicly released.
Similarly, Attorney-General George Brandis has recently raised the spectre of toughening regulations around Internet piracy again, despite international evidence that government sanctions on the issue, such as controversial “three strikes” policies, are not effective in stopping piracy.
“You may not believe this, Prime Minister, but your advocacy on behalf of foreign biotechnology corporations and Hollywood’s copyright-industrial complex to chain Australia to the Trans-Pacific Partnership has been noted,” Ludlam said. People have been keeping a record of every time you have been given the opportunity to choose between predator capitalism and the public interest, and it is bitterly obvious whose side you are on.”
Similarly, Ludlam criticised the Coalition front bench on issues related to Labor’s popular National Broadband Network project — which the Greens supported but the Coalition is drastically modifying — as well as the issue of Internet surveillance.
Several Coalition front bench Ministers, such as Brandis and Foreign Minister Julie Bishop have recently described NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden as a “traitor” to his home country of the United States for his revelations of widespread government surveillance by the agency, despite the fact that Snowden’s leaks have been welcomed by many.
The US Government has charged Snowden with espionage and theft of government property, but much of the international community, and even respected US politicians such as former President Jimmy Carter, have applauded his actions as both patriotic and also serving humanity. In addition, a number of legal challenges have already been mounted to the legitimacy of the spying programs in the US.
Most Western countries have set up inquiries into the extent of NSA spying on their citizens. In Australia, the Greens in December successfully moved a motion in the Senate to establish a formal inquiry into Internet surveillance, through a review that will take place into the controversial Telecommunications (Interception and Access) Act.
In addition, following the ongoing Snowden revelations, US President Barack Obama last week called for ending the government’s control of phone data from hundreds of millions of Americans and immediately ordered intelligence agencies to get a secretive court’s permission before accessing such records.
“As for the premeditated destruction of the NBN and Attorney-General George Brandis’s degrading capitulation to the surveillance state when confronted with the unlawful actions of the US NSA—even the internet is turning green, ‘for the win’,” Ludlam told the chamber.
“Geeks and coders, network engineers and gamers would never have voted Green in a million years without the blundering and technically illiterate assistance of your leadership team. For this I can only thank you.”
There have been several examples over the past several years where Coalition frontbenchers have displayed a lack of knowledge when it comes to the technology sector. For example, during the 2010 Federal Election campaign, Abbott declared he was “no Bill Gates” in a lengthy interview on the ABC’s 7:30 Report in which he appeared to display a lack of understanding of the Coalition’s new broadband policy at the time and repeatedly explained he was “no tech-head”.
In June 2012, then-Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey inaccurately claimed that 4G mobile broadband has the potential to be “far superior” to the fibre technology which Labor’s National Broadband Network policy features, in a controversial interview in which he also claimed that it could cost Australians up to $1,000 to connect to the NBN.
And in October that same year, then-Shadow Education Minister Christopher Pyne inaccurately claimed on national radio that the National Broadband Network has not connected any customers at speeds of 100Mbps, despite the fact that in fact, 44 percent of NBN customers connected so far to the project’s fibre infrastructure have taken up such speeds.
opinion/analysis
It is extremely common at this point for online commenters on technical forums such as Delimiter to express their opinion that Ludlam is one of the only politicians in Federal Parliament who understands technology and is willing to help his party form reasonable policies on technology-related issues. I certainly consider Ludlam a valuable asset to the Parliament because of this.
In terms of the other parties, Ludlam is correct that the Coalition front bench in general suffers a lack of understanding of technology, with certain exceptions such as Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull. In addition, even if the Coalition does understand technology, its policies in this area are generally extremely conservative or even commonly viewed as destructive (such as its current policy on broadband), rather than progressive as much of Australia would like.
Labor is a little better, in that it does have quite a few parliamentarians — Stephen Conroy, Kate Lundy, Ed Husic, Tim Watts and others — who really do understand technology very well. However, with the exception of the NBN policy, Labor has struggled to articulate good technology policy over the past half-decade.
It is for these reasons that Delimiter endorsed the Greens based on their technology policy for the September 2013 Federal Election. Little has changed since then, and we continue to recommend readers support the Greens with their vote, if they primarily vote on technology-related issues. If you vote on wider issues, of course, there are many other factors worth considering as you place your vote, and the Greens may not suit your views.
Image credit: Parliamentary Broadcasting
Voting for him for sure, and telling everyone I can to vote for him too.
Go Ludlam!
LNPMTMNBN – now with added green crayon!
Never voted Greens in my life, but I will be in this WA senate re-election.
I don’t know what is more of a concern, the fact that the Lib’s are ‘technically illiterate’ or the bureaucrats providing the briefs that form these strange distorted policies.
I will be again voting Ludlam.
I didn’t vote Ludlum last time, because I assumed he was safe. I won’t make that mistake again.
The pirate party has fielded two candidates for the senate election in WA, and it looks like they’ll have the greens as their first preference (though that’s not confirmed yet). Hopefully i’ll be able to support my personal favourite while still making sure Ludlum gets back into the position he needs to be in.
I have voted green ever since the NBN became a policy option. There were also the only major party to stand up for our citizens. They may have their extreme component but they certainly tick the boxes in the areas that matter to me.
Infrastructure (NBN, Bike Paths (good separation of people from cars), Public Transport), Peoples Rights (in particular Australians), Environment, the Economy, and generally acting in the best interest of Australians.
On all these points the LNP fail dismally. They dont just fail, they go beyond failure and rollback any good that has been done in most areas. The party that is “meant” to be better at managing our economy has done nothing but destroy since they came to power. Jobs are going backwards fast, our digital economy is not going to survive past this government, or will at minimum require a large investment to get us back to being a country that has a technology sector.
Labour is a little bit better but they have lacked governance in the past. Labour still dont seem to want to support peoples rights when put against other countries. They at least try to keep jobs in Australia.
I am thinking of moving to a nice country location and living off the government, that is where technology people will get equal pay with the outsourced IT departments. Lawyers and Accountants are running the country now, we are all doomed (Except the lawyers and accountants).
So I now advocate voting Greens to everyone I know.
If the Greens get more people of the same calibre as Scott, they’ll be a real force to be reckoned with…his biggest strength is he is ‘down to earth’ sensible, he needs to get back in because common sense is in very sort supply in Canberra.
Then you have to wonder why the ALP are going to be complicit in removing Ludlum, probably in favour of a more LNP friendly candidate…
http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/labor-unlikely-to-back-greens-in-was-senate-reelection-20140305-347ol.html
And apart from Ludlum, most of the rest of the greens are nutjobs. Brown at least had the force of personality to drive it, but Milne is a shrieking harpy who would serve the party by stepping aside for the likes of Ludlum.
When you look at effectiveness, the only name that keeps bobbing up in the greens is Ludlum, and unless the ALP decide to back him, he’s gone.
Simply because Ludlam is a threat to the status quo… you know Labor or Coalition… period.
Always said it, the only thing the two major entities hate more than each other (politically) is someone new who can upset everything! And having seen Ludlam’s speeches now, it is obvious that he and his intelligence is a breath of fresh air in comparison to the rest of the grubs we have to stomach.
So that obviously makes him doubly dangerous to both sides…
That and I assume that Labor is keen to drum up that their cutting ties w/ Greens on the supposed Labor and Green “coalition”.
Just to show that Labor is “just as tough!” as Liberals on “issues that matter!”
Labor is busy making themselves irrelevant in the modern political landscape. They had a chance to change when Rudd left, but they decided to stick with “LNP Lite”…
Maybe the movie “Idiocracy” wasn’t so far-fetched…?
+ a Gazillion
“technically illiterate”
I.M.O Being most kind and considerate, I am having difficulty finding where they have any areas of competence outside of ideological fervour and misinformation and FUD
Maybe they have some quality on the backbench, none on the front.
NZ is lucky, they have some quality, but then they were never cursed by Packer Media followed by The omniscient omnipotent Rupert’s Goebellian media – Sig Heil (check your history, the parallels are showing)
“technically illiterate”
I.M.O Being most kind and considerate, I am having difficulty finding where they have any areas of competence outside of ideological fervour and misinformation and FUD
Maybe they have some quality on the backbench, none on the front.
NZ is lucky, they have some quality, but then they were never cursed by Packer Media followed by The omniscient omnipotent Rupert’s Goebellian media – Sig Heil (check your history, the parallels are showing)
Rarely come to this website, but came here to say that Ludlam deserves our support as he has been trying to help us.
“with certain exceptions such as Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull.”
I don’t consider him an exception, he is as dumb as the rest of them, certainly has you fooled though.
Woo hoo vote green because they want the NBN!!!
Yes, let’s turn the whole country into a bigger version of Tasmania!!! The Greens have turned that into a mega succes……….oh wait……Tasmania is a complete basketcase!
From crikey.com.au (just so you can’t say it’s from an “evil” Murdoch paper)
Tasmania ranks at the bottom among Australian states on virtually every dimension of economic, social, and cultural performance: highest unemployment, lowest incomes, languishing investment, lowest home prices, least educated, lowest literacy, most chronic disease, poorest longevity, most likely to smoke, greatest obesity, highest teenage pregnancy, highest petty crime, worst domestic violence. It seems not to matter which measure is chosen, Tasmania will likely finish last.
Yeah vote Green to get FTTH but judging by their record with the rest of their policies, you won’t get it!
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