Stephen Conroy will arguably go down as one of the most hated people put in charge of the internet in Australia ever. Apart from a National Broadband Network that we may or may not get by 2255 the other major saga he’ll be known for is the proposal for a nation wide internet filter.

To be honest I haven’t really been paying much attention to what’s gone ever since the trial finished late last year. Last I heard they weren’t going to release the trial reports or Conroy’s office were just sitting on them for some stupid reason.

I’m not exactly sure filter wise currently where we’re at. I think most of the Australia has long since accepted the futility of an internet filter and is just secretly hoping that nothing happens before the next federal election.

In the meantime it seems Conroy is determined to waltz about the country doing television and radio interviews assumedly because he believes people still think the filter is a good idea.

In his latest ABC radio interview Conroy pretty much directly summed up the major problem with an Australian internet filter and conceded that there is no solution in sight.

The two biggest problems facing internet censorship in Australia is firstly the issue of free speech and secondly trust in the Australian government. Politicians don’t exactly rank up there on most of our ‘people we can trust’ lists so charging them with filtering the internet seems naturally uncomfortable.

Yet that’s exactly what the Rudd Labor government want you to accept. Fortunately they’ve at least got enough foresight to realise that this is a problem. In Conroy’s latest ABC interview he acknowledged this problem;

Senator Conroy today conceded greater transparency was needed in terms of what was deemed RC material.

“We have a discussion paper that we’ve issued calling for increased transparency measures,” he said.

The measures were needed to make sure governments could not slip things onto the list, he said.


This at a very basic level at least assures Australians that the government is aware that nobody trusts them to run a closed internet filter.

Despite calling for more transparency however Conroy also ‘ruled out making the (banned website) list public’.

If we look at the possible solutions of increasing transparency from the government end in terms of monitoring what websites are added to an internet filter censorship list, then it’s hard to imagine a more effective solution then banned website list transparency.

When asked why he was categorically ruling out this option Conroy stated that ‘the problem when you produce a list of URLs is you are actually giving the address of where to go and look‘.

And herein lies the problem. If the proposed internet filter was working as intended then the public wouldn’t be able to access websites on the publicly available ban list.

Conroy reasoning that you don’t publish a list of banned URLs is an admission that the internet filter simply won’t work. I mean if people are easily accessing URLs which are on a government blacklist then clearly the filter isn’t doing its job.

Either the filter will block websites Australian’s aren’t meant to be accessing, in which case it really doesn’t matter if the banned URL list is made public or not, or the filter won’t work.

Which one is it Conroy?



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