[Silhouette]

It's horrifying that standards of education have fallen so far that a national political leader can say things like this with a straight face and enough voters will believe them to make it a viable political strategy. Our leaders here in the UK and in several of our European neighbours are no better.

[nl]

A bullet killing a person is the 'law of physics'. It doesn't mean it can't be outlawed.

In fact, I'd make the case that it is horrifying that anyone reading that statement doesn't understand exactly what it means.

Don't underestimate your opponents here. They are smart, well educated and know what is possible and what isn't.

[avh02]

>A bullet killing a person is the 'law of physics'. It doesn't mean it can't be outlawed.

Illegal or not, it actually still happens, this is a fact that can not be argued. Pretending that making it illegal automatically stops all bad things from happening is also bad.

All that said, I'm pretty glad that hurling bullets is not legal because shooting someone is rarely ever good (argue self-defence, etc) but the whole privacy debate is a different monster.

[nl]

I'm not sure what you think I disagree with here?

[vacri]

What straight face? He's presenting the policy, and a journalist asks him "won't the laws of mathematics trump the laws of australia". When have you ever seen a senior politician reply to something like that with "Oh, you're right. I withdraw the policy". It was standard politician's bluster, answering a question in kind; it wasn't meant to be taken as a literal truth.

Do you think the journalist who asked the question thought that mathematical law and national laws were the same kind of thing? Shouldn't you be mocking the journo just as much for asking such a silly question? People wonder why politicians hedge everything they say these days, and refuse to say much of substance. This is why: they get crucified on any single comment which sounds funny when taken out of context.

Disclaimer: not a conservative voter, and indeed generally vote on the far opposite side to Turnbull.

[thanksgiving]

> It was standard politician's bluster, answering a question in kind; it wasn't meant to be taken as a literal truth.

I see it differently. The standard operating procedure for a career politician is to "pivot" and "stay on message". You cannot ignore the enemy. You shouldn't underestimate them.

Look at this stupid war on drugs. This isn't funny. We have no option than to assume that this is the message and we must oppose it.

[vacri]

https://www.pm.gov.au/media/2017-07-14/press-conference-atto...

Have a read of the comment in context. He's primarily saying that the G20 is going to lean on the providers as the method of action. The journalist throws out a quip and he quips back. The journalist raises the point of 'what about outside the jurisdiction of the G20' and he responds that we've gotta start somewhere.

I think it's a misguided push missing some fundamentals and am totally opposed to it, but in context it's clear that they're not trying to legislate maths to behave differently.

[Silhouette]

Regardless of how exactly it's presented on any specific occasion, it is unfortunately very clear that several prominent first world political leaders now believe either that they can have their cake and eat it when it comes to encryption and online security or that enough voters are ignorant enough to believe that even if the politicians know it to be untrue. Either way, this is not a healthy situation, and either way, it reflects very poorly on the political leaders in question.