The fear campaign against a price on pollution has become so absurd that talkback radio hosts are claiming that a price on pollution means the end of our economy and life as we know it. Independent MPs are even receiving death threats.

Now, these same radio hosts have joined with climate deniers and far-right politicians to organise anti-climate action rallies as part of Tony Abbott's "people's revolt". They start on Saturday outside Julia Gillard's electorate office in Melbourne. We must make sure that on the other side of town, our movement comes together to present the positive, mainstream views that hard-line 'shock jocks' prefer to ignore.

Right wing shock jock Chris Smith said last week on MTR radio: "I'll do my best on a daily basis to spread the word". We don't have a radio network to promote our rally, but

GetUp members have proved before that, when it counts, we're willing to publicly show how much we care about clean energy & climate action.



Click here to RSVP

I was in Canberra last week and almost every politician and journalist I met with talked to me about the anti-climate action rallies. They're spooked.

I assured them that the campaign for climate action was just as strong -- and now, we need to demonstrate this.

That's why it's so important we

join together for a few hours this Saturday March 12 -- not to have a louder, angrier rally, but to show the difference in both size and tone.

While they're shouting their angry slogans and misinformation, on the other side of Melbourne we'll hold a positive, family-friendly gathering to stand up for our vision for clean energy and preserving a safe climate for our kids.

With your help, we'll prove there are more of us than there are of them and in doing so we'll make a powerful statement.

See you this Saturday.

Simon Sheikh

National Director

for the GetUp team

In other news, the GetUp community has stood behind renewable energy, successfully campaigning to restore funding cuts to the Solar Flagship Program. To see the story of how it all happened, click here.

Want to have your say about this campaign? Leave a comment on our new blog here

Taking on electoral litigation was never going to be easy. In Australia, the courts have not historically played a big role in shaping Australia's electoral process -- but in the last two weeks GetUp has changed that. Having campaigned for the last 3 years to modernise Australia's enrolment system, this past fortnight has been the most successful period ever in the electoral reform campaigning efforts of GetUp members, who voted in record numbers to pursue this latest online enrolment case.

In 1902 Australia's electoral democracy took its first steps in creating an electoral roll and 15 years later compulsory enrolment was legislated. These days technology plays an enormous role in how people enrol to vote and how the Australian Election Commission manages elections.

Already the AEC accepts enrolments submitted by fax, and even enrolments submitted by people who download a form, sign it, scan it and email it in (a cumbersome process!). GetUp's counsel, Jeremy Kirk and Aditi Rao together with the legal team from Marque Lawyers, argued in the Federal Court on Thursday that the process of faxing or emailing a scanned signature creates a digital signature and that signing with a digital pen would therefore be acceptable -- indeed extremely comparable in terms of the end result.

The OzEnrol website represented a proof of concept. The website enabled members to send to the AEC's fax machine an enrolment form that is comparable to one received directly from another fax machine. It essentially combined an online forum with an online fax system that GetUp members already use to send faxes to their politicians. The website also used a specially built signature tool which GetUp purchased from Europe and built into the OzEnrol website. The need for this ingenious tool was due to the fact that the Commonwealth Electoral Act (and most state acts) requires a person enrolling to sign using their "personal signature". 

The legislature foresaw the direction technology was taking when in 1999 that implemented the Electronic Transactions Act, a piece of legislation designed to remove legal impediments that may prevent a person using electronic communications to satisfy obligations under Commonwealth law. A key principle in the Act is 'technology neutrality' - that is that there should be no discrimination between transactions conducted using for example between a fax machine and a computer -- both forms of 'electronic' communication. It suggests that transactions conducted using paper documents and transactions conducted using electronic communications should be treated equally by the law and not given an advantage or disadvantage against each other and established the basic rule that a transaction is not invalid  because it took place by means of an electronic communication.

When seen in the light of enrollment this provided an opportunity for GetUp to launch a test case. From the start the key was whether a court would accept that a personal signature, whether applied by an ink pen or a digital pen, was all that was required and that the AEC was not entitled to discriminate simply on the basis of the means of signing.

To bring a test case you need two things. The first is a client and 19 year old Sophie Trevitt who had never enrolled kindly agreed to step up to the plate. The second is a law firm. Marque became involved following a chance meeting that I had with Simon Shiekh at a taxi rank in Canberra. From that meeting both Marque and GetUp could see an opportunity to challenge the manner in which enrollment  was being conducted. Added to that was an alignment in the way that both GetUp and Marque like to challenge the status quo.

With the overwhelming support of the GetUp members a test case was launched following the rejection by the AEC of the online enrollment of Sophie. From there things moved really quickly. A team of leading  counsel were assembled, evidence was prepared and the matter heard before the Federal Court, all in the space of three weeks.

The Federal Court found overwhelmingly in favor of GetUp. A key finding was that the AEC was not entitled to discriminate between faxed forms and those that had been generated via the OzEnrol site. The immediate outcome is that Sophie can now exercise her right to vote. In the area of electoral reform it should encourage Federal and State governments to introduce much needed changes to ensure that the 1.2 million Australians who are not on the Roll are given every opportunity to enroll in a manner that reflects the 21st century.  

The principles outlined in the decision extend beyond the somewhat arcane field of electoral law to all areas of government  and commerce. The decision could hasten the adoption of cutting edge technology and facilitate a move away from the need for hard copy forms to be signed by traditional means.     

Damian Sturzaker

Partner , Marque Lawyers

Then he felt compelled to argue point-for-point with a 22 year old campaigner (ie me) over the deeply flawed design of the internet filter policy.

At every opportunity, the Senator has felt compelled to defend his ideology-driven policy against immense opposition.

This week he was given another reason to get on the back-foot with the announcement that the legislation will be shelved before the election.  This is a small and subtle way of Rudd expressing his lack of confidence in his communications minister.

The internet filter is on life support but we need Kevin Rudd to pull the plug.

Just by speaking up, Rudd could save over $40 million a year- money which could be spent on methods which work- education, parental empowerment and resourcing the Federal Police to help keep kids safe online.

While we can't quite say the filter policy is dead, we can say it's dying. And for that we have to thank the 120,000 people who have signed our petition, the 10,000 who flooded Q & A, the thousands who donated and the countless other GetUp members who have shown their support for internet freedom. The campaign is an excellent example of why we need to keep the internet a free and open space for expression. Without keeping the internet free from censorship a movement of this kind would not be possible.

So thanks, GetUp members, for helping to keep the internet amazing!

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[For the media]