In Guy Rundle’s essay in Overland 197, he describes the evolution of modern Labor:

The party no longer seeks to take control of objects (the products of the economy) for the benefit of subjects (the working class and the Australian people in general) but instead seeks to control subjects (especially the sub-groups and cultures that make up or replace the working class) for the purpose of social reproduction without significant change. This is not a sinister scheme for social manipulation but rather the opposite: a petty series of controls compensating for the absence of a larger vision of the good society, and a total separation of thinking and reflection from the process of governing.

Stephen Conroy’s decision to introduce compulsory internet filtering illustrates the point perfectly. In the name of solving a completely non-existent problem, Labor’s prepared to subject us all to slower speeds and the supervision of some sinister panel of censors.