Thoughts from the Train - The Dawn Chorus

Well, it's ten to seven in the morning, and I'm on the train to Sydney so I thought I would put some thoughts down.

Ding dong the witch is dead, or is she?

Last week, the Coalition finally announced their position on the Labor party's mandatory ISP filter, stating that they would oppose it or scrap it depending on whether they won or lost the election. This caused much celebration and crowing on the twitters, with many declaring the filter proposal dead, buried and cremated. "Huzzah!" they declared, "the witch is dead!".

Except of course the witch isn't dead yet.

All of those celebrating today seem to have forgotten their recent history. The filter proposal that the Labor party took to the 2007 election was an opt-in model with a much tighter purview, it was only after the election that it expanded to the beast we see today. Given that the Coalition  is the party that brought the phrase "Non-core promise" to the national language, what insurance do we have that the Coalition won't change their mind after the election? 

I'm going to hold off on the dancing in the streets.

Mark Latham - This elections WTF

Seriously, channel 9, do you even care about being taken seriously anymore?

There was an excellent question in last nights Q and A to Julia Gillard:

"How big a tool do you think that Mark Latham is?"

To which Julia Gillard answered reasonably well:

"There are some things that just can't be measured"

If 9 had any journalistic integrity left whatsoever they would be giving Latham the bums rush as soon as possible.

Family First - A tale of two candidates

Well hasn't the Family First twitter mess been interesting. Wendy Francis, Family First senate candidate for Queensland posted several tweets indicating that she thought that legalising gay marriage was tantamount to legalising child abuse. After copping a huge amount of flack, she pulled the tweets, but then gave an interview in which she stood by the statements and in fact went further, comparing the children of gay parents to the aboriginal stolen generation.

It went all down hill from there.

The national president of Family First tried to claim that a staffer posted the tweet, then Wendy denied that, stating she had posted it. Then of course the news had emerged that Family First had disendorsed a candidate for repudiating the views that Wendy Francis had been espousing.

Remember folks, these are the people that the Liberal party has deemed to be worthy of their first preference in the senate.

Well I'm about to hit the no signal zone so I'll sign off for now.