> Nanny state is a term coined by tobacco industry in their lobbying against tobacco laws. Is it really a term you want to use here?
Sure, because most people h ave no idea where the term originates from and it now has a life of its own. It's the standard term for this sort of thing.
Who cares? Whether or not it applies in this particular case, it's a useful term. Rejecting ideas because of who they come from is the very antithesis of intellectual maturity.
ASIO has been able to track you for decades since they have real-time metadata feeds from Telstra, Optus, NBN etc.
They have access to your location estimate, URLs of sites you've visited, people you talk via email/phone etc. And we know that this dataset is shared to the Five Eyes.
So if you are concerned about being tracked I would strongly recommend leaving Australia.
And now they’ll be able to see the groups you go to within pages, read comments, see what we write, etc etc. It also goes from being a defence capability to used for all sorts of things and eventually leaked.
It’s not bad enough to leave, better to engage with the politics and try to get some rights before it spreads further outwards
For a time, we did not have an “R” rating for video games and this sort of content called for this rating, which legislation said could not be given. Fortunately saner heads prevailed and they created an “R” rating for video games and this oddity went away.
Ha! We have compulsory voting but unlike many Anglo countries we don't require voter ID, vote registration etc. In fact you do not need to provide any ID to vote, because voting fraud is so statistically low (see https://www.rmit.edu.au/news/factlab-meta/voting-fraud-negli...). We simply provide a name and address and fill out the ballot.
We have so many issues, but compulsory voting is not one of them, in my opinion. If you feel so strongly to not vote you can abstain by an informal vote like roughly 5% of the country does on any given election (https://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/Informal_Voting/) or simply pay the AU$20 (roughly US$13) fine like apparently around 5-10% of Australians do on any given election (https://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/non-voters.htm).
In my view, and in the view of many Australians, people encouraging further "freedom" to not vote are attempting to suppress votes, a major issue in the United States and other countries with optional voting.
In Australia they ask to see your ID but you can say you don’t have it on you. I think they mostly just ask for ID so it’s easier to look up your name with the correct spelling.
You won't win any arguments with Australians on forced voting. The major parties would love to kill it, but it is something the (forced) voters will refuse to give up. It may not be 'free', but it helps keep things free.
If you are going to cite sources about 1960's Australian culture, back in the oppressive dark ages of 'White Australia', make sure you compare it with other 1960's cultures. Or try some sources from this millennium that have come to terms with not being part of the British Empire.
Forced voting is a net benefit, the biggest being that it forces parties to the center rather than having to say/promise stupid stuff to appeal to the fringes that have firm political positions (see: USA). Mandatory voting + preferential voting, alongside a well-run independent election commission has resulted in very high trust in our democratic process.
Compulsory voting means that a large part of the electorate that doesn’t pay attention to politics is easily frightened by scare campaigns.
An example of this is that Australia is sorely in need of tax reform, but any party that pushes for it at state or federal level is damaged at the polls, often fatally.
You have to remember, Australia as a nation is young, and has an interesting history - forced migration of convicts, high levels of immigration (IIRC 25% of the population are 1st or 2nd generation immigrants), and of course the difficulty of dealing with colonial treatment of the Aboriginal population. "No culture" is patently absurd; everywhere with people has a culture.
And on mandatory voting: yes, in one way, that's a curtailment of freedom, but in another way, it's enshrining freedom.
In day to day life we are fairly free but for example we have much weaker freedom of speech/opinion than the USA. For example if you raise your arm at a particular angle you can now be sent to jail [1].
We also had some of the longest/harshet COVID lockdowns in the world in my state.
https://www.tobaccotactics.org/article/countering-industry-a...