Scott Ludlam | scott ludlam

The hitchhikers guide to net filtering

“Does it worry you that you don’t talk any kind of sense?” ~ Agda, the Restaurant at the end of the Universe Every couple of months we get the opportunity to hold a discussion directly, on the record, with Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and the senior officials responsible for implementing the Government’s mandatory net filter scheme (#nocleanfeed, #openinternet). These opportunities come about as a result of the Senate Estimates Committee process which provides a valuable, if somewhat warped, window into the world of the Australian public service.

29 May 2010

Reviewed to death for a 10c piece

The Government has been strongly criticised this year for rolling out massive policy initiatives without properly thinking through the costing and institutional frameworks required to make them work. The $43 billion National Broadband Network (NBN) and the home insulation scheme are two examples of big picture budget items that proceeded at breakneck speed unhindered by the normal process of internal checks and balances. The tragic results are a matter of record in the case of home insulation; the jury is still on the fence with regards the NBN. But what happens when the reverse occurs – when a simple

29 May 2010

Government lights fuse on radwaste campaign

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s proposed ‘solution’ to our sixty year radioactive waste legacy has lit the fuse on a major confrontation between the Australian Government and everyone else.

16 April 2010

Going Nuclear? What’s so scary?

Isn’t it interesting that anyone who asks where the Liberal Party’s nuclear power stations will be constructed, is immediately accused of running a scare campaign?

8 December 2009

climate change by legislative attrition

And so we go into the first long night of the CPRS bill. The deal has been done, with enough Liberal Senators giving the Government the numbers to extend sitting hours late into tonight and all the way into next week if necessary.

25 November 2009

Failing the climate: senate speech on the CPRS

Senator LUDLAM (Western Australia) (1.17 pm 24 November 2009) – I rise to add my remarks on the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme Bill 2009 [No. 2] and related bills with a sense of deja vu, because we were here a couple of months ago debating not just the same bill that we are now confronted with but, evidently, we are debating a bill that has been made substantially worse as a consequence of the horse-trading and deals that have been going on behind the scenes.I would like to acknowledge that we have been joined by a couple of school

24 November 2009

Coal or Food: 48 hours on the floodplains

One moment last week sums up why I wouldn’t swap this job for anything. At about 11am on Tuesday morning the Senate Environment, Communications and the Arts (ECA) Committee is confronted with an unusual sight in the Felton Valley, about 20 km south of Oakey on the Darling Downs in southern Queensland. A crowd of people have taken over the road; a sea of green T-shirts and triangular yellow placards, kids lined up with banners, hand-made signs; all the essentials for a home-grown demonstration.

5 October 2009

Question time fail: net filter shapeshifts again

Net filtering got a run in senate question time again yesterday. See if you can spot the difference:

25 September 2009

A fortnight in the red room

The September sittings opened and closed with unplanned symmetry. Opened with a line in the desert sand drawn by Aboriginal elders refusing any further compromise with the uranium miners. Closed with the tabling of a meticulous two hundred page manifesto for the rapid abolition of nuclear weapons, signed by the ALP, the Greens and the Coalition.

25 September 2009