Australian Sex Party Live Blog | Daily Telegraph Your Say Blog

Fiona Patten
Monday, November 17, 2008 at 12:14pm


The Australian Sex Party convenor Fiona Patten is live online Tuesday at 9am to discuss the party’s formation to fight censorship and Internet filtering. Send questions below.
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By Fiona Patten

In 1999 John Howard’s Communications Minister, Richard Alston, banned phone sex in Australia on the premium rate, 1900 network. They also banned Australian adult web sites from setting up and being hosted in Australia. A few years later Howard was successful in further restricting what could be shown in an X rated film. All of these actions were precipitated by Howard as means to secure Senator Harradine’s balance of power vote in the Senate for the sale of Telstra and the passing of the GST.

Ten years on and Kevin Rudd’s Communications Minister, Steven Conroy, wants to take censorship of the internet much further by forced filtering of internet Service Providers a la China and Iran. And it’s no coincidence that Family First now hold a balance of power position in the Senate. Fred Nile presides over a similar position in the NSW.

R Rated computer games are banned in Australia because one religious South Australian Attorney General has vetoed all the other state attorneys.

This has to stop. Australia is not a nation of wowsers and prudes. Attitudes to sex and censorship in the community are more relaxed than ever before. Just not in the parliaments. And the parliamentary systems that allow religious individuals to hold the rest of the nation to ransom on moral issues must be reformed before we all look like Indonesia or Iraq.

Enter the Australian Sex Party.