Translation: We only changed our stance so people will vote for us and once we are in power, we'll make it opt-out again because it'll be too late and we have nothing to lose.

Remember John Howard famously saying there wouldn't be a GST and then introduced a GST? Replace John Howard with Malcolm Turnbull and GST with opt-out Internet filter and it reads the same...

John Howard actually went to an election over the GST. He lied about it the first time, but it's not as though he then passed it into law without warning.

No he just said he wouldn't do something and then did it.

Yes, but instead of just lying and introducing it without a mandate, he sought a mandate.

It was suggested to me that the original policy statement was probably a sop for evangelical fundies, who are amongst other things absolutely obsessed with the wickedness and deviltry of teh intarwebs.

I don't really know why they went back on it so precipitously. Maybe Malcolm's mates made a phone call and explained that it was a fucking stupid idea to install the exact mechanism that future governments could 1. turn into a compulsory scheme and 2. use to filter material other than pornography.

I would be interested to know if this was released without Turnbull's approval. It's a sorry story if it was.

Even though they're saying they wont do it, it's pretty typical of Australian politics to simply change their mind again once they get in to power.

You'll find that it's pretty typical of _global_ politics. Say one thing, then do another once you have the power.

So typical, and so typically unpunished.

I am normally a cynic and wouldn't put it past either of the major parties in this election but I highly doubt they ever planned for a mandatory internet filter.

The current government has tried more than once to implement a filter and it has only been because of the Greens and the LNP blocking it that it hasn't gone through. If they really wanted a filter, they could have just let it pass when Labor tried to implement it.

Libraries are bastions of the idea that information is free and an inalienable right. The internet is basically a library at your fingertips.

To allow such censorship to happen is an affront to one of the most basic of human rights.

But we've already given it up in fear of a few Windows viruses and spam, so we deserve what we get. Fearful children require protection.

What we're seeing here is a demonstration of the divorce between politicians' private beliefs and their public electoral platform, and even more problematic, a sign of the breakdown of our democratic system.

Back in the day, politicians had an idiology, and you could trust them because you knew that they really believed in what they were saying. But this started to change after the Second World War, when some politicians realized that if they believe in a minority position, they were not likely to win. So what did they do? They publicly advocated something slightly different, something slightly more likely to win, while privately holding onto their own beliefs. And then they moved a little more, because everyone is doing it and they had to get closer to that perfect center, where they could get the most votes.

Skip forward a couple of decades and what you get is a system in which the only way a politician can get into power is by outright lying about his or her beliefs. If you're honest, you probably won't get elected: there's always people out there who are just echoing focus groups. But if you're dishonest, maybe you can push through some of the things you privately believe in, without anyone noticing. Those private beliefs don't even need to be self-serving, you can genuinely believe in them being the right course of action.

So when you're a politician looking to get elected, you pick some issue you think many people feel strongly about and take a position.

Of course, the people in your focus group might change their opinions from day to day. Or maybe they're influenced by the mass media, controlled by powerful elites seeking to use the masses for their own gain. Or maybe your focus groups just aren't very representative.

Whatever the reason, something went wrong: it turns out you picked the losing (minority) side. There's an outrage, your ratings plummet, your opponents vow to enact the opposite policy. Now you can either 1) try to salvage the situation by changing your public position (but not your private beliefs), or 2) stick with your guns and not get elected for sure. Even if you're genuinely just looking to gain power to do good for the people, the only viable choice you have is is option 1.

However, this is a short term optimization. People actually do remember your promises. They hear you saying "X!" one day and "not X!" the next, again and again and again, and so they stop believing in politicians, whatever they say.

Now you've got yourself a system in which even honest politicians (the ones who never succumbed to the corrupt system) are no longer believed. All politicians are now percieved as liars, whether they are or not, and this makes the content of their proposed policies irrelevant. But people still have to vote for someone, and now the only way to win is by making yourself stand out on some other level: presentation. You have to approach the sneakiest PR firm, hire the best spin doctor, have the biggest war chest, get the best television ads, and then maybe you can win by deceiving enough people into voting for you. This is the dominant approach in the Anglosphere, where the difference between 'winning' and 'losing' is a gaping chasm, and where buying influence is both easier and more widely accepted.

If your political system isn't so conducive to manipulation by the raw power of money, that's not very effective. Thankfully, people are still willing to vote for someone they think is just like them. So they vote for the person who has a real talent for public speaking, who identifies popular grievances, but who very much is not a politician. But politics is contagious: when you get elected, you can't help it, you become a politician. You get infected by it, and by all of its associations. And thus you fall out of favour with the people who elected you, and the cycle begins again. This is a type of populism that's common in continental Europe, because coalition governments mean that you don't have to get an absolute majority to gain political power.

And this has had an effect on the established political parties too. Politics is now just a career in which the issues are no longer so important, a politician can always implement a couple of policies that benefit a certain powerful group. You might even delude yourself into truly believing that what you're doing is right. In return, that powerful group will give you a 6 or 7 figure job when you leave politics. Maybe couple of positions on the boards of large corporations, or a lobbying position, to make use of your political contacts.

This is a vicious cycle, where each of the effects is another cause exacerbating the problem. I chose to start at a certain piece of this whole mess because it fit well with what's happening in Australia now, but you might as well start at the corrupting effect of the mass media, or at the rise of the focus group, or anywhere else.

I guess this is where I should be coming up with a simple and straightforward solution. Sorry about that.

I hope everyone takes the time to read through this because it is spot on.

(I have a US perspective, this may not apply) I think a start to the solution is to increase the number of politicians per citizen. The original numbers would have a much larger congress than what is in place now. Gerrymandering should be illegal, if a district goes out to sea and back at high tide that needs to be a crime. First-across-the-fence voting needs to go[1]. None of that will ever happen, however.

[1] Although UIAM Australians have a separate system and that's still not good enough.

It is impossible to develop a system that satisfies all the Arrow criteria. In practice you compromise. Australia's system is a sophisticated series of compromises that has evolved partly from a local reformist streak in our politics and partly because our Constitutional starting point was after the US civil war.