Week 8 Task: Political Participation

Part 1: Sign an e-petition

One of the few socio-political injustices I feel really strongly about, even though no amount of e-petitioning can correct it since the West Memphis Three have been incarcerated for over 15 years, it was the first thing that came to mind when I thought of something to e-petition. Here is the link to my direct petition, through the 'SAVE DAMIEN ECHOLS & THE WM3' project.

Part 2: Respond to a professional blogger at a major news site

I went onto Crikey.com, which is considered to be Australia's leading independent online news-site, and found a vast array of professional blogs. The blog I chose to respond to was Pure Posion, comprised of a team of 4 key bloggers (or writers, if you will) who for lack of a better word, scrutinise any Australian mainstream media journalist they deem to be intellectually dishonest. This current blog was regarding the "Hey, Hey, It's Saturday" skit that was deemed as racist and insensitive, my response:

'Front page of ‘The Age’ online

verbatim:“Hey Hey blackface skit frontman says sorry. He’s a top plastic surgeon – and of Indian heritage.”

Does ‘The Age’ mean that Australians of Indian heritage can’t be racist? I’m not sure'

Part 3: What is Barak Obama up to today (7/9/10)?

Today, President Obama was at the White house, to present recipients of this year's National Medal of Science and National Medal of Technology with their awards. Just looking through the first few pages of this blog (the offical White House blog- updates as often as 3 to 4 times a day), I realised just how busy Obama is on constant day to day basis. The number of hands he shakes and photos he poses for must be insane.

Part 4: Find out who your local, state and federal representatives are

I live in Molendinar, so my Local representative is Councillor Dawn Crichlow, OAM
I live in Queensland, so my State representative is Peter Lawlor
And since I live in a the division of Moncrieff, my Federal representative is Mr. Steven Ciobo MP

Part 5: Look up the Queensland or Australian hansard to find the last time your local member spoke in parliament

Woah. I found it difficult to figure out how to navigate the Queensland hansard and find out when the last time Peter Lawlor spoke in parliament. So instead, I figured that I'd have a good chance of getting this information via Peter Lawlor's own website. And I did: located in a section of his website entitled "Parliamentry Speeches", there was a listing of his speeches, the most recent being on the 22nd of September. Asked a question without notice regarding a goverment-funded trip (excess of $50,000) to the Cannes Film festival for the director of Tourism Queensland, Mr.Lawlor replied: 'The simple fact of the matter is that that
campaign that cost $2.9 million is estimated to have benefited the Queensland tourism industry by in excess of $330 million.'

It's a good comeback but it's probably very good political spin.

What do you think of the Australian Government's plans to censor the internet (the so-called "Clean Feed")???

Simply, I think that such plans would never be able to work. Even if such a censorship was put in place, people would find ways to buck the system and access uncensored information anyway.
Plus, by restricting or banning certain sites, the government would only raise more public-interest into why these sites were banned in the first place. It's like only wanting to see something just because you're not allowed, more than the actual interest in what's to be shown.
If Australia wants to consider itself a democracy, than any censoring of internet, of free press and media, is totally undemocratic. But like I said before, I highly doubt that these plans for a Clean Feed will be passed through Parliament anytime soon.