On Australia Talks with Paul Barclay on ABC’s Radio National last night, Senator Stephen Conroy launched an attack on Google.  You can listen to the program here or read the Sydney Morning Herald’s report on the topic:

On ABC Radio last night, the majority of callers were opposed to the filters and right before the end of the segment, Senator Conroy attacked Google over its privacy credentials.

“Recently the founders of Google have got themselves into a little bit of trouble because notwithstanding their alleged ‘do no evil’ policy, they recently created something called Buzz, and there was a reaction, and people said well look aren’t you publishing private information?,” Senator Conroy said.

“[Google CEO Eric] Schmidt said the following: ‘If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place’. This is the founder of Google. He also said recently to Wall Street analysts, ‘we love cash’, so when people say, shouldn’t we just leave it up to the Googles of this world to determine what the filtering policy should be….”

Google said today it was surprised to hear Senator Conroy trying to “make this an issue about Google”.

“This is a debate about freedom of access to information for all australians, an issue of national importance. Let’s focus on that,” Google said.

Read more here.  The surprising nature of this attack suggests that Senator Conroy is increasingly feeling the pressure from all angles at the moment.