At the 24 November 2007 federal election the Family First Party ran 129 House of Representatives and 23 Senate candidates, according to Senator Steven Fielding's website.
According to the Australian Electoral Commission website, Fielding was the only Family First candidate actually elected.
One would think that this might indicate to both parliament and government that the majority of the national electorate had rather convincingly rejected Family First's political philosophy.
One would also think that other senators would recall that Fielding's avowed aim is to act as a 'spoiler' in the Senate.
So it came as a rather rude surprise when Crikey reported the following yesterday.
Bernard Keane writes:
Steve Fielding, the Senate choice of 1.88% of Victorians, is obsessed with p-rnography. Since he arrived in Canberra, no Estimates session has been complete without Fielding earnestly declaring that Australian families weren't safe from the flood of p-rn ready to roll out of their PCs. His greatest direct contribution to public policy since he was "elected" was to badger the Howard Government into wasting tens of millions of dollars on the ludicrous Netalert internet filter scheme.
Now he has managed to impose the views of his bizarre monotheistic cult on other Senators and their staff. Since 28 March, Senators have been prevented from accessing "inappropriate" internet content at the request of Senator Fielding, who has convinced Senate President Alan Ferguson to impose the same filter as that in place for bureaucrats, though not the Parliamentary Library.
Accordingly, anything related to s-x, drugs, weapons or other "inappropriate content", regardless of what it actually is, is blocked.
Senator Lyn Allison has written to Ferguson demanding to know why Fielding was permitted to impose his own reactionary view of the online world on other Senators, who determines what is "inappropriate" and how Senators are supposed to do their job properly.
Allison reels off a number of topics now blocked by the Fielding Filth Filter: reproductive health; s-xualisation of children; drug abuse and rehabilitation, the opium crop in Afghanistan, weapons trading – all issues of legitimate interest to those engaged in the policy process, and all now blocked as "inappropriate".---
The only available evidence that any politician has been using the Parliament House network to look for inappropriate content comes from the culprit himself – Senator Fielding, who last year boasted of his ability to obtain p-rn from his Parliament House computer---
Reporters Without Borders offers tips for those lucky souls still outside the Fielding-Ferguson-Conroy butterfly net who want to remain free to research, post and comment.
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