Conservative commentator Piers Akerman has a blog post today on the Australian Government’s plan to censor the Internet:

BIZARRE but true, Australia and China are allied in their determination to censor internet content. In totalitarian China, the plan is known as Green Dam. In Australia it should be called “freedom-be-damned”.

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is attempting to shepherd Labor’s monstrous $43 billion broadband network rollout to completion and simultaneously ensure that information will be blocked.

There are plenty of excellent arguments against the Rudd Government’s rollout, not least being its record of failure in GroceryWatch, FuelWatch, the distribution of laptops to schoolchildren and the mismanaged insulation program.

There are also well-founded arguments against the installation of the exorbitantly expensive national broadband network itself, including the obvious observation that the pace of techno development will ensure that whatever form the great NBN takes will quickly be superseded.

To hobble the new internet network before its completion, however, is sheer lunacy reeking of group punishment.

Read the rest here.