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According to the Australian¹ the Australian Labor Party have announced that they plan to force app developers to submit games and apps to the censors. The Pirate Party condemns this move as completely unworkable and a direct assault on the software industry.

"With the announcement that the government plans to force app developers to submit their works to the Australian censors, any credibility the ALP have in dealing with the digital environment has been torn to shreds. Apps are globally developed and available. Many developers work from home as a hobby and cannot afford the cost of classification, especially if they need clearance with each country separately as would occur if other countries followed Australia's lead," said Pirate Party Australia spokesperson, Simon Frew.

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The Obama Administration is calling for its allies, including our own government, to investigate and charge Australian Wikileaks founder Julian Assange for leaking the Afghan War Diaries.[1] Pirate Party Australia calls for the Federal government to reject this attempt to silence one of the greatest defenders of freedom and democracy this country has produced.

Pirate Party activist Simon Frew said "It is unfortunate that a nation such as the United States, with such a pretense for defending freedom has fallen so far as to be calling for a global man-hunt of Mr Assange for leaking information about the conduct of the war in Afghanistan. The leak shows a systematic attempt to cover up every bad turn in the war and to keep the citizens of the countries involved in the dark about what is happening."

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With Julia Gillard calling the election for August 21 it is with some regret that we must announce we will not be able to contest this election as a Party. Our application to register is before the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC), however a Party cannot be registered once an election has been called.

This does not mean that you won't hear from us this election. We'll continue to highlight important issues that have been largely neglected by other political parties, and to lobby and campaign for a better policy direction with respect to transparent governance, the Internet and civil liberties. We will continue to work to grow the Party, build a stronger base and be better placed to campaign for the next federal election. You may even see us at a state election. As with any start-up organisation, we are still finding ourselves, and our first National Congress occurs on July 31 in Sydney, where our members will formally adopt our first statement of platform, and our first manifesto — and discuss the future of the Party, the future of the democracy in Australia, and how we plan to make it better.

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It was revealed today that the Australian Government has been making inquiries regarding a policy of storing the browsing history of every Australian Internet user¹ in another move that displays the federal governments contempt for the privacy and civil liberties of the Australian people.

"Pirate Party Australia is shocked and appalled by the news that the Australian Labor Party is now considering this sort of indiscriminate data surveillance. Pirate Party Australia was formed to campaign for privacy and Internet freedom and this is a direct attack on every Australian's right to privacy." said Rodney Serkowski, Party Secretary.

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"We at Pirate Party Australia welcome the news that a legal challenge is being mounted over the BRCA1 breast cancer gene and we hope that the case will be a catalyst for laws to expressly forbid patents on genetic materials. Patents on any genetic material raise large ethical questions, and there are severe implications for the future of scientific research involved in granting monopolies for what are essentially naturally occuring mutations, in naturally occurring genes." said Party Secretary, Rodney Serkowski.