back to article Godly Aussie MP accused of being online 'smut' junkie

Another day, another God-fearing Australian politician is accused of surfing hardcore adult websites. Last week, it was New South Wales Minister Paul McLeay. Just one day later, it was the turn of fellow NSW MP and leader of the Christian Democratic Party (CDP), the Rev Fred Nile to take the title of "one of the biggest …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    "Sex Scandal ?????" - WTF ??

    Depicting Homo Sapiens while attempting to reproduce is a "Scandal" ??

    This looks like a f§cked-up attempt to shoot down opponents for nothing. Whether the "evangelical" guy looked at porn is totally irrelevant, irrespective of his theories about porn. It is his private business and the Aussie gov is clearly on a Mad Witchhunt.

    I have certainly downloaded more than 200000 porn files from lots of free sites and I am proud of it. Nobody was hurt and everybody should just keep their mouths shut.

    1. irish donkey
      Happy

      Do s I say ..... not as I do

      I think you might have missed the point. Nobody cares that he views Porn. What is more worrying is that he lectures everybody else on the evils of porn and fornication which chokeing the bishop at home.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Joke

        Re: Do s I say ..... not as I do

        "What is more worrying is that he lectures everybody else on the evils of porn and fornication which chokeing the bishop at home."

        What? The bishop is involved in this as well?!

    2. Lord Elpuss Silver badge

      Yeeeeeeeesssss.....

      ...but you're not running for public office on a ticket of being pure as the driven snow.

      That the good Reverend may prove to be just as human as the rest of us is essentially of no consequence beyond the fact that it highlights a certain hypocrisy when it comes to vilifying others for doing much the same (having sex, not being clothed top to toe, using naughty words etc).

    3. Lord Elpuss Silver badge
      Grenade

      Addendum

      IMHO "Sex scandal" refers in the main to Homo Sapiens *enjoying the act of trying* to reproduce - not the act of reproducing itself. In fact, being successful in reproducing would be somewhat career-limiting for the average grumble star(let).

      Grenade, because sometimes when it goes off (prematurely or otherwise) you know you're in trouble.

    4. DavCrav

      The scandal is...

      I'm guessing the scandal is hypocrisy, not the sex stuff. If he'd have said "sex and porn are fine, wahay", and then got caught watching porn, nobody would care. But he didn't. He got caught going "porn is bad!!11! think of the children!11!" or something similar, then looking at it himself.

    5. Sam Liddicott

      mostly for comment:

      I don't think the intent is merely to depict homo-sapiens attempting to reproduce* any more than I think selling cocaine is merely an attempt to help one enjoy earth's rich bounty.

      However it is startling how often a hard-core religious witch-hunts are mostly a public mask for a private self-condemnation of the self-righteous.

      Interestingly this is a rare example of a true ad-homenim attack, that is Fred and Paul see it as an attack - it is an attack "to the man" (to themselves) (as opposed to an attack of the man, which most people think it means) - but you and many don't see it as a valid attack at all.

      Personally, I class porn as a mental addiction that's heavily commercially exploited and makes perceptual changes to the addicts mind of a nature that is acceptable to the changed mind.

      Sam

      *that's merely a slightly related subject. What is depicted is not intended to convey a view of reproduction but stimulate an addictive response rooted in the same parts of our mind that drives reproduction. Whether or not harm is considered to result from the view of porn depends on what the considered natural states of mind are, and how the developed states of mind control or affect life. Of course one persons addiction is another persons normality; perhaps it's not really addiction till you want to quit or till it makes you do things you don't like.

      1. BristolBachelor Gold badge
        Coat

        addiction

        @Sam LIddicott

        I think that we are supposed to be addicted to reproduction. Without it the species dies out...

        As for heavily commercialised and exploited, well it may be, but I don't know what isn't

    6. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

      "Aussie gov is clearly on a Mad Witchhunt"?

      I have no idea where you got that from. This is state politics, the federal "Aussie gov" is not involved and doesn't even care.

      It's scandalous because of the hypocrisy of an ultra-right wing bible thumping parliamentarian, who spends his time trying to ban everything that might make people happy because it's "impure," caught looking at porn.

      Oh but it's okay because it's for "research" purposes. Right.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

    7. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      no title available

      The scandal is that he is opposed to porn websites and probably has no idea what a log file is.

      Yet another 'research' defence I see, its getting boring.

    8. Cameron Colley

      It's called "hypocrisy" and you don't want it in leaders.

      Someone who is a member of the church and an opponent of pornography who actually looks at it themselves is someone you don't want in any position of authority or of trust.

      Campaigning against porn then looking at it basically means he thinks that other people should be punished for something he should not be. He's a hypocritical fucktard of the highest order and puts his party into disrepute, whatever your views on pornography (personally, I like it).

    9. Nextweek
      Unhappy

      Tax payers money

      Clearly you missed the important point. This was on his works computer. A tax payers computer. Are you happy that tax money is going to pay for someone to sit and view porn?

    10. Diogenes
      Alert

      actually no hypocracy

      Whilst I despise the rev & all he stands for to be fair to the man...

      He does not have a computer in his inner office - all the computers are outside in the outer (staff) office.

      When he rails at something at least someone in his office has seen it - unlike the great crusaders who protested Life of Brian without ever seeing it on the basis of media reports. The staff actually contact ACMA if what they find is beyond the pale to have the site added to "the list".

      Then again I can easily see how 200,000 hits can have been recorded as a lot sites seem to pop up a lot of windows for no good reason (webmasters scamming pay per click ?)

    11. Goat Jam
      Thumb Up

      @StrongType

      I'm guessing you are not a New South Welshman going by your fervid defence of The Rev Fred Nile, otherwise you would be aware that this man has had a long history (30 plus years) of the most extreme type of hysterically strident preaching in the public arena that you can imagine.

      That a man who has been so vociferous in his condemnation of everybody from homosexuals, pornographers, the greens, muslims, and basically everybody who does not loudly and often profess the most conservative Christian beliefs is irony at its very best.

      It made me lol anyway.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    All power to your [elbow]...forearms

    If 200,000 is the amount of porn you admit to viewing then according to this Pron Usage Chart.

    http://i56.tinypic.com/8z2x03.jpg

    You must have the strongest forearms in history.

    Not to mention the other questionable characteristics you must have attained.

  3. Arclight

    Not quite

    The difference is your not actively campaigning for a national porn filter, and decrying anyone who views porn as a demented pervert.

    He can't stand there shouting "Ban porn" while getting his rocks off looking at porn. Its called 'Hypocrisy'

  4. Mike Hanna
    Big Brother

    Private business?

    Apart from when he used public equipment - the computer provided to him by the government. Don't his staff have their own log ins? Perhaps they had to use his as using government equipment to download p0rn is against their terms and conditions. They can be sacked for breaching those terms and conditions - MP's can't. So (perhaps) they knowingly circumvented a system to stop them looking at p0rn. Is that system abuse news, rather than a witchhunt?

    Also, don't forget he's one of the guys who wants the p0rn blocking firewall installing... He wants Big Brother in place to keep an eye on all other Aussies and stop them doing things which aren't currently illegal (are they), but until it 's there, he's happy to watch porn, or assist others to do so. Which smacks of hypocrisy, doesn't it? Is the hypocrisy newsworthy?

    When the hell do you get the time to watch 200000 p0rn files? Don't you work for a living?

  5. Francis Boyle Silver badge

    Don't actually believe it.

    I mean if it were any other god-botherer, yes, but Nile is a certified grade A sex-phobic nutter who in the words of one of his followers thinks "genitals are rude" and no doubt a little bit "scary" too.

    BTW, El Reg, the pandering to the religious right thing is over. The agenda for the next three years is pandering to anyone who has ever owned an Akubra. (No, don't get too excited down the back. That's a type of hat not a Bulgarian airbag accessory.)

  6. Anonymous Coward
    WTF?

    @StrongType

    You don't think hypocrisy should be exposed? Not even from those who would seek to rule over us or castigate us for our sinful ways?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Flame

      I Repeat

      "This looks like a f§cked-up attempt to shoot down opponents for nothing."

      Can't you see the abuse potential of all that ? Australian Ministers (and now also MPs ?) have to resign for doing something which is clearly legal ?

      If I were the Minster in question I would have called this an Unconstitutional Attempt Of Blackmailing A Government Officer and reported the issue to Police. The person to be kicked out of office is the Prime Minster who requested resignation.

      1. Mike Hanna

        Who said...

        ...it's not legal? He's downloading p0rn on government provided IT equipment. I bet you my lunch money and a packet of Bensons that there are terms and conditions that say he should not be using public-funded IT equipment for pornographic material. Home PC - not a problem.

        On a personal issue I think he should fess up, put his hands up, admits he "feeds the ducks" two or three times a day and vote against the Oz Firewall, and keep his job.

  7. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge
    WTF?

    State vs Federal Politics

    Here is an article about a NSW state MLC, and inexplicably there are two entirely unrelated paragraphs added regarding the federal government. Who are these politicians with highly moral agendas to which you refer?

    1. Jane Fae
      Paris Hilton

      Motes, beams and political implications

      The two are hardly unrelated. The link I make is a very practical one – as John Major found out to his cost in the UK.

      In general, family and politicians’ private lives are off limits. Not totally: and if family are involved in criminal wrong-doing, then they become fair game.

      Back in the ‘90’s, John Major started banging on about “family values”, at which point, personal morality became an issue…and a number of his MP’s suddenly got outed as serial cads and sleaze-bounders.

      Now fast forward to Australia. If things had gone differently and, electorally speaking, Ms Gillard was now in bed with Fiona Patten of the Australia Sex Party…. If the Labor Party advocated minimal net censorship…then stories about politicians surfing for smut would be mostly irrelevant.

      However, in a system where the government advocates a clean net and keeps having to do deals with far right independents and the likes of Family First (which I know they haven’t just done…but the principle remains), personal political morality is very much in the frame.

      The story of the rev Nile is merely a cautionary tale…but with implications for national politics should any of Julie’s 75 parliamentary supporters have smut-gobbling tendencies. A warning of things to come.

      Paris...cause she'd have no probs dealing with smut-goblins of any tendency. :)

  8. Dazed and Confused

    @StrongType

    For many of his voters his viewing of porn would be the sin that he has been telling them it was all along.

    For many others it will be a question of hypocrisy.

    That some person likes to look at pron should indeed be their own private business, but this guy has been going around saying that no one else should be allowed to look at it. At that point it does become a point of public interest. He is alleged to have been using tax payer funded equipment to do something he, as an MP, says should be illegal. He was also risking further public expense when the Government gets sued by some employee who claims to have been sexually harassed by coming across material they find offensive, or at least claims to find offensive when they realise that there is a big payout coming their way.

    Ideally the good people of Oz should just vote the sex party in and then all this could be legalised and no one would have to worry about it.

    In the mean time, people in glass houses shouldn't throw stones.

    1. Disco-Legend-Zeke
      Joke

      Skip This Post If...

      ...you hate puns.

      An African king bought a new throne.

      He put the old one in the attic of his thach palace.

      One day it fell through the ceiling and killed him.

      Moral: People who live in grass houses shouldn't stow thrones.

  9. Barrie Shepherd

    Fred and his excuse

    As a local radio station put it;

    Q: “What have Fred Nile and the Japanese whalers got in common?”

    A: “They both do it for research.”

    Boom Boom (or should that be Bang Bang.?)

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      a different answer....

      A. "They're all fucktards who are a waste of oxygen, should have their balls crushed in a vice while having their eyeballs and brains slowly pecked out by hungry ravens."

      That wasn't too harsh, was it?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @StrongType

    I have no idea what agenda you are pushing here, but surely you can see that this is nothing more sinister than someone being hoisted by their own petard?

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    "his staff had used his log-on"

    ...many occasions?

    Me, I make sure that my log is well hidden under the desk when my staff are around.

  12. bluest.one
    Coat

    His Staff?

    Is that a euphemism?

  13. RW
    WTF?

    This is an old story in Oz

    Donkey's years ago in the pre-internet age, there was some woman in Oz who had amassed an astonishing archive of printed porn in the name of "research". If my memory serves me correctly, it was largely hardcore stuff that Oz law strictly forbade the possession of, but her excuse was accepted by the coppers.

    The rest of the global population had our doubts.

    Oz needs a government that lets the djinn out of the bottle for good by legalizing all porn, drugs, nudity, and skimpy form fitting swimsuits for women. (The men all run around in their Speedos already, and have for a long time.) A law strictly forbidding men of the cloth from pronouncing, or inciting someone else to pronounce, on political matters wouldn't be a bad idea either.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Megaphone

      Apparently

      ...Australians are very, very weird people with a 18-century mindset. Porn & drugs are two totally different things. The first one is a depiction of human reproduction - a biological necessity.

      The seocnd one are destroying human biology, at least if taken in excessive amounts.

      Are you seriously having Issues With Swimsuits ?? I suggest you rename your country "HillBillistan".

      1. Sarah Bee (Written by Reg staff)

        Re: Apparently

        Well, that's an... interesting perspective.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Pint

    Classic!

    ' his staff had used his log-on “for research purposes" '

    Try to contain my amazement that a Bible-bashing prat is a complete hypocrite

  15. Schultz
    Go

    Give the man credit...

    At least he and his staff did some serious research on the issue.

    I hope all commentards did proper research before spilling their beans.

  16. The Other Steve
    Paris Hilton

    Sex Party

    is what he typed into Google, for sure.

    +99 ROTFFLMFAO for the 'staff' gags. Snark.

  17. Christopher Cowan

    Misquote

    "the long list of Christian evangelicals whose spirit proved to be all too willing"

    This simile is wrong, it is whose flesh proved to be all too weak. If the spirit was all too willing he wouldn't have looked at the pr0n.

    1. Sorry that handle is already taken. Silver badge

      It's fine

      It's left to the intelligent reader to finish the proverb in their head.

    2. Jane Fae

      Oh, dear...

      ...yet more evidnce that anything slightly fancy is wasted!

      The original quote, of which i am well aware is "the spirit is willing but the flesh is weak". Comes from Matthew 26:41 .

      I was trying to be ever so slightly clever by inventing a variation on that. I see now that i shouldn't have been. :(

      And oops...my original version went: "whose spirit may have been all too willing, but whose flesh proved that bit stronger". It was a delibrate play with the original.

      That said, i rather think i prefer the subbed version, which maintains the allusion, but still inverts the idea.

      jane

  18. Phillip Brown 1

    not all that it seems

    FWIW, a report on the weekend stated that the biggest site in terms of 'adult content' that showed up on the logs was .................

    news.com.au - ie the local website for News Corp newspaper publishing.

    The reason it was classified as 'adult content' was because there was a dating site link on it - which News Corp happens to own. So just reading the news gets you lumped with watching porn.

    http://www.news.com.au/technology/newscomau-classed-as-adult-website-in-audit-of-politicians-internet-use/story-e6frfro0-1225914118368

    If news.com.au is adult content, what does that make El Reg?

    P.S. the person who ordered the inquiry did so without autorisation and has resigned

    http://www.smh.com.au/nsw/woman-behind-nsw-parliamentary-porn-inquiry-quits-20100906-14y1i.html

    1. Alan Newbury
      FAIL

      Certainly not all

      Add to that that you get one 'porn' hit for the front page and another 'porn' hit for every story that you go to - and yet another when you leave that story and return to the home page.

      At that rate I'd have about 40 from work today just going through the tech sections in various news.com publications.

  19. Loki 1
    Stop

    Come on...

    ... is there an Australian who DOESN'T look at porn?

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    @Phillip Brown and Alan Newbury

    Given there is absolutely no value whatsoever that can be gained from visiting any news.com affiliated website I would actually rank doing so worse than visiting porn sites.

  21. KayKay
    FAIL

    they really didn't....

    200000 hits is not all that many, they didn't actually VIEW them.

    This is where searching the computer falls down for "proving" someone visited a site. The person did not "visit", their webpage did.

    In connection with this story, I saw a TV "news" image of supposed adult sites being viewed ... they showed "dating" (read paid webcam porn) sites which have as many as 100 images ... each one coming from a different site. The page has to access those sites to download the images. Some go through several redirects to collect "clicks". Finding records of that site on the hard drive in no way shows anyone actually viewed them, any more than they viewed the plethora of ad-serving sites the page accessed.

    The interesting thing here is, how did he think to oppose porn all these years if he didn't know what that is ???

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