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Why the media love the Sex Party |
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Written by Free Beer Web Marketing
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Tuesday, 03 August 2010 19:48 |
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Free Beer Web Marketing
Last Thursday we launched the WA campaign for the Australian Sex Party. A good result; we got coverage in the daily paper, the talk radio station and two of three commercial TV stations.
I was struck by the high level of engagement by the media people who attended. Much nodding of heads when we spoke about 25 years of ludicrous censorship laws, the power of very conservative people in parliament and the need for more secular people to stand for election.
I asked Fiona Patten, the party leader, if this was typical of the response as she travelled the country and she said it was very much the case. It seems if the election were confined to members of the media, the Sex Party would form Government.
Why are the media (privately) so positive about the Sex Party? Clearly they are among the most politically engaged people in society. It would be interesting to test the proposition and research what is driving this. Here are my own speculations on the subject.
* People who have close access to what really goes on are not impressed by the nature of two party politics in Australia. This would follow naturally from cynicism in the media.
* The media, like the Sex Party, are frustrated that Australia lags in progressive social policy. This would result from idealism; another problem known to affect the media.
* The media dislike the narrow agenda that results from following the major parties. This would result from boredom :p
I think it would be a great tactic for one of the networks (and for our democracy) to publicly declare a Major Party Blackout Week during the election campaign and see what issues emerge. I suspect they would develop a far more interesting agenda and alter the course of the election.
Chances are slim. Today was the drawing of the ballot in all electorates; the only opportunity before the election for the media to gather all the candidates together in each constituency. In my electorate, Swan, no-one from the media attended. Neither did any media attend the draw of the Senate. They were all out following Julia Gillard. Boy, does that work – flying around the country visiting towns/cities for fractions of a day! The media might not like it, but they lap it up.
Source: freebeer.com.au
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Classification And Internet Censorship As An Election Issue |
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Written by Gizmodo | Fiona Patten
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Tuesday, 03 August 2010 19:41 |
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When was the last time someone went to jail in Australia for a censorship crime? 1870? 1926? 1947?
Try… May 2010.
That’s right. In May of this year, the NSW Labor government sent a 40-year-old gay adult-shop owner to jail for selling non-violent, erotic X-rated films. He has just been released and from all reports is a broken man.
Make no mistake about what really happened here. This man went to jail for selling films that had been classified by a federal Labor government as legal to sell, legal to purchase and legal to possess at a Commonwealth level. They were legal to bring into the country through Customs in Sydney and they were legal tender in western democracies around the world. But in the moral backwater that Australia has become since the mid 1980s, politicians are in our bedrooms like never before. The religious right have quietly transformed this once free nation into a country of censors and moral puritans.
Last week a 40-year-old Sydney woman who ran an adult shop in Sydney’s southern suburbs was hauled before a magistrate and fined $5000 for selling adult films that were legal at a federal level and was told by the magistrate that if she was convicted again she would immediately go to jail. This happened in a state where the Police Commissioner is a regular Hillsong Church worshipper and who recently ordered bibles to be printed with NSW Police monograms on them. Whatever happened to the notion of separation of church and state in Australia?
Last month, Australia’s largest producer of non violent erotica, a Gen Y Melbourne website operator called abbywinters.com, was convicted and fined for making X rated films by a state Labor government. He used Gen Y models who often filmed themselves in their own homes and many of these 18 -25 year old men and women received visits from the police in trying to convict the website operator. Rather than wait around for a jail sentence on a second offence and for proceeds of ‘crime’ legislation to bankrupt him, he packed up his entire business and staff and migrated to the Netherlands where his business is perfectly legal.
A couple of months ago the federal Labor government changed the Customs regulations to force people to declare whether they had any ‘pornography’ when returning to Australia. It didn’t matter if the material was legal. If you had anything that could possibly fit the definition of ‘pornography’ such as a Playboy magazine, a lesbian journal, a photo of your partner naked or, worse still, an image of the two of you making love on a mobile or a laptop, you had to declare it or risk prosecution. Customs officers now have the right to search your browsing history and iPhoto for the catch-all reason of investigating ‘pornography’.
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Political porn as the sun rises |
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Written by ABC The Drum Unleashed | Catherine Deveny
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Tuesday, 03 August 2010 19:35 |
ABC The Drum Unleashed | Catherine Deveny
Morning television is the intellectual equivalent of having Burger Rings, smokes and an asbestos bong for breakfast (a big hello Shane Warne if you're reading).
My firm belief as a professional in the area of "What I reckon based on no evidence or qualifications whatsoever" is that AM TV turns brains into lumps of ash coloured phlegm that smell like Laurie Oakes' crack. Let's not call it a belief but a hypothesis shall we? And while you're at it you can call me Professor.
Political porn's political porn, no matter how it comes. And considering the current poor grade of it, we're all chasing for a decent hit. As a welcome distraction from Gillard verses Abbott (AKA Same Car Different Model verses Similar Features Longer Hair) the promise of a bit of girl on girl action, bit of scratching and hair pulling dragged me from my slumber this morning. My kids thought I must have been going overseas. They'd only ever seen me up pre 8am when I was going on an international flight. Or I was coming home from a night of dirty martinis.
So there I was, at 7am on the couch watching Channel Seven's Sunrise strapped in for The Great Debate between Australian Sex Party's Fiona Patten and Family First's Wendy Francis hoping my brain wouldn't break. Apparently the deal with brain synapses is 'where it fires it wires'.
I'd be lying if I didn't say I had grave fears of even limited exposure to Sunrise transforming me into a pathologically outraged tabloid reading talkback caller, mouth breathing small minded swinging voter or a chinless, neckless blog troll. Yes I was risking my neural health, for you readers. Because I love you.
So the Sex Party verses Family First. The fornicators taking on the fundamentalists. The Whore verses the Madonna. Morning glory indeed. Game on moles.
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Comedian Austen Tayshus to contest Tony Abbott in Warringah for Australian Sex Party |
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Written by HeraldSun.com.au
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Tuesday, 03 August 2010 19:25 |
Be very afraid, Tony Abbott. Alexander (Sandy) Jacob Gutman is taking the gloves off.
"I'm changing my strategy," he said on Monday.
"So far I've been playing it pretty soft. From today, it'll be the real Austen Tayshus."
Gutman, the stand-up comic whose most famous creation is the provocative Austen Tayshus, is the Australian Sex Party's candidate in Warringah, the opposition leader's northern Sydney seat.
This is the first general election for the Sex Party - a strange combination of serious policy and in-your-face double entendre jokiness. It did run in the Bradfield and Higgins by-elections, winning nearly four per cent of the vote in each - enough to suggest it may have some influence in the Senate results.
Party president and Victorian Senate candidate Fiona Patten admits her party's name "didn't roll off the tongue so easily at first".
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ASP Ad Encouraging Young People to Enrol Goes Viral |
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Written by Rebecca Lanning
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Monday, 19 July 2010 13:26 |
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This ad we created to get young people to vote has gone viral on facebook and twitter.
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