Australia is proud of its many unique attributes and achievements. The landscape, the people, the sporting legends and so on.
A few years ago we achieved something special. Former Senator and Minister for Communications Richard Alston was given the accolade of the World’s Greatest Luddite for his complete lack of understanding of the internet. Alston is:
…behind a number of proposals in Australia that would seem to point to an overwhelming miscomprehension of the Internet. He also appears to view himself as a moral crusader in which he will cleanse Australia while the rest of the world descends into hell.
+1 for Aus.
In 2009 Senator Stephen Conroy trumped this by being voted Internet Villain of 2009 by the ISPA in the UK. The ISPA said:
“This was awarded for continuing to promote network-level blocking despite significant national and international opposition.”
+1 for Aus.
At the time, Conroy was working for this man, the former Least Interesting World Leader. Yet another achievement we can proud of. Kev is an interesting bloke that likes a fair shake of the sauce bottle but doesn’t like people making their own choices about what they read or see on the internet. He was also the Most Censorious Leader In The Western World.
+1 for Aus.
Kev achieved massive popularity on the social network Twitter. I can almost hear you asking how someone so terminally boring could manage such a feat. Easy. Buying pre-made list of Twitter followers, the digital equivalent of childhood imaginary friends, is no big deal. That probably made him the World’s Saddest Leader too.
+1 for Aus.
Our 2010 replacement for Dear Leader Kev is Dear Ranga, Julia Gillard. The mining corporations and the right wing factions of the Labor Party - and possibly others - decided the engineer a party coup and install her in the PM’s office. Gillard, who previously had zero interest in Twitter, suddenly became everyone’s best friend. At the time of writing she had 12,012 imaginary friends, many of them young women who squeal with much delight at being followed by Gillard.
Has Julia been buying follower lists too? Or maybe she has Labor staffers furiously clicking the follow button on Twitter in a shabby and cynical astroturfing exercise. Twitter follower lists are also available from offshore sources where third world workers are paid a pittance for each new friend they follow.
Which is it, Ms Gillard?