Time’s up South Oz Attorney General - his email in full

Last week I received an unhappy email from the South Aussie AG about my blog piece bemoaning his influence. I sent him a reply to give him a chance to do a better job of it but he has not taken advantage of this opportunity so here, in all its glory, is the email.

The next post will address the tactics and shortcomings of the AG’s email. Clearly, he got lost in the first attempt.

Dear Mr Anonymous

Your Blog site contains the false imputation that I do not use email because I cannot use email.

The reason I ask email correspondents for a street address is owing to the large number of crank emails I receive on this topic (and a few others).  I do not reply into the ether to threatening, abusive and illiterate emails I receive from people with pseudonyms and people who may or may not live in Australia.   Most of the letters on this topic fall into that category (I shall be reading to Parliament a selection of emails on this topic).  I think it a proper courtesy to correspond with a real person at a real address, not a phantom.

I look forward to your action matching your rhetoric.  I trust you will be a candidate for the State District of Croydon at the next State election, due in March, 2010.  At the last election I won more than 76 p.c. of the two-party preferred vote.  I have held Croydon for 19 years, but, owing to the gaming industry being run by billion-dollar multinational corporations, I am sure any candidate running against me on this issue would be lavishly funded. 

My electorate has the highest proportion of people from a non-English-speaking background of any of the 47 electorates in South Australia.  My new-citizen and new-constituent letters and my election material need to be printed in 40 languages other than English.  If one is a Christian Sudanese who has escaped a lifetime of war and chaos and who speaks in Dinka and reads in Arabic and is trying to find lodgings for the family, find employment and sponsor relatives from the old country, one's vote is hardly likely to hinge on the "right" to score gamer points by running down and killing pedestrians on the pavement, cutting people in half with absurdly large calibre shells, blowing oneself up in a market, killing a prostitute to recover the fee one just paid her, injecting drugs or raping a woman using the computer controls.

Ditto for Bosniak Muslims, Burmese, Hazara Afghans, Congolese, Rwandans, Kossova Albanians and Orthodox Bosnian Serbs who have been subjected to the practical instead of the virtual suffering on computer screen.  Actually, I know some of these constituents' views on censorship: from street-corner meetings, letters, phone calls, from meeting them in their lounge rooms (and now you will be horrified, Mr Anonymous) after the service outside their pagoda, mosque or church.

For years, Fiona and Robbie of the Eros Foundation (the front for sex shops) have been saying they are going to get rid of me at the next election, and they brandish the lists of names and addresses of people to whom they sell X-rated videos.  Fiona and Robbie write to them and tell them not to vote for me.   What Fiona and Robbie can't grasp is that pornography addicts don't vote as pornography addicts - they vote as Australian citizens.

Don't forget to nominate for the election in February 2010, Mr Anonymous, and don't forget to include the result in Croydon in your Blog.

Michael Atkinson

Member for Croydon

P.S. If you really believe in freedom of communication, will you publish this reply unexpurgated on your Blogsite?