Displaying items by tag: Scott Morrison

Scott Morrison wants to get re-elected. Nothing wrong with that aspiration; which man who earns more than half-a-million a year without having to take responsibility for anything at all wouldn't want to continue in the job?

Melbourne, Australia's second biggest city and one that has often earned the title of being the globe's most liveable city, has set a dubious record, that of being the world's most locked down city due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

ANALYSIS The Australian Federal Police appears to have provided the best possible argument for not passing federal bills that seek to enhance its powers, following the provision of details about using existing Australian encryption laws to read the encrypted messages of criminal gangs and take them down.

Despite the blaring headlines that six million more Australians are eligible to get the COVID-19 vaccine from today (Monday), this does not mean they can get themselves vaccinated.

A federal Labor MP has called for WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to be brought home to avoid his possible extradition to the US to face alleged charges of espionage.

News Corporation has announced it has reached a multi-year agreement with Facebook, to provide news to users of the social media site Down Under.

A shade over two weeks since Treasurer Josh Frydenberg crowed that Australia had put in place "world-leading legislation" to bring Facebook and Google into line, no big news organisation has signed a deal with Facebook to share news content.

ANALYSIS Despite all the brave talk emanating from Canberra, Facebook has comprehensively dictated the terms under which it will restore news content to Australians.

If the initial reaction to Facebook's sudden decision to cut Australians off from the site on Thursday was idiotic, it became even more ludicrous on Friday, with reactions from politicians and the media competing to be dubbed the silliest of the lot.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has made his reaction known to the blocking of news content in the country by Facebook – in a post on Facebook.

Both Google and Facebook have demonstrated to the Australian Government in no uncertain terms who exactly is calling the shots in the stoush over the news media code, but in diametrically different ways.

The Australian Department of Defence is continuing to use a Chinese-owned data centre, Global Switch, for hosting some of its data, even though it was told to switch providers by the end of last year.

The Federal Government is likely to give Google and Facebook a major concession before it puts its news media code legislation up for a vote, with a clause that says the two companies do not have to cut deals with publishers under the law if they can convince them to sign up to their news products.

Microsoft would support the implementation of a law similar to the Australian news media code in other countries, including the US, the company's president, Brad Smith, says.

A Senate committee that has held public hearings into the Federal Government's news media code is unlikely to propose any changes to the bill before it.

Google has refused to rule out the possibility that it will pull other services apart from search from Australia in the event that the Federal Government goes ahead and legislates its News Media and Digital Platforms Mandatory Bargaining Code which was introduced into Parliament in December last year.

Google has launched its News Showcase in Australia, a product that was announced in October 2020, but not introduced Down Under till now due to the company's stoush with the government over the news media code.

The national body representing the electric vehicle industry in Australia, the Electric Vehicle Council, has issued a scathing critique of a Future Fuels discussion paper put out by the Federal Minister for Energy and Emissions Reduction Angus Taylor, describing it as “yet another flaccid, do-nothing document that will prevent Australians getting access to the world’s best electric vehicles.”

Google has very cleverly got its way as far as the news media code is concerned, leading Australian politicians on and ensnaring them in a very neat trap. And the company has ensured that nobody will lose face as a result of all the threats.

Search behemoth Google, which is trying to muscle the Australian Government into accepting a news media code devised by itself, has contradicted its own threat to pull out of the market by slyly approaching smaller news organisations and trying to cut deals on its (Google's) terms.