Last night Stephen Conroy continued his train wreck PR campaign for Labor’s proposed mandatory Internet filter. Appearing on the ABC’s 4 Corners program in a report titled Access Denied Conroy continues to make guarantees and assert that the clean feed filter is in the best interests of the Australian population.

The report by 4 Corners makes for some interesting viewing in itself but before we have a look at the actual program here’s some points from 4 Corner’s extended interview with Stephen Conroy.

The extended interview starts off with Conroy denying that in the last election he promised ‘to introduce a mandatory clean feed filter for computers used by children‘.





Note that Conroy completely dodges the question and instead focuses on the narrowing of the scope of material to be blocked.

Meanwhile here’s what Conroy promised before the last election.





There’s no doubt that protecting children was the idea that Labor and Stephen Conroy chose to sell their mandatory internet filter to the Australian public with. According to Conroy in the 4 Corners report this election promise was never a primary factor in the internet filter policy.

Here’s Conroy again challenging the then Liberal Senator Helen Coonan.





Yes you heart that right. Conroy actually challenges Coonan to commit to Labor’s ‘mandatory system of ISP filtering that will guarantee that parents will not be receiving this sort of child pornography and these sort of images coming into people’s homes’.

Stephen Conroy guaranteed the filter would work as an election promise.

Back in March however Conroy admitted the internet filter was useless and has publicly acknowledged getting around the filter will be easy and not punishable by law.

In an official statement released yesterday, Conroy said he had attended a demonstration of the filter last year, and was also shown how users could get around the filter by using VPN technology.

“ISPs will not be required to block circumvention attempts by their customers or end users,” he said yesterday, also admitting those attempts could be relatively easy to undertake.


So pre election it was guaranteed that the filter would work and now post election Conroy’s conceded the filter won’t work, that it’s easy to bypass and that it’ll be completely legal to do so.

So why exactly are we pressing ahead with the internet filter again?

It’s on the back of this broken guarantee that Conroy then goes on to guarantee that the scope of the filter content will not be expanded by a future Labor government.





Australian’s are standing up now and saying ‘just a minute‘ but that doesn’t seem to be having any effect. Given Conroy’s past guarantee back flips do we have any reason to trust him this time?

A lack of technological understanding has been at the centre of a lot of talk, advice and public bungles when it comes to the internet filter. Here’s Conroy giving us another example of how little he understands filtering technology.





The problem with Conroy’s explanation here is that how is an internet filter going to know what to filter unless everything you do on the internet is fed through it?

The filter will have a blacklist and each time you view a website the site’s URL will have to be put through the filter and checked against this blacklist.

There’s simply no way around this.

Conroy also tries to justify criticism from Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo by pointing out what some of these companies do in other countries.





Seriously, does anyone give two shits what is censored in other countries. The freedom of the Australian internet is at stake here, in a global context what is and isn’t blocked overseas is irrelevant.

Currently it seems the Australian public’s protests against Labor’s internet filter are falling on deaf ears. I don’t recall ever witnessing any government policy that has been so one sided, clouded in secrecy and seemingly pushed forward without so much as a consult of the general population.

Conroy sums up the current situation pretty well. Replace ‘China’ and ‘Chinese’ with ‘Australia’ and ‘Australian’ respectively in this next clip and you get an eerily prophetic snapshot of the future of online Australia with Conroy’s internet filter.





What really worries me is why is nobody in the Labor government holding Conroy to task over appearing on national television and deliberately misleading the Australian public?

Where is the accountability?!

The entire 4 Corners report ‘Access Denied’ is definitely worth the watch and raises some interesting issues. Sadly though it doesn’t break any new ground and seems to go relatively easy on Conroy.

Due to these sorts of reports typically disappearing from the internet after a few weeks I’ve included a Youtube hosted copy below.


Part 1:





Part 2:





Part 3:





Part 4:





Part 5:





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Related posts that might interest you:

1. Stephen Conroy admits internet filter is useless
2. Conroy continues to contradict himself
3. Stephen Conroy: Australians are opting into child porn
4. Stephen Conroy censors TV debate on internet filter
5. What does Stephen Conroy have to do to get fired?!