The Pirate Party is distancing itself from the ‘Alliance for Progress’. The Alliance, an informal group consisting of a number of progressive minor parties, was formed to promote collaboration on common interests and the negotiation of preference arrangements between its members. While these were commendable goals, and the Pirate Party values the cooperative ties that were established with other like minded parties, the Party wishes to distance itself in particular from any activities where Alliance for Progress members may be associating with the so-called ‘Minor Party Alliance’ and their ‘preference whisperer’.
Category: Press Release
Press releases
Today the first test of Australian website blocking laws is being launched. These laws were passed by the Abbott Government last year, and are now being used by Village Roadshow in an attempt to block the free movie streaming site SolarMovie.
"It took them long enough," said Simon Frew, President of Pirate Party Australia. "They have spent years campaigning for these laws, and 'donated' hundreds of thousands of dollars[1][2] to both the Coalition and ALP in an attempt to put the Internet genie back into the bottle. It then took them over six months to launch their first case."
The Pirate Party welcomes the long-anticipated release of the text of the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (‘TPP’), available from the New Zealand Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade website.[1] However, the Pirate Party remains firmly opposed to the agreement itself and calls on the Joint Standing Committee on Treaties to recommend it not be ratified.
“After years of secret negotiations the text has been revealed, and it should be deeply concerning to all Australians,” said Simon Frew, President of the Pirate Party. “Most concerning of all are the investor-state dispute settlement (‘ISDS’) provisions which create a two-tiered legal system in which foreign-owned businesses gain special rights to sue the Australian government if policies or regulations hurt their interests. These cases are run through international tribunals which have none of the accountabilities and appeal mechanisms which operate in domestic courts.”[2]
Mandatory data retention is set to come into effect on 13 October 2015. Despite the certainty of this date, there remains considerable uncertainty within the communications industry as to what data needs to be retained to comply with the law. Among this confusion the Attorney-General’s Department has advised the industry that exemptions to the data retention regime will be revoked if their existence is publicised[1]. This is despite the legislation not specifically requiring exemptions remain confidential. The Department has argued that this is to “prevent exposing gaps in data retention legislation to be exposed to criminals”.
“The Government and the Attorney-General’s Department would have the communications industry lie down and accept its fate,” commented Michael Keating, Deputy President of the Pirate Party. “The fact is that the industry has been ignored in the Government’s push to involve itself in every individual’s and business’ communication in Australia. Not only are they dismantling the right to privacy, they want to silence anyone who challenges them, while at the same time expecting everyone to pay for the ‘privilege’. There should be no room for attacking transparency in Australia, but the Attorney-General’s Department seems willing to do this on the flimsy excuse provided.”
With the commencement of the mandatory data retention regime just around the corner, both Kmart[2] and David Jones[3] recently experienced online data breaches resulting in unauthorised access to customer details. These breaches raise serious concerns around the storage of individual’s data once the data retention regime is in operation. Internet service providers have already indicated that they would have no hesitation in storying the data overseas[4], but there is little information about security measures to prevent unauthorised access. With the stored data being capable of exposing individual’s day-to-day activities (as ABC reporter Will Ockenden’s social experiment demonstrated in August[5]), it is the perfect target for hackers wishing to access and abuse that data. The Government appears happy to use smoke and mirrors to cover this issue.
Late last night word trickled out that the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPP) was finalised. This trade agreement represents many of the darkest wishes of multi-national corporations intent on using regulatory capture in the United States to drive the global trade agenda. The text of the agreement is still secret and will not be released for perhaps another month[1].
"Civil society has been kept at arms length from the negotiations, with access to the draft texts only being granted to major corporations. The fact that the text is not immediately available gives us some insight into just how bad this agreement could be," said Simon Frew, President of the Pirate Party. "We demand that the text be immediately published so the Australian people can see what has been negotiated on our behalf and judge whether this is something that will benefit all of us or just a wealthy few."
Much of what is known about the TPP has been exposed through leaks, painting a bleak picture for the future of signatory countries. The leaks indicate draconian intellectual property provisions, investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) tribunals and poor environmental and worker protections.