Senator Kate Lundy wrote a blog post earlier this month in which she outlined her plans to present an opt-in and opt-out model of Stephen Conroy’s proposed internet filter.

Opt-in requiring Australian internet users to put their hands up to have their internet censored and opt-out giving users the option to literally opt-out of a filter.

Stephen Conroy’s proposed filter as it stands will be compulsory for every Australian internet user.

Back before Kevin Rudd and the Labor party were elected in 2007, an opt-in filter is what was originally proposed to the Australian public. Sometime between then and now Stephen Conroy hijacked the proposal and began pushing for a universal mandatory filter.

So how did Conroy respond to Lundy’s attempts at offering Australian’s the choice to have their internet filtered or not?

Apparently Australians are a bunch of child porn supporters.

Conroy recently spoke at NeuroScience Australia after which he gave a quick press conference. When directly asked what he thought about Lundy’s opt-in/opt-out proposal, this is what he had to say:

I’m not into opting into child porn.


Despite being the original motivating factor for pushing the mandatory filtering forward, child porn has long since taken a back seat to ‘protecting our children’ and ‘limiting the scope of the filter to RC material’.

Over the past year Conroy has become aware that the moral child pornography argument wasn’t going to cut it with Australian voters and has broaden the argument for the filter to encompass material that falls under RC and is not available via other mediums.

Yet here we are in June 2010 and instead of actually answering the question presented to him, Conroy sums up his argument in one sentence;

It’s all still about filtering out child porn.

I for one take offense at the idea that anyone who thinks a mandatory filter is a authoritarian rubbish idea is ‘opting into child porn’. Seriously when was the last time anybody ran into random child porn on the internet?!

Child porn itself is opt in, continuing to use it as a scare tactic focal point in favour of the filter is only going to appeal to the paranoid and technologically incompetent religious demographic.

This ironically is why the focal point shifted away from child porn over the last twelve months to begin with.

When people are stumbling across child porn just by checking their emails, conducting non-related google searches or chatting to people on MSN then by all means think about a mandatory filter.

Until then how about you stop trying to protect us from an imaginary internet supposedly awash with child porn at every click of the mouse.

Not only are Conroy’s suggestion that people who opt out of an internet filter are opting into child porn offensive, they’re just downright misleading and manipulative.

Child porn is a dead argument, get over it Conroy.



Related posts that might interest you:
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  3. The future of Australian internet under Stephen Conroy
  4. Stephen Conroy vs. Google: Who are you going to trust?
  5. Stephen Conroy admits internet filter is useless