While Senator Ralph Babet sometimes says things that bring to mind the phrase ‘mad as a cut snake’, he is right in saying that “Instead of democracy, we have autocracy”, in his article about the 32 pieces of legislation rushed through the Senate “without even so much as a debate on them”.

We don't have an autocracy of course - power by a single dictator - we have a bunch of tinpot dictators, all seemingly sharing the one brain among them.

So, although we don't technically have an autocracy, we have been gradually getting something pretty damn close to it, result-wise: with our lockstep leftist major parties, and a political class that is more remote from, and out of step with Australians than ever before.

If the slippery bills were not debated, as Babet says, the Senate should not have passed them.

Senator Babet, not a career politician, believes that our parliamentary system “needs serious reform”. Hear hear!

A couple of his suggestions are:

. Ministers should not be Senators. How, he asks, can the Senate review legislation with any integrity when executive members of the government responsible for the legislation are part of the review?

. Parties should not be on how-to-vote cards, replaced with just the names a local representative who voters think will best serve them.

Good ideas from a politician, not just trying to keep his job, like most of them. He wants “ ….. Senators free to assess legislation on its merits rather than according to party allegiances”.

The Senate was supposed to be the states’ House.

(Source: ‘Spectator Australia’)

You think they're actually going to let the people decide anything?
- The apples become too rotten, the whole entire western political class do not represent their constituents.
We don't just need new ideas we need a full western overhaul.

Keir Starmer - Call for General Election petition now at 3 million signatures.
http://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/700143

Nigel Farage's Reform UK is gaining support.

3 million people calling for another election is just like calling for another referendum when the Brexit vote went the way they didn't want.

No sympathy for the Brits: they voted against the Tories for going too far Left by voting for a mob that is even further to the Left, and getting more that way.

They are stuck with Stasi Starmer for 5 years. Serve them right.

Meanwhile, let's concentrate on our own problems. Albanese has had 4 big knock backs, and he hasn't got a clue how he is going to police the ridiculous under 16 ban from social media. And Dutton wants face scanning. What a mess Australia is in. I think they are both more interested in collecting the massive fines from the social media companies than they are in 'having anyone's back', helping out parents, or "protecting" children: as well as increasing their despotic control, of course.

Hi ttbn,
I'm not sure if you saw the discussion Paul and I had, he said that Labour would be in for quite some time after the Tories were booted.
- I told him don't be too sure, this won't last very long.

I'm not sure what the plan for social media is either tbh.
I can't see the social media companies themselves enforcing Digital ID on every global user.
Not unless a critical mass of countries demand it.

The browser I use most of the time is Mozilla Firefox.
It has a built in VPN, why couldn't these kids just spoof their location to New Zealand for instance, and create a new account bypassing Australian rules?

Tech savvy kids will find a way around it, post a tik tok video on how to do it, and the government will have blown another truck load of money for absolutely nothing.

But at least it 'looked like' he did something.
The bloke reminds me of Elmer Fudd.

It feels to me like the government is trying to build a database of voice and facial recognition on every citizen in the country, so that ultimately you can't go anywhere without being instantly identified by AI, and you can't speak to anyone on the phone without being instantly identified by AI, even if it's not your phone.

They just need to find or create reasons to tell us they need to collect this data, i.e. 'for the kids safety'
- And it's hard to argue against it when they say 'kids are committing suicide because of social media, and we have an obligation to do something'.

Maybe that's just my paranoid conspiracy inclined mind at work;
But in this day and age, it probably shouldn't be entirely discounted.