No, the greens have NOT aligned themselves with either of the other big parties.

The greens have been campaigning against this sort of thing for ages. The Greens spokesperson for media stuff has the following campaigns running:

http://scott-ludlam.greensmps.org.au/campaigns In particular:
http://scott-ludlam.greensmps.org.au/natsecinquiry
http://scott-ludlam.greensmps.org.au/stopgovernmentsnooping

As an Australian, I am so glad we have a preferential voting system, not first past the post. Here we -can- vote for whoever we want, and not worry about a 'wasted' vote - no strategic voting. I wish it were somehow possible for you guys to change your voting system (not to ours necessarily, I'm sure there are better counting systems).

Although I see your point, I don't think that example is very apt. Sure, when your cell phone is off, signals from the nearby tower are still passing through you, but those aren't the ones people claim to be concerned about when the discuss 'cell phone radiation'. Its the signal coming from your phone, since it is right next to your head/body that is the issue. Your phone has to pump out a strong signal to reach the tower, due to the inverse square law, while the signal from the tower is already weak(er) by the time it reaches you.

The airport in Kuala Lumpur (capital of Malaysia) is very commonly used as a sort of 'hub' when travelling to/from Australia/New Zealand to/from elsewhere in the world. Its not surprising he had a stop over there. Source: I'm a West Australian and find that 'KL' is frequently used in conversation to mean that specific airport.

The more I read about all this stuff going on, the more and more I think of Accelerando by Charles Stross. The description in the news of these companies makes them sound like organisms trying to compete in an artificial world, with less and less connection to reality. Soon their actions will be run by programs, and will eventually become sentient :P (Book is available free online if interested, see http://www.jus.uio.no/sisu/accelerando.charles_stross/)

If I recall correctly, this was done by the Liberal party (and maybe the Labor party?) during the last federal election. You search for a candidate, and the first link is a sponsored ad directing you to a page telling you how crap they are.

My favourites are Google results pointing to a forum thread where someone is asking exactly what I want to know, and the only answer is 'google it'.

While reading your comment I realised what you describe is exactly what I was doing. Time to close slashdot :P

I still use a 24 inch Samsung TV. I honestly don't notice the difference after watching it for 15 seconds, brain just disregards the space around it.

Who the hell modded this flamebait?

No, you are only meant to fill in one box above the line. If you put a mark in more than one box it won't make any difference to your vote, or it may be marked as informal. (I say may, because my sources aren't clear on what happens if you fill out more than one box). What are you talking about is what Bob Brown of the Greens party is suggesting would be a better system, but its not what we have at the moment. Sources: http://www.aec.gov.au/Voting/How_to_vote/Voting_Senate.htm http://www.comlaw.gov.au/ComLaw/Legislation/ActCompilation1.nsf/framelodgmentattachments/DEC4F8A1D65DEBBCCA25776B001D4AC4

Just to add to ACs comments in case people get confused. The caps that most ISPs have don't charge you when you go over the plan, your speed is just reduced to 64kbps or 256kbps until the next month. Exceptions are Dodo internet, which have tiny caps starting at 100MB, and then charge 16c per MB over that to a maximum of $99. Telstra also charge when you go over the limit at 15c/MB for a maximum of $300.

Well done sir. That made my day a little bit better.

Then apparently even websites talking about RC games or other material will be blocked in part or whole.

Actually, RC computer games will be explicitly left out of the mandatory filtering until a review is finalised on how to classify them. (According to http://openinternet.com.au/learn_more/ anyway)