Prime Minister Julia Gillard wants to talk about euthanasia, a topic that is banned from discussion under the Australian Government censorship regime.

Julia Gillard has opened the way for a fresh debate on legalising euthanasia after the Greens leader, Bob Brown, nominated it as one of his top priorities.

While three state parliaments wrestle with euthanasia legislation, the Prime Minister and Senator Brown are expected to discuss the Greens’ demand for the repeal of legislation preventing territory governments from legalising voluntary euthanasia. –Sydney Morning Herald

Dr Philip Nitschke founder of Exit International has had his book titled The Peaceful Pill Handbook added to the Australian Governments ‘secret’ blacklist. The book is available online here and because our internet is currently uncensored we can access it. However a quick check of the blacklist shows that the (un-)Australian Government is very much against it’s citizens having access to euthanasia material.

Part of the ACMA Blacklist; peacefulpillhandbook.com is highlighted in green.

If you want to check the list yourself you can find it on wikileaks.org. The Sydney Morning Herald article “Web filtering pulls plug on euthanasia debate” also documents the governments anti-discussion stance.

So why does our Prime Minister suddenly want to discuss euthanasia. Certainly this puts her at odds with government policy. Still it’s good to see that some progress is being made.

Hopefully this will highlight how incompatible censorship is with a democratic society. Not even the PM will bow to the will of the censors, ironically her own party.