Children’s welfare groups slam net filters

Australian Sex Party tells politicians what it wants
November 20th, 2008

The Australian Sex Party (previous IPR coverage here) has now issued its policies:

    * To bring about the establishment of a truly national classification scheme which includes a uniform non-violent erotica rating for explicit adult material for all jurisdictions and through all media including the Internet and computer games.

    * To overturn mandatory ISP filtering of the Internet and return Internet censorship to parents and individuals.

    * To bring about the development of a national sex education curriculum for secondary schools as a first step in preventing the sexualisation of children.

    * To enact national anti discrimination laws which make it illegal to unfairly discriminate against people or companies on the basis of job, occupation, profession or calling.

    * To hold a referendum to create mandatory equal numbers of women in the Senate and State Upper Houses.

    * To enact national pregnancy termination laws along the same lines as divorce law — which allow for legal, no-fault and guilt-free processes for women seeking termination.

    * The listing of Viagra, Cialis and other drugs used to treat sexual dysfunction, on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.

    * To create total equal rights in all areas of the law for gay, lesbian and transsexual couples.

    * Ensure that the introduction of paid maternity leave is fair and equitable for small businesses.

    * Abolish sex slavery and sexual servitude by introducing non morality-based immigration policies that allow bona-fide sex workers to work legally in Australia.

    * Overturn racist laws that ban Aboriginal people from possessing erotic and sexual media in the Northern Territory.

    * Ensure the sexual rights and freedoms of the disabled and elderly in institutions.

    * Convene a Royal Commission into child sex abuse in the nation’s religious institutions.

    * Develop global approaches to tackling child pornography which focus on production of the material rather than its distribution.

    * Overturn restrictions on aid to overseas family planning organisations that reference abortion.

There was also a media release:

    Eros Launches The Australian Sex Party

    Amidst a rapidly changing political landscape and an increasing resistance to ‘nanny state’ politics, Australia’s national adult industry association will today announce details of a new force in the Australian political landscape – the Australian Sex Party. The party launch will be held in conjunction with the opening of Sexpo, Thursday 20th Nov, at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre.

    Eros CEO and party convenor, Fiona Patten, said the party was a sign of the times and an acknowledgement of the importance and scope of sexual issues in ordinary people’s lives these days. “People want their House of Reps members to balance the budget but increasingly they want their Senators to look after their rights and freedoms”, she said. “The Sex Party is the beginning of a new chapter in Upper House politics.”

    The party is a sex and gender party that will run candidates in the next Senate election and in some state Upper House elections over the next few years. Its first priority would be to alert Australians to the unprecedented censorship of legal material that Senator Conroy’s proposed internet filtering scheme represents. “Senator Conroy’s plans actually threaten the existence of the Sex Party online which represents a real challenge to political free speech”, she said.

    Ms Patten said that anti-sex politicians had managed to get themselves elected to key balance of power positions in the Senate and state Upper Houses for many years and had created a real climate of wowserism in Australian politics that was not shared by the community. “Community attitudes to sex and censorship have been shown over and over again by community opinion polling to be more relaxed than ever and yet in politics, the opposite is the case. When was the last time you heard a politician say something positive about sex?”

    She said the party would co-opt Australia’s 1,000 adult shops as individual branches of the party and the four million Australian adults identified in the La Trobe University’s Sex in Australia survey (2006) who regularly purchased X rated films, vibrators, adult books and lingerie, would make up its initial audience.

    She said that discrimination against sex industry workers and companies was rife in the community and that the party would work to replicate ACT laws which outlawed job and occupation discrimination. “The Victorian government and the Melbourne Exhibition Centre Board have thrown Sexpo out of the MEC next year because they don’t want to offend overseas countries who are shy around sex and want to hire another part of the building”, she said. “Why should 70,000 ordinary Victorians miss out on their show because 100 Indonesian dentists or a thousand Iranian potters want the building. Its discrimination on the basis of profession and occupation and it should not be allowed to happen in a free country.”

    Fiona Patten: 0413 734 613 www.sexparty.org.au info@sexparty.org.au

SYDNEY, Australia: The name may seem like a joke, but the Australian Sex Party is serious — serious about sex, according to their slogan.

The country’s newest political party is also serious about a number of other issues: quashing a government proposal for a national Internet filter that would block 10,000 Web sites; instituting a new national sex education curriculum; and pushing for the legalization of gay marriage.

The party — launched Thursday at Sexpo, an annual sex exhibition in Melbourne — has already gathered the required 500 members and plans to register with the electoral commission next week.

“We’re concerned about the Australian government becoming a nanny state, and about this conservative creep in politics,” party convener and Eros head Fiona Patten told The Associated Press by phone.

Patten called the federal government’s proposal for an Internet filter “the last straw.”

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy told Parliament earlier this month that his mandatory Internet filter would block 10,000 Web sites on a government blacklist of “unwanted content,” including sites showing child pornography, excessive violence, drug use or instructions in criminal or terrorist acts.

But Patten said the filter targets a far wider range of sites.

“If they were aiming to block child pornography, no problem,” she said. “But they’ve identified any adult site, things like playboy.com, a site that shows material that you can buy in a news agency or rent or buy in an adult video shop. It was an incredible shift back 30 years.”

The Australian Christian Lobby has already condemned the Sex Party.

“Pornography and prostitution do enormous damage to women and children, and the idea of mainstream political parties giving this trade seats in our nation’s parliaments … would offend the sensibilities of most Australians who believe women should be respected,” the lobby’s Managing Director Jim Wallace said in a statement.

The party, whose slogan is “We’re serious about sex,” plans to run candidates in Senate and state upper house elections.

Australia’s copyright police have used the cover of the internet filtering debate to launch a surprise attack on ISPs, with seven movie houses filing an action against progressive ISP iiNet – claiming it harbours pirates.

The action against iiNet was filed in the Federal Court today by Village Roadshow, Universal Pictures, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox and Disney, as well as the Seven Network.

The companies want an order forcing iiNet to prevent its customers from engaging in copyright infringement over its network and are expected to claim damages. It’s a move that’s likely to send a chill through Australian internet service providers who already have their hands full with the Federal government’s plans for force them to implement mandatory ISP-level content filtering.

iiNet is one of Australia’s largest ISP and no stranger to controversy, with managing director Michael Malone recently volunteering to participate in the internet filtering trials just so the ISP can help point out how stupid the idea is. You don’t need to be a conspiracy nut to question the timing of this week’s legal action – coordinated by the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT).

There’s an old saying; my enemy’s enemy is my friend. Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, is facing an uphill battle to implement his mandatory ISP-level filtering, which critics say is unworkable and heavy-handed censorship which has the potential to be abused. The plan’s conservative supporters in the Senate are already calling for the filtering to be expanded to encompass “illegal” content. ISPs such as iiNet are leading the fight against the plan. iiNet has also publically slammed the federal government’s efforts to build a National Broadband Network.

Meanwhile the Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft is facing an uphill battle to stop Australians downloading copyrighted material via peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent. AFACT and its supporters want ISPs to monitor their customers’ usage and enforce copyright law, a job ISPs say is best left to the police. The head of the Internet Industry Association, Peter Coroneos, has been previously quoted as saying ISPs won’t step in unless forced to do so by law.

With the copyright police and the moral minority in the Senate attacking ISPs on two fronts, it forces ISPs to divide their efforts between two fights. Should Conroy get his internet filtering wish, you can bet AFACT will be first in line calling for the plan to be expanded to encompass illegal movie downloads. At this point ISPs will have no choice but to comply, and thus be burdened with the task of censoring what all Australians can do online.

Expect Australia’s ISPs to circle the wagons and plan an orchestrated response to this two-pronged attack designed to hit ISPs when they’re most vulnerable.