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Senator Sue Boyce: “Internet Filter Proposal Descending Into Farce”
Apr 30 2010, 2:09Senator Sue Boyce, Liberal Senator for Queensland, has issued this media release slamming the Rudd Government’s proposal to censor the Internet:
The Rudd Government’s hare-brained proposal to censor the internet was descending into complete farce with the Prime Minister admitting he didn’t have a clue what was going on, Liberal Senator Sue Boyce, said today.
“Yesterday, Mr Rudd at a media conference, admitted that he had ‘no advice’ about whether or not the legislation would be introduced before the election and fobbed the matter off to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy,” Senator Boyce said.
“This is despite the fact that Minister Conroy’s spokeswoman was quoted in the media yesterday morning (Thursday) as saying the legislation would be delayed at least until after the June sitting of Parliament,” she said.
“If Minister Conroy can’t even keep the Prime Minister informed then there is no hope anybody else will ever be able to get any sense out of him on this issue.”
Senator Boyce said Senator Conroy had announced last December that the legislation would be introduced in March this year and the delay only confirmed repeated warnings by independent experts that the so-called “filter” was proving to be impossible to implement.
“It is ridiculous to try and assert as Minister Conroy does at every available opportunity that his proposed internet filter will protect us all against child pornography and other disgusting and depraved websites. He knows, as everybody else knows, it simply won’t work,” Senator Boyce said.
“The revelation by Electronic Frontiers Australia that Minister Conroy’s Department has a closed online forum to discuss the issue and that his Department had admitted in an April 13 posting to the forum that there wasn’t even draft legislation shows how hopeless the project is,” she said.
“Actually, I feel sorry for Departmental officers who have the impossible job of trying to devise legislation and come up with some sort of filtering technology that will even try to meet their Minister’s absurd promises.”
Senator Boyce said the fact that Minister Conroy had refused to say if there would be any penalty for circumventing any internet filter if and when it was ever imposed was a tacit admission that it was doomed to failure.
“It would be political suicide for a government to impose penalties for an offence which millions of Australians would inadvertently commit every day,” she said.
“If and when the Prime Minister bothers to find out just what is happening, he should tell Minister Conroy that this mandatory internet filter idea is as futile and as useless as GroceryWatch and FuelWatch were.”
“Mr Rudd has become very experienced at announcing that promises and programs are to be dumped. Let’s hope he will be well enough informed to announce the dumping of this program in time for World Press Freedom Day next Monday.”
April 30, 2010
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Excellent commentary by the Senator.
Awesome!! I hope this government gets thrashed on world press freedom day over this!!
“The Rudd Government’s hare-brained proposal to censor the internet was descending into complete farce with the Prime Minister admitting he didn’t have a clue what was going on, Liberal Senator Sue Boyce, said today.”
Descending into a farce? It’s been a farce the first time Conroy decided to open his mouth on this subject.
Wheres Tony Abbot on this issue? That’s right still trying to work out whether its
“technically’ feasible. Freedom of speech and transparent Government are all secondary.
Hear Hear. I suspect the polling isn’t accurately reflecting the impact this issue is having on the “middle class” labor supporters who are amongst the 300,000 members of Whirlpool – an election suprise for the Govt… and very revealing of their actual agenda (of control and the limitation of freedom).
The internet filter represents a serious situation with Civil Liberties groups because of how it conflicts with the standards of a democratic society against censorship. The Australian Government states that filters should be mandatory and the blacklist will be hidden from the public. As well as this, it will effect performance in internet traffic and increase the cost on a large-scale. In addition pornography trade will take additional steps like encryption such as TOR to keep away from censorship and that prevent the implementation of the law. Subsequently, it will give parents incorrect sense of security about online content. For all homes it will be obligatory to have an internet filter even if there are no children. The Black list does not contain enough URLs that would be considered sufficient to protect people from inappropriate web content. Also filtering internet will not stop people to distribute new sexual material for children from website or any other way. The reality that black list will filter only a small part of the material on the internet, and the government cannot determine what parents consider to be suitable or harmful websites for their children. It is proposed that measures such as more education about the accessibility filtering systems for parents and teach parents and children about the online threat for children without censor. Even though these disadvantages are apparent, the Government is pushing ahead on the facts proven by the Internet Service Providers that filtering will reduce the speed of the net considerably, according to experiments conducted in Tasmania. The net filter will cause a reduction of 78% of network speed. Therefore it will create a technical disaster because any determined user even children can bypass the filter using, proxy or VPN connection. Moreover, the internet filter would be less effective on a personal computer.