Australians to face age checks from search engines

2025: if you're logged in, then we check your age to see if you can do or see some stuff

2027: the companies providing the logins must provide government with the identities

2028: because VPNs are being used to circumvent the law, if the logging entity knows you're an Australian citizen, even if you're not in Australia or using an Aussie IP address then they must still apply the law

2030: you must be logged in to visit these specific sites where you might see naked boobies, and if you're under age you can't - those sites must enforce logins and age limits

2031: Australian ISPs must enforce the login restrictions because some sites are refusing to and there are loopholes

2033: Australian ISPs must provide the government with a list of people who visited this list of specific sites, with dates and times of those visits

2035: you must be logged in to visit these other specific sites, regardless of your age

2036: you must have a valid login with one of these providers in order to use the internet

2037: all visits to all sites must be logged in

2038: all visits to all sites will be recorded

2039: this list of sites cannot be visited by any Australian of any age

2040: all visits to all sites will be reported to the government

2042: your browser history may be used as evidence in a criminal case

Australian politicians, police, and a good chunk of the population would love this.

Australia is quietly extremely authoritarian. It's all "beer and barbies on the beach" but that's all actually illegal.

> your browser history may be used as evidence in a criminal case

As others have said, that's the case already and not just in Australia. Same in lots of other places like the UK and the whole EU. Less so in the US (though they can demand any data the ISP has, and require ISPs to collect data on individuals)

> Australia is quietly extremely authoritarian.

It is weird, as a recent-ish migrant I do agree, there are rules for absolutely bloody everything here and the population seems in general to be very keen on "Ban it!" as a solution to everything.

It's also rife with regulatory capture - Ah, no mate, you can't change that light fitting yourself, gotta get a registered sparky in for that or you can cop a huge fine. New tap? You have to be kidding me, no, you need a registered plumber to do anything more than plunger your toilet, and we only just legalised that in Western Australia last year.

It's been said before, but at some point the great Aussie Larrikin just died. The Wowsers won and most of them don't even know they're wowsers.

There are a lot of people changing their own light fittings. I have never heard about laws against plumbing but I don't see them stopping old mate from doing it.

Electrical work can be pretty dangerous...

Yeah, here in WA at least, there are signs up in the plumbing section of Bunnings saying “Stop! DIY plumbing is illegal! Only buy this stuff if you’re getting a professional to fit it!”

The reasoning is often “people might contaminate the water supply for a whole street!” Which just points to poor provision of one way valves at the property line.

But yeah, illegal.

I agree there are limits with what you want to do on electricity, but turning the breaker off and replacing a light fitting or light switch is pretty trivial. And I know people do just get on with it and do some of this stuff themselves anyway.

Was particularly pissed off that in January this year the plumbing “protections” were extended to rural residents who aren’t even connected to mains water or sewage, to protect us from substandard work by … making it illegal for us to do it ourselves. Highly annoying.

And let me guess, this rule isn't eliminated if your property is isolated by a reduced pressure zone device?

I assume that in your post "WA" means Western Australia -- as I can't imagine this kind of absurd protectionism law flying in Washington state, even though it's a little more paternalistic than average for the US.