Editorial Cartoons

STORY by DAVID BELL

THE Australian Sex Party is seeking to be officially registered in WA.
The party is federally registered and already has 300 people signed up but needs 500 to become a legitmate party in WA. 

State convenor Bret Treasure says the party is perfect for anyone who thinks Australia is too conservative and needs some new ideas.

“I tell people we’re way liberal, we’re a civil liberties party and we’re interested in progressive politics, and we would like Australia to be more liberal in its social outlook.”

Despite the catchy name the party isn’t all about sex, Mr Treasure says. Science, civil libertarianism and seeking rational approaches to policy, secularism and separation of church and state are all key issues, he says.

“The name is great for getting attention and lousy for credibility,” he acknowledges.

“We were nearly called the Secular Party, and the reason we aren’t is the party had a meeting with Don Chipp, the founder of the Australian Democrats, and he said whatever you do make sure you make it punchy and memorable and he was right, because if we called it the Australian Secular Party we would have got zero media attention.

“I know that when the name was floated three of the people around the table said ‘what does secular mean?’.”

Getting religion out of government decision-making is a primary ASP goal.

“The Labor and the Liberal party are very heavily influenced by the Christian lobby and in the last parliament something like 40 per cent of the members of parliament were members of the Parliamentary Christian Fellowship, which is a prayer group,” Mr Treasure says.

“Nothing wrong with that, but only eight per cent of the population go to church every week, and 40 per cent of parliament are going to a prayer group? That’s not representative.”

Apart from keeping religion out of public policy the ASP wants consistent management of adult material across the country. He says it makes no sense that X-rated DVDs can be freely ordered from the ACT and Northern Territory and posted to WA, but adult shops here aren’t allowed to sell them. The party is also opposed to Labor’s proposed internet filter and wants video games classified under the same system as movies, which would allow R18+ games into Australia.

The party is also seeking across-the-board decriminalisation of drug use. He stresses it’s not the same as legalisation—saying Australia isn’t ready for that—but he believes the time has come to stop treating drug users like criminals, which is bad for them and ties up police, the courts and prisons.

Backed by porn industry lobby the Eros Association, Mr Treasure won 2.59 per cent of the vote when he stood as the ASP’s candidate for Swan at last year’s federal election.

“At that level we were the most successful new party in Australia since the Greens,” he says. “It’s a pretty solid start.

“When you get to three or four per cent of the primary vote that’s when you become important, and that’s because of your capacity to influence votes through the preference system.

“People think ‘why would I vote for a minor party?’. You can have a really solid impact on Australian politics by giving a minor party your primary vote.

“If a major party thinks you’re going to get three per cent of a vote they will talk to you.

“Before the last election we had good conversations with both parties and the adult industry has been invited to conversations in Canberra since the federal election as a result of that, so there has already been a dividend in terms of the government’s willingness to engage with the industry on law reform.”

The Sex Party registration is at the Universal Bar, Tuesday November 8 at 6pm. RSVP through sexpartywest.eventbrite.com

by STEPHEN POLLOCK

THE Liberal Party has become so green it’s now recycling its own spin.
The Voice received media releases, lambasting Federal Labor’s passing of the carbon tax, from Federal Liberal Stirling MP Michael Keenan and Perth Liberal senator Mathias Cormann.

Both releases had five identical direct quotes, including:
• “The coalition’s commitment to the Australian people is that we will continue to do everything in our power to fight this toxic tax,” Mr Keenan/Senator Cormann said.

In the unique sections, Mr Cormann said Perth Federal Labor MP Stephen Smith had “betrayed the people of Perth today by voting for the carbon tax.”

“Stephen Smith voted for this job-destroying carbon tax and abandoned jobs and industries in Perth,” he said.

“This fundamental betrayal is going to impact on peoples’ cost of living and it is going to make their jobs less secure.”
Mr Smith said the tax would actually benefit the community.
“The revenue from the scheme will go to permanently increasing the pension and family payments, permanently reducing taxes, and investing in clean energy and pollution
abatement,” he said.

“It will also create new opportunities for local businesses including in renewable energy.

“Recent independent modelling has found that the average Australian household will be $2.50 better off per week under the carbon pricing scheme when tax cuts and pension increases are factored in.”

When the Voice asked Adam Le Lievre, Mr Cormann’s media advisor, if he was aware that both press releases had the same direct quotes, he tersely replied “Yes.”

The Gillard government’s controversial carbon tax was passed by the House of Representatives (74-72) on October 11.
Meanwhile, councils in Voiceland have no idea how much the proposed carbon tax is likely to push up rubbish charges.

• Perth city council CEO Frank Edwards says the PCC is “expecting some increase” but couldn’t quote an exact figure until the Mindarie Regional Council, where the PCC dumps rubbish, had analysed figures.

• Vincent city council CEO John Giorgi says the tipping rate per tonne is currently “$123 per tonne” for MRC members and he’ll have to wait and see.

• “If there is an increase in landfill costs then the appropriate proportion of this would have to be passed on to ratepayers and customers,” says Stirling waste manager Eddy Albrecht.

Australian Landfill Owners Association says the $23-a-tonne pollution price could drive rubbish charges up by $36 a tonne from July 2013.
“We want to know how much this carbon tax is going to affect ratepayers wallets with the extra levy on rubbish in rates,” says Bayswater City Residents’ Association president Tony Green

After being boned last year, insiders say Rudd is positioning himself for a comeback..

Tony Abbott says he “pledges in blood to repeal the carbon tax” after it passed in the House of Representatives today.

It sounds so, I don’t know.. Deranged?

A woman in Perth is collecting unused shoes from the upper-classes to pass on to the poor in Nepal.

FORMER prime minister Kevin Rudd will undergo heart surgery early next month to replace a transplanted aortic valve, putting him out of action for up to eight weeks.

The Revolution in your Newsroom

Writer: Jess Hill

At the BBC’s Social Media Summit in London this May, journalists from around the world agreed that the biggest problem with social media is ‘verification’. 

It’s good to hear journalists talking about verification. But for this conversation to be useful we need to be honest. The problem is not social media - in fact, Twitter, used systematically, is one of the best verification tools journalists have ever had. The problem is what the mainstream media has come to accept as ‘verified’ information.

Journalists have long relied on ‘official’ and ‘expert’ sources for the bulk of their reporting. These sources may be officially ‘verified’, but media regularly publish their information without checking or unchallenging it. In short, journalists feel no compulsion to verify the ‘experts’.

Armies of academics have analysed the media’s failure to question the reasons for going into Iraq. But have we learnt our lesson? Even after official sources are proven to have willfully misled the media, we continue to publish their statements as ‘verified’. On several occasions, NATO spokespeople have knowingly announced civilian deaths as militant deaths. How many times does this have to happen before we start publishing their reports as ‘unverified’? Ditto for government spokespeople the world round. Where do we draw the line?

After all, verifying a source is just the first step. It’s the information that matters. It’s not our responsibility to relay the official line – it’s our job to interrogate it. And social media is making this aspect of interrogation faster than ever before.

On platforms like Twitter and Facebook, journalists can now double-check statements from official sources with the help of thousands of people all over the world, from the mountains of Pakistan to the villages of the West Bank. These citizens are publishing videos, photos and eyewitness accounts from events as they happen, before government spokespeople get a chance to put their spin on them. 

For the first time in history, the truth is getting halfway around the world before the lie can get its boots on. 

At ABC Radio Current Affairs, we started collaborating with people on Twitter the day the revolution began in Libya. With the help of Libyan expats, we located and contacted an eyewitness in Benghazi who provided one of the first reports that Gaddafi was using African mercenaries against the Libyan people.

Since then, we have developed extensive networks with people on Twitter, Facebook and YouTube in countries across the Middle East, Africa and Asia. Every day, these people alert us to breaking news, send information, help with finding eyewitnesses and contacts, and much more. We can also find articulate, English-speaking experts from almost every country in the world, so instead of relying on Western analysts, we preference local analysts who can give a local perspective.

In journalism, the more things change the more they stay the same. Collaborating with people on social media is basically the same as working a beat. To begin with, you need to establish sources, and get to know them. On Twitter, I got started by introducing myself to people in specific countries who appeared influential and reliable – human rights activists, dissidents, journalists, bloggers and committed local citizens. Once I established contact, I began following them closely and communicating with them regularly, adding lesser-known sources they were communicating with.

As with any source relationship, you need to earn their trust. I do this by keeping in touch with people, and feeding information back into the network. For example, back in March, when The World Today discovered that two senior Bahraini opposition figures had been arrested in the middle of the night, I posted that information immediately on Twitter, and fielded questions on what we knew about the arrests. Our account attracted about 100 Bahraini followers that morning, many of whom have fed us information and contacts ever since. 

I also regularly help other journalists looking for information and contacts on Twitter, and have developed collaborative relationships with reporters all over the world. 

This collaboration occurs daily on a range of projects. For example, when I heard that MediaWatch was looking for the origin of a video Reuters had sourced through social media, I asked my network to look into it. Within five minutes, I had a response from Lebanese activist @TrellaLB, who posted a link to the original video on YouTube. Reuters (and by association, SBS and ABC News 24), had got it wrong – it wasn’t Syria, it was Lebanon, and the video was three years old. 

Working with people on social media is certainly not straightforward. There are serious verification challenges to grapple with. 

You may have read about the Gay Girl in Damascus: the 40-year-old American man who masqueraded as a Syrian lesbian blogger, faked his own arrest and was then exposed by people on Twitter. There’s no foolproof way to avoid hoaxes; even the CIA is fooled from time to time. Where social media is concerned, however, there are precautions you can take. 

Triangulation is key. If you see something newsworthy on Twitter, check to see if anyone else is reporting it. If not, proceed only with extreme caution, and request evidence to support the claim (photos, videos etc). 

Don’t ever conduct interviews via email if you haven’t made phone contact first. The Guardian published email interviews with the Gay Girl in Damascus without establishing contact over the phone. If they can’t speak to you by phone or Skype, don’t report it.

Anonymous sources are another verification challenge on Twitter. Many of our Arab contacts insist on being anonymous, even when we’re speaking off-the-record (in countries like Libya and Syria, international phone calls are often monitored, and even Skype isn’t 100 per cent safe). In these cases, I focus on verifying their information. (After all, what difference does it make if you know their name is Mohammed?)

When a source offered me an anonymous contact in Tripoli recently, I was extremely cautious. It’s very risky for people in Tripoli to speak to the media, and I hadn’t heard anyone from the capital interviewed in weeks.

First, I checked the source with my network. The Twitter community takes self-regulation very seriously, and regularly exchanges information on who can or can’t be trusted. Then, after recording the interview, I uploaded the audio onto a website called Audioboo, and sent the link to one of the most high-profile Libyans on Twitter, who is in regular contact with friends and family in Tripoli. He assured me the information was accurate. Only then did we broadcast the interview on PM.

As journalists, our first obligation is to the truth, and our first loyalty to the public. We should approach all sources with skepticism. By verifying official lines using tools like Twitter, we put spokespeople on notice: lie, and you’ll be found out. 

Social media is paving the way for a better kind of journalism – one that doesn’t lecture its audience, but includes them in the process. By collaborating with people online, we can make our work more transparent, more trustworthy, and ultimately, more truthful. 

(Story by David Bell)

A HARDCORE music gig was suddenly cancelled after the lead singer knocked over a bowl of pears last week.
US mathcore band The Chariot was playing at HQ in Leederville when the musos got a bit mental and danced out of the main stage area and into the front store.

A bowl of pears was knocked over and seconds later HQ management pulled the plug on the gig.
“Who broke the free pears?!” someone called out in the darkness.

The band’s singer then asked the crowd to donate pears to make up for the incident: “if you all have pears you might want to donate them, because I think the show might be done because that bowl fell. But they were tiny pears. So if you have three big pears I’m sure it will be even.”

The crowd called on HQ manager “Dudeman” to turn on the power: “let’s all say sorry: we’re sorry Dudeman!”

In the end a fan offered his nearby house as a venue and The Chariot continued their EP launch there, playing on the rooftop and almost collapsing it.

“It’s still early, let’s take it somewhere else!”  the singer announced to riotous cheers.

“Until further notice, come hang out with us over there and maybe we’ll go to his house!”

There’s footage of the whole kerfuffle at youtube channel “dontforgetthedream”