The unfortunate fact of Australia’s history is that it was a completely authoritarian construct — citizens were prisoners and therefore free labour, and the ruling class had absolute authority in a way the oldest monarchies of Europe have since abandoned.

Dictatorial edicts from on high are therefore still possible, if mostly imprudent.

As for Atkinson, he will be reelected by his base if history is any indication, and he will not do as he now promises. This is a fake mea culpa designed to blow off the issue.

It is interesting that where anonymous commentary is allowed, it carries less weight with a lot of people because of the author’s unwillingness to own it. While those who forbid anonymous speech give it a weight and power it may or may not deserve.

–GimpWii

But this is a good start.

1) The law is still in effect, exposing his enemies.
2) To get rid of it, voters have to reelect Atkinson so he can keep his campaign promise of repealing the law.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_australia

I’m a Melbournian too. I get the impression that Adelaide has an ageing population, possibly due to many people in middle age leaving the city and returning when they retire, so I suppose politics follows the demographics.

The fact he is a member of the Labor party just goes to show they’re no different from the bible-bearing Libs after-all.

The sooner he’s gone, the sooner we’ll get a proper video game classification system. Or maybe not… Australia in general seems to be going down a fearful TSA-style censorship path.

@messiah,

Hmm sounds like Canada too, except if it aimed for zero unemployment, did they evict the unemployed?

Fascinating and progressive history, maybe a victim of its own success? I’ve often noticed that those who are progressive in their youth can be overtaken by the better society they create.

ie. Roddenberry’s 60s female captain vs. 90s male skirt
or Will & Grace’s ‘gays are people too’ vs. genuine acceptance

Sounds to me (from both far away and close) that Atkinson the individual is the biggest problem, universal veto the next.

–GimpWii

Errr, yeah, I guess… Still better than being founded by a pack of disagreeable religious fanatics, though.

—–

The funniest thing about the South Australian law was that the requirement for providing a name & address for all on-line comments on the election did not apply to “the publication in a journal (including a journal published in electronic form on the Internet) of a leading article”. (Yes, that’s right: bloggers, commenters, letter-writers – no anonymity; newspaper managers writing editorials: anonymity. Do what now?) I was waiting to see heaps of people claiming that their online musings were effectively the same thing as a “journal” editorial, and therefore had the same right to anonymity; it would have made some interesting test cases.

Actually, that’s the second funniest thing. The funniest is that this is the same government with the worst record for campaign donation transparency in Australia. So you can’t criticise political parties in SA anonymously, but you can buy them anonymously.