So now the Liberal Party believes it has a right to censor what Australian's think!

The live worm feed from last nights debate was cut at the request of the Liberal Party, and channel nine, and Ray Martin (the host of last nights broadcast) are not happy about it. From The Age this morning:

Libs cut worm: Nine

The Nine Network has accused the Liberal Party of cutting its broadcast of the leaders' debate last night.

Nine used the controversial worm to track the reaction of 90 swinging voters in its Sydney studios to the comments of both Prime Minister John Howard and Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd.

*snip*

The Nine Network managed to secure a feed of the debate from co-broadcaster Sky News.

*snip*

"The deal was that we would take the coverage and we would have the worm, we didn't say when we'd run the worm," Martin told ABC Radio.

*snip*

The ABC technicians had bowed to pressure from the press club who had already bowed to pressure from the Liberal Party, he said.

Prime Minister John Howard said before the debate he did not want the worm, which charts reactions from 90 swinging voters in Nine's studio audience, while Mr Rudd was in favour of it.

*snip*

"Pulling feeds and threatening all sorts of dire consequences if we didn't do what the Liberal Party required, this is an outrageous act, the most outrageous act of censorship I've seen in some time,'' he said.

Link: The Age: Libs cut worm: Nine

And I have to agree with the last paragraph quoted above; it is censorship, and it is outrages that the Liberal Party thinks it has the power and authority to censor what people of Australia think.

Just like the last three years of their government have been, this is a blatant misuse of power, and the Australian people should not tolerate a government doing things like this.

As yet, I haven't read anything about what Kevin Rudd has said about this election controversy but when I do find it, I will blog about it.