Rewriting history and disappearing the historical record

[Magda Hassan]

Seems to be popular on one side of politics. Now why would they do that.

13 November 2013 Last updated at 15:59

Conservatives purge old speeches from online archives

"By making more information available to more people, you're giving them more power," the PM said in 2006

The Conservative Party has deleted speeches and press releases published on its website between 2000 and the 2010 general election.
The archive has also been hidden from search engines.
The move was spotted by Computer Weekly, a trade publication, which also said some records had been removed from the Internet Archive, which aims to make a permanent record of web content.
The Conservatives said the move keeps their revamped website up-to-date.
Computer Weekly said the effect of the changes was "as alarming as sending Men in Black to strip history books from a public library and burn them in the car park".
"Prime minister David Cameron and Chancellor George Osborne campaigned on a promise to democratise information held by those in power, so people could hold them to account," it added.
'Broken promises' Instead, they have overseen a change which has left Conservative speeches in a "secretive corner of the internet like those that shelter the military" and "gangsters", it concluded.
Archived pages on the Conservative Party website providing a record of evolving policy announcements were deleted "sometime after 5 October", Computer Weekly said.
In addition, a text file was added to the website, called "robots.txt". This is a standard way of telling search engines which parts of a website they should not try to index.
But the robots.txt file had the effect of preventing search engines from continuing to make a record of the website's former contents available to the public.
It also prompted the Internet Archive to take down its copies of the pages, according to Computer Weekly - although some of those copies have since been re-instated.
A Conservative spokesman said: 'We are making sure our website keeps the Conservative Party at the forefront of political campaigning.
"These changes allow people to quickly and easily access the most important information we provide - how we are clearing up Labour's economic mess, taking the difficult decisions and standing up for hardworking people."
Labour MP for Edinburgh East Sheila Gilmore described the changes to the Conservatives' website as a "cynical stunt" saying "it will take more than David Cameron pressing delete to make people forget about his broken promises".
Update 25 November, 2013: The Conservative Party has pointed out that many of the web pages can be found on the [URL="http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/target/101940/source/search"]British Library's UK web archive.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-24924185
[/URL]

The Sydney Morning Herald

Tony Abbott's controversial speeches wiped

Date December 1, 2013
New order: Tony Abbott, with breast cancer patient Hilary King, announces funding for chemotherapy infusion drugs at The Mater. Photo: Fiona Morris

Some of Prime Minister Tony Abbott's most controversial speeches have been brushed from Coalition history since the election, including a 2009 speech backing a carbon tax, and a 2004 speech in which he describes abortion as ''a question of the mother's convenience''.
During Mr Abbott's 2009 carbon tax speech, in which he described himself as a ''climate change realist'', he said he doubted climate change was man-made, saying ''we can't conclusively say'' man-made carbon dioxide emissions contributed to climate change.
But he went on to say: ''If Australia is greatly to reduce its carbon emissions, the price of carbon-intensive products should rise … a new tax would be the intelligent sceptic's way to deal with minimising emissions because it would be much easier than a property right to reduce or to abolish should the justification for it change.''
When he was in opposition, the speeches were posted on Mr Abbott's website, tonyabbott.com.au. But since the election, that website has been redirected to liberal.org.au, which only archives material back to July 2010, the month before the previous election.
Advertisement
Despite Mr Abbott becoming opposition leader on December 1, 2009, all his speeches and media statements before July 2010 have disappeared. And at least two recent transcripts have also been expunged from the public record.
They include an interview on Sky with Chris Kenny in which Mr Abbott vowed to lift foreign aid - a position he later reversed - and a speech to the conservative Institute of Public Affairs.
In March, Mr Abbott was quizzed about whether he would heed the advice of former finance minister Nick Minchin, who said the Coalition could save billions of dollars by freezing the growth of foreign aid.
Mr Abbott said: ''Our policy and that of the [then-Labor] government is to lift foreign aid to 0.5 per cent of gross national [income] … It does remain our commitment … we are a generous people, we don't want to be niggardly in respect of our poorer neighbours.''
Five months later, the Coalition said it would cut foreign aid growth over the forward estimates, saving $4.5 billion.
In April he gave a speech to the Institute of Public Affairs decrying the ''great Australian silence'' about its Western heritage.
''There is a new version of the great Australian silence, this time about the Western canon, the literature, the poetry, the music, the history and above all the faith without which our culture and our civilisation is unimaginable,'' Mr Abbott said.
The Government's Direct Action policy, the cornerstone of its climate change policy, is not on the liberal.org.au site, despite being on the earlier page. It has also disappeared from Environment Minister Greg Hunt's website, although a 2010 version of the policy remains available on Mr Hunt's website.
A spokeswoman for Mr Abbott said: "The Liberal Party website is being updated to provide a single website to access media releases, speeches and policy documents released prior to the election of the Coalition government."
Since 1996, the National Library of Australia's PANDORA system has archived websites and pages, including political material.
Since then it has collected content from more than 50 elections, from local government to federal campaign, and has retained all the pages formerly on tonyabbott.com.au.

http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/p...2yiez.html