thanks to you, the real opposition

END OF YEAR SENATE SPEECH TO GET A FEW THINGS OFF MY CHEST.

Oct 18, 2014

dear jo

this december, we celebrate a very important 30th anniversary: it is 30 years since jo vallentine was elected to the senate.

On October 19 I was invited to participate in a ‘Men of Letters’event in Sydney — an occasional departure for the wonderful women of letters team. ten of us were…

Scott Ludlam

Oct 2, 2014

A digital call to arms: #StopDataRetention

FIRST PUBLISHED AT JUNKEE.COM

I’d have never made it as a journalist. The tyranny of a blinking cursor on a blank white page. Rendering legibility out of complex, high-dimensional events while deadlines drum their fingers on the…

Scott Ludlam

Sep 18, 2014

our new war in iraq

piece on our latest deployment into iraq; first published on ‘the strategist’

Cracks are already starting to show in the Government’s strange haste to commit Australian troops and aircraft to war in Iraq, and the equally confused messaging about how we are meant to…

Scott Ludlam

May 25, 2014

what even is #estimates

Three times a year, the ordinary sittings of the Senate are suspended for the obscure but essential business of budget estimates hearings. For the next fortnight, the bleak theatre in the House of Representatives will continue as expected, but the Senate chamber will lie empty; the…

Scott Ludlam

Mar 31, 2014

labor’s strange surveillance capitulation

It won’t make the front page but on 30 March, Labor’s deputy leader Tanya Plibersek quietly caved in on one of the most invasive of recent proposals for mass surveillance in Australia.

Scott Ludlam

Mar 23, 2014

The growing threat to Australia’s media plurality

As we know, Australia has one of the most concentrated media markets of any democracy. When you turn on your free-to-air television, you know that you’re receiving your news from one of only six major companies. Radio broadcasting comes from…

Scott Ludlam

Mar 3, 2014

Welcome to Western Australia

Tonight I rise to invite Prime Minister Tony Abbott to visit the beautiful state of Western Australia. I do this in good faith, because we are only a matter of weeks away from a historic by-election that will not just determine the final makeup of this chamber after July but…

Scott Ludlam

Feb 10, 2014

the day we fight back

11 February 2014: around the globe more than 6000 websites, with user groups ranging from sub-niche to hundreds of millions, are blacked out today. The cause is serious: government surveillance overkill that compromises privacy, the rule of law, journalism and democracy itself.

Scott Ludlam

Nov 18, 2013

slow fuse

“We don’t discuss intelligence matters,” Australia’s bewildered Prime Minister told the media again this morning, making him the only person left on earth not discussing intelligence matters. Finally, seven months after the fuse was lit, the scandal of the US National Security Agency surveillance state has…