Canberra Labor cans free speech

Cleaning up after free speech is one thing, cleaning up after free speech uising places dedicated to postering is another. Cleaning up after “Come and see DEATH-METAL DJ GORCHRIST play the Muckrakers Arms” is quite another.

Nice point Thumper.

And now that I think about it, I fail to see why the State shouldn’t have to clean up after free speech. The State is composed of all of its constituent individuals and exists solely for their benefit – surely cleaning up after things is one of the fundamental roles of the State. They take the trash away from the front of your house; where’s the big distinction between this and clearing a concrete pole once a month?

Has anyone else noticed the piles of rubbish where bins used to be in our parks. The state does not want to clean them up either. Yet the rubbish still comes.

poptop said :

I get that bit Jimbo. But why should the government, AKA taxpayer, pick up the tab for someone elses “right of free speech” through the medium of poster?

Think about it practically: which is going to be cheaper and actually work:

1) having a few designated poster sites cleaned by an urban services crew while doing their rounds about once a month or so.

2) attempting to keep tabs on everyone who puts up posters on designated areas and ensuring that they clean them up afterwards (despite the fact that said posters will have been covered up by other posters within a fortnight at the most and will hence be underneath posters for events that haven’t occurred yet).

I don’t want to be rude, but I think that your point about ‘my tax dollars’, ‘the responsibility of the individual’, etc., is – in this context – just as divorced from reality as Passy’s rhetoric about ‘the State’s continuing assault on freedom of speech via posters’.

It makes sense to do what works rather than be driven by ideology that ignores reality.

Yet bus shelters can have ads. Personally I’d rather have community notices and (gasp!) timetable and bus route information!

Passy said :

… But nothing lascivious in that.

And I was trying so hard, too …. *blows nose* … I’m just too naturally unlascivious, I guess.

I get that bit Jimbo. But why should the government, AKA taxpayer, pick up the tab for someone elses “right of free speech” through the medium of poster?

The right carries a responsibility too; or it should.

For adults, there seems to be lots of jockeying about rights and very little of the other.

Granny

You’re not going to shave your head and rent it out for advertising? A woman in NZ has done that. But nothing lascivious in that.

Hmmmmm … *spots new commercial opportunity to sell poster space* … tick, tick, *tic* How do y’all like my lascivious leer?

; )

Poptop – the ‘designated poster areas’ in civic, ANU, UC and other joints about Canberra are regularly cleared and cleaned at least once a month.

The only debris and litter I’ve seen around these areas has been caused by d1ckheads ripping down poster (mostly drunk, sometimes as retribution for having their own posters overposted).

I’m sure far fewer people would be concerned about the horrors of bill postering if the free speakers came and took the posters down when the even/protest/whatever was over.

The State should not have to clean up after free speech.

Agreed – I’m a big fan of the Greens in many respects. But it’s perhaps their moderating influence that most endears me to them.

Jim

I think the real issue will be whether Stanhope pushes ahead with teh Bill as is or accepts that it goes too far and is really in part an attack on freedom of expression.

I know the numbers are against him at the moment so he is likely to compromise. But he could reach a deal with the Liberals that is less than adequate.

The Greens seem to think that sending the bill to one of the Assembly’s standing committee has fixed the issue. I’m more interested in keeping the outside pressure up right now. Come August when the standing committee reports back it may be too late.

Passy said :

Thanks cicrusmind.

It may be generational, but nothing gets the blood running like a good demo with thousands of others united over a [particular issue and wanting something done about it. Or a union meeting with ideas and arguments flashing like lightning across the room.Somehow face book doesn’t do that for me.

Of course, however I suppose I am more interested in spreading the ideas rather than getting a blood rush (and that is not a dig at you at all). Plus, a demo of the nature you are talking about is unlikely to happen in Australia, at least for issues that I would support. I can see the appeal though and am not opposed to the idea of going to a protest march. I was going to go to the anti-China protest back when the Olympic Torch was here but I CHOSE to work (I was going to say had to work but I couldn’t give you such an easy target ;-)).

I think it was jakez who said he became a libertarian through the internet (or maybe found out about that philosophy through the internet.) But presumably something immediate prompted him to search.

I don’t specifically remember what I was doing but I really did just stumble upon it. It was certainly nothing outside of the internet beyond my own natural inclinations.

And to sidetrack a little, Marx of course is the ultimate libertarian, believing in the withering away of the state as class differences disappear. Capitlaist libertarianism seems to still leaves workers in chains, the chains of exploitation, while ostensibly freeing the bosses.

HAHA cheeky bastard.

Thanks cicrusmind.

It may be generational, but nothing gets the blood running like a good demo with thousands of others united over a [particular issue and wanting something done about it. Or a union meeting with ideas and arguments flashing like lightning across the room.Somehow face book doesn’t do that for me.

The last inspiring demo was against the Iraq invasion, but that was like a shooting star.

The last good union meeting? Hmm… 1986? Or maybe earlier in 81-82.

I think it was jakez who said he became a libertarian through the internet (or maybe found out about that philosophy through the internet.) But presumably something immediate prompted him to search.

And to sidetrack a little, Marx of course is the ultimate libertarian, believing in the withering away of the state as class differences disappear. Capitlaist libertarianism seems to still leaves workers in chains, the chains of exploitation, while ostensibly freeing the bosses.

I take the point Jim makes about possibly being seen as a conspiracy nutter. I will try to be less expansive if I can. I’ve always been a bit left field. As a particular type of Myers Briggs personality, I often can’t help myself. I can’t avoid linking areas that may not be linked in other people’s minds. Even if the links may only be tenuous. Sometimes the links grow and become more obvious to others, sometimes they don’t (or in fact don’t exist or only exist in my mind.)

But if needed I can always plead the elephant waving defence on this.

Why are you waving your arms around feverishly in the room?

To keep the elephants away.

But there are no elephants here.

See, it works.

This legislation is obviously flawed–though I would say it is flawed in its excessiveness and poor drafting, rather than in terms of human rights issues.

Passy, you have a fair point, if a stretched one. I would point out that even the SA is prone to excess in bill posting at the ANU. I often read your posters, but I feel that given the campus left’s penchant for environmental issues, they should probably stop plastering the Amazon’s remains all over the campus. Obviously there is a balance to be struck, and the Bill has not struck that balance. Not even close.

I also think, respectfully, that you are overstating the case for posters vis a vis online activism. You are a member of a generation which did a lot of its politicking on the streets. For better or for worse, though, politically active youngsters such as jakez and myself engage in a lot of our activities online. Facebook and blogs are my first port of call for finding out about political goings on, and the couple of protests I have gone to (internet censorship, mainly), I have found out about online.

Passy said :

I was saying that the trend over the last number of years, especially with the war on terror, has been increasing state surveillance and control.

Agree with you completely on that score. Britain in particularly has devolved into some nasty police-state policy that even the police don’t like (for example, legislation making it illegal to photograph police officers).

But viewing the ACT gummint policy on bill posters as part of a state conspiracy against free speech really is terribly paranoid behavior.

It’s dodgy policy, perhaps. But even then the intent seems fairly legitimate, you seem to admit as much yourself. Using the ‘attack on free speech’ language and going for the state vs. the people rhetoric really does leave you open to being lampooned for being a conspiracy nut.

Jim

I was saying that the trend over the last number of years, especially with the war on terror, has been increasing state surveillance and control. maybe the Bill posters Bill is back door way for Stanhope to do that here, although i still think it is probably just a badly worded Bill.

Nevertheless seeing trends and putting current events into that context is an important part of any debate even if people like me get it wrong sometimes, or often ,or have to adjust our analysis or guesses over time.

Oh dear, if this sounds too much like management speak or MBTI, shoot me immediately.

Working out the distinction between what is commercial and what is political and community is something for the drafters to do. I think (and this is from memory) there is a political exclusion from the criminal activity of postering (it would be more nuanced than that) in one of the states.

Well, at least you’re a St George supporter, Passy… my favourite team too.

Passy said :

tom-tom, I thought I drew a distinction between commercial advertising and community and political notices. Does that (sort of?) address what you are saying?

Not really – the distinction between ‘commercial advertising’ and ‘community and political notices’ is so thin that at times its more semantic than anything else.

Posters advertising a local band playing a benefit gig (non-profit), is that ‘commercial advertising’ or ‘community/political notice’?

If you put up posters that inform people about, for example, a socialist forum, isn’t that ‘advertising’ an event as much as it is a ‘community notice’?

Yes, there are limited avenues for free advertising (whether the advertising is done altruistically or not), but characterising this as part of “ongoing State attacks on free speech” really is ludicrous.

You’d probably find that people would be less aggressive towards these sort of posts if you turned the stereotypical rhetoric down a notch or two.

I thought by drawing a distinction between commercial postering and political and community organisation postering I was addressing these free speech versus commercialisation issues.

And I agree that Stanhope probably did only want to stop this full scale commercial abuse of public spaces. Certainly that is his focus in Hansard. But the legislation doesn’t draw that distinction, and if you add that together with the growing influence and interference of the State, often in quite dictatorial fashion, there may be a trend here.

And why would you criminalise lost dog notices on posts? Or at least put yourself in the political position of appearing to do so?

If the choice is between a stuff up and a conspiracy, choose the stuff up. Most times that is true but not always. Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not after me.

Passy – I profoundly apologise for my mistake. I’m probably the one non Pies fan that doesn’t hate the Pies so you’ve gone up in my book.

I think you profoundly underestimate the value of the internet. To be honest I hope you continue to do so. The more you guys stay off the internet, the better chance that true freedom (not so subtle dig :-P) has of a resurgence.

I didn’t find libertarianism at a Liberal Party meeting (that’s for sure), on a poster, or from a guy handing out pamphlets. I found it dicking around on the net, and I was hooked.

jakez

Pies actually. That’s a St George scarf. (I was born in Wollongong,my Dad and his family came from Caringbah, my uncle played thirds for St George and I went to my first game when I was two. (Or rather was taken there.) I was going to play for them but then found wine, women and song. And I became radicalised by the Vietnam war and discovered politics at 16.

But St George is ingrained into me. It is me. Oh well.

tom-tom, I thought I drew a distinction between commercial advertising and community and political notices. Does that (sort of?) address what you are saying?

I take the point about other avenues. But why are they not complementary to rather than exclusive of posters, fliers, spruiking, meetings etc.

Interestingly the Canberra Times hasn’t published an article of mine since I had a contretemps with them 6 years ago. It was my fault, but you get more for manslaughter.

And they have tightened up their fridge door section. In the past they used to accept my notices for our Socialist Alternative Thursday night meetings. Now they don’t.

Advertising on your own website preaches to the converted. What about those who don’t know you exist? Most probably don’t care, but there may be a few interested, and they’d only come across you through direct contact like fliers, posters, stalls etc. And in times of political uncertainty and action the ebst place to be is at its centre, not on teh net. oh for those days..

In fact the economic crisis means they mightn’t be too far away as recession sparks rebellion, (or political turmoil anyway) at least in parts of Europe.

Actually there’s an interesting piece in the Sunday Times Online about how Sarkozy is running scared and trying to buy of rioters in Guadeloupe and other places and also the the union movement. Olivier Besancenot is a trotskyist and he is rated in rench polls of the French as the most effective opposition to to the President.

His new party is the New Anti-Capitalist party (Nouvelle Parti Anti-capitaliste or NPA). I think the new party is actually a step back, but nevertheless his personal support has gone up 12 per cent since it was formed and I think the NPA’s support is over twenty per cent. I’ll have to check. He wants a new May ’68, but this time for it to be successful. Watch out for this red postman!

Another digression! Sorry. But it does sort of address all those naysayers who tell me my ideas belong in the 1850s or are irrelevant or whatever.

Jim Jones said :

The proposed bill seems excessive, but it’s not really an example of censorship.

I think if our 2004 Bill of Rights and the current bill are read in tandem, this is unquestionable.

I wonder, though, where it will stop. Passy’s reference to pamphleteers makes me wonder if the prohibition of poster posting will lead to an increase in pamphleteering, which would likely create an equivalent litter problem, negating any positive change…

I tend to agree with tom-tom (although perhaps not as vociferously).

I really don’t know if you can classify postering as ‘freedom of speech’. Realistically, most of the time postering is more about free advertising than free speech.

I do band poster runs fairly often, and the lack of places to stick posters up can be a tad frustrating (not to mention the competition with such limited space), but there are other venues to get information out there.

The proposed bill seems excessive, but it’s not really an example of censorship.

Good points trevar. I am perhaps too loose with my words. Free expression is what I mean, but in any event the written word is encompassed within the term free speech, I think.

Freedom from others speeches, written words, spruiking etc? How do we enforce that? I don’t want to hear racist sprouting their filth but I can’t avoid it.
I don’t want to watch interminable ads during the cricket for example, but how do i avoid that. (And do the free to air stations time their ads so that if you switch between them you get other ads?0 Anyway, sometimes ABC and SBS (between ads) are not alternatives.

But I digress. I see the net as an adjunct to, not replacement for, posters and fliers. But then again I have used the same argument in relation to newspapers, and that doesn’t seem such a convincing idea now.

In fact the net may be a return to the days of yore in the sense that many of us are like 17 th or 18 th century pamphleteers. (Lavartus Prodeo mentions this and I quite like it since an old journo friend described me in exactly those terms a few months ago. Not quite the Tom Paine of the net, but you get the idea.)

hyperbole anyone?

this isn’t about freedom of speech at all passy its about stopping people from defacing public property and stopping the waste of money that follows from cleaning up after them, and you are drawing a very long bow to suggest it does.

this doesn’t stop you at all from advocating a socialist agenda, it doesn’t stop you from putting your opinions out in the public domain at all. It certainly doesn’t stop you from writing your blog, posting on riotact, giving lectures or writing to the canberra times, you have plenty of oppurtunities to have your opinion heard.

i’ll maybe buy into the idea that the laws will stop community groups from publicising events as much but even then there are still places to put up posters and the opinions above from people in the know (tonka for example) suggests that there is little point in postering anyway.

an attack on your freedom of speech? came of the grass and get a little bit of perspective.

(and before you respond i’ve read and understand your arguments; i just dont buy them and think you are drawing a very long bow)

Passy said :

But I think there is probably a difference between bands and fairly small political organisations with only a handful of members in Canberra.

Ah yes, the self exception.

And community groups – who is going to look up what the Salvos or Vinnies or Red Cross are up to on the net? But if we see on a poster an event they are organising, we might then look it up on the net.

Me, all the time.

On market day at ANU for example Socialist Alternative had a stall, spruikers, magazine sellers, and a talk. The posters advertised the talk. I doubt the net in these circumstances would have caught the eye of 18 year old students new to campus. And bands? There are still posters everywhere at the ANU for them.

I think you guys had a noticeably less visible presence than in previous years. I don’t think there was much that you could do about it though with the placing you had. The upside would be that everyone most likely went past your stall though and from my own experience that gets a better result.

By the way, we walk around to poster – the ANU mainly.

I always used to read SA posters I have to say. I’m a little annoyed I never went to a meeting when it was more convenient. Oh well, I have your blog now (Swans? You are evil).

Is the ANU campus included in the prohibition? That would be an intensive job for police!

We should also consider the distinction between ‘freedom of expression’, as our Bill of Rights words it, and ‘free speech’. Obviously a poster is not ‘speech’, which is why the word ‘expression’ is used, but I’m more interested in ‘freedom’ versus ‘free’. The former implies that it is legal and acceptable, whereas there is the possibility of imferring that by ‘free’ we mean “without cost”. The ACT Bill of Rights does not entitle us to free expression without cost, only the capacity to express our thoughts/beliefs/opinions regardless of what they are. And more pointedly, this right is intended to give individuals the right to speak freely, not to cause individuals to hear what other individuals are saying.

I think I prefer the argument that more modern strategies–such as web, email, etc–for getting your point across be used in place of allowing people to paste things on pillars, but my main reason is that I don’t always want to hear what these groups want to say. I belong to a few minority groups, and agree that they should be allowed to make their point, but I don’t want to hear what everyone is saying, and would prefer that they say it in a forum like this where I can choose to hear (read) it or ignore it. Unfortunately this makes me sound like I would also approve of a law to prohibit people from spruiking in public places, but I probably would only support a law if it came to a point where you couldn’t move without being accosted.

While everyone does have the right to freedom of expression, no one has been given the ‘right’ to have the ideas they express heard by others.

And although I never thought it incredibly unsightly, if there are a significant number of individuals who prefer the streets without posters, it seems a relatively small loss to free (in the monetary sense) ways to promote an event or idea. What is necessary is a creative approach, and I think those with the best ideas are likely to be more creative, so there’s some natural selection at work.

Thanks tonka. Don’t put yourself down. What you said makes a lot of sense. I wouldn’t be blogging if it didn’t!

But I think there is probably a difference between bands and fairly small political organisations with only a handful of members in Canberra.

And community groups – who is going to look up what the Salvos or Vinnies or Red Cross are up to on the net? But if we see on a poster an event they are organising, we might then look it up on the net.

On market day at ANU for example Socialist Alternative had a stall, spruikers, magazine sellers, and a talk. The posters advertised the talk. I doubt the net in these circumstances would have caught the eye of 18 year old students new to campus. And bands? There are still posters everywhere at the ANU for them.

By the way, we walk around to poster – the ANU mainly.

I’m not really disagreeing or arguing… I just think as a medium it’s passed its use by date, and as I said, there are plenty of alternative options.

By not postering, we’ve reduced the band’s carbon footprint significantly (because we’re not driving all around the city for days on end putting the damn things up…, and we’re not responsible for polluting/littering the city.

I get what you’re saying about postering being a political act, but we stopped postering because it was plainly not effective for our purposes.

How do i put this… um… these days I send an email out or post on RA etc or a myspace bulletin and if people are interested they send it on, and if not, they don’t. I guess horses for courses though.

I would argue that a lot of people who do pass the poster pillars have a computer at work or home and do use the net to find what they’re looking for in terms of event advertising and or political messages. I don’t even look at those things anymore anyway because the majority of stuff on there isn’t my cup of tea. The groups I like don’t use them anymore.

Don’t get me wrong… I’m all for community/political organisations being able to communicate to the public, I just think times have changed since posters were an effective medium. I’m probably wrong as always ha ha, but that’s what I think.

Thanks tonka.

Actually, when I read Hansard, all Stanhope talked about was some event organiser who had plastered every switch box and anything they could find with posters for a particular event. Jon said they were from the top to bottom of Canberra and when the relevant department approached the organiser their response was words to the effect that they had hired the posting out to someone else and were shocked they had broken the law.

I think that is where Stanhope is coming from, and I suspect he hasn’t really thought through the freedom of speech aspects.

That’s why I try to draw a distinction between community and political organisations (not for profit) and commercial profit organisations. For the first named groups it is a free speech issue. For the second group it is ending an avenue for free postering. They could then advertise their gigs etc on RiotACT, although some ‘reviews’ seem to do that for them for free anyway.

As to the internet, you don’t have passing trade/readers there, do you? And Civic at lunchtime is full of people, many of whom may not use the internet, or read RiotACT if they do, or even worse(!!), not read my blog or that of Socialist Alternative.
So unless you had already met me or SA, you’d never look at the website in all probability to, for example, find out what our talks are to be on over the coming weeks in Canberra.

And even on RA the charges can be quite steep for most community and political organisations (which is why they always try to run articles of interest, isn’t it?).

And for political organisations, the act of postering (in prescribed areas) is a political act; helping to put their views out to a wider audience, often through shared labour. I don’t think that is the same as posting on a website.

There’d probably be plenty of space on those advertising pillars if people only stuck one of their posters on instead of covering the whole bloody thing.

I don’t know if Academy or any other club advertising a their latest event really qualitifies as free speech does it? That pretty much covers the extent of most of the posters I see these days.

As a member of a band that has used postering in the past (particularly in the 90’s) I’m pretty sure event postering has passed its use by date anyway.

There are so many other ways to let people know about an event it’s really not neccesary anyway. I’m not even sure people pay much attention to posters these days, though I may be wrong.

As far as I’m aware, non-profit/charity groups are still able to post roadside signs etc and most shops have a community noticeboard of some type.

Given that the internet alone provides so many options for free speech and so on, I don’t think that limiting postering is really going to damage our ability to publicly express an opinion or notify people about an event.

There are plenty of options for free speech and I don’t think less posters will make an iota of difference really.

My two cents.

Passy said :

As a general rule business supports the Libs and Labor. (Labor is probably the second eleven of capital but that’s another story). Some business groups and the Libs have had a lover’s tiff here in the ACT. Big deal. Once the particular personalities move on, die, disappear into the dustbin of history etc, they’ll get back together again. Their class interests will force them to.

I resent having my insular Liberal party joke being referred to as nonsense. I assure you it was the height of nerdy wit.

I absolutely agree though with what you have said above, as classical liberals have warned for centuries, if you create a powerful and centralised big Government, those who want that power will invariably get their hands on it. This is why I argue for small Government and individual freedom.

I don’t like this bill. People vandalising others private property is certainly a problem however the punitive measures prescribed are hardly based on restitution. Personally, I have no problem with the aesthetics of postering. I would also probably agree that there aren’t enough community noticeboards (although I think the internet has largely solved the problem of not being able to get your message out).

proofpositive said :

I support the proposed law so long as it is modified so to permanently lock up people like Passy who insist on defacing public and private places with their postering.

What are you, some sort of sad internet stalker or something?

I thought your comment in the other thread about North Korea was pretty moronic, but you’ve really one-upped yourself here.

Seriously dude, I don’t agree with a lot of what Passy is saying, but replying like some sort of retarded teenager only serves to make him look good and you like a super-ultra-mega-uber-tool. Why don’t you try using your brain before you start tapping the keyboard.

I support the proposed law so long as it is modified so to permanently lock up people like Passy who insist on defacing public and private places with their postering.

Let me deal with the nonsense first.

Civic doesn’t have a population of 310,000. But it is a commercial and work centre of Canberra, which has a population of around that. 2 notice boards for a major work and commerce centre! And guess what? 2 may be wrong. There might be 4. I don’t care. There aren’t enough.

As a general rule business supports the Libs and Labor. (Labor is probably the second eleven of capital but that’s another story). Some business groups and the Libs have had a lover’s tiff here in the ACT. Big deal. Once the particular personalities move on, die, disappear into the dustbin of history etc, they’ll get back together again. Their class interests will force them to.

What about the argument that this anti-postering Bill is an attack on free speech. Agreement? Rebuttals, disagreements etc?

johnboy said :

Pommy bastard said :

Surely less postering is good for RiotAct revenue?

Indeed, but it’s not free speech.

On the other hand our ads don’t clog up drains and poison the planet.

Poison the planet literally or metaphorically?

Pommy bastard said :

Surely less postering is good for RiotAct revenue?

Indeed, but it’s not free speech.

On the other hand our ads don’t clog up drains and poison the planet.

Surely less postering is good for RiotAct revenue?

Since when has Civic had a population of 310,000?

Woody Mann-Caruso said :

An early version of may article about what I think of people who post their blog posts to other blogs is on my blog.

I actually clicked. Personally I would have appreciated the deliberate irony.

An early version of may article about what I think of people who post their blog posts to other blogs is on my blog.

Business supports the Liberals now? They’ll be relieved.