At least the Greens are questioning Conroy on his crazy internet scheme

Well, if anyone was concerned that Senator Stephen Conroy might really be a serious and honest man genuinely trying to protect children from harm, and not a sneaky cynic merely using the magic words "child pornography" to avoid revealing the full extent of what he's actually planning to censor from the internet, the following exchange in the Senate yesterday might dispel those fears:



Greens Senator Chas Licciardello Scott Ludlum asks the Minister:

I refer to the statements made by Senator Conroy in Senate Estimates hearings on October 20, 2008, in which the Minister said that Sweden, the UK, Canada, and New Zealand had mandatory internet filtering systems similar to those now being trialled in Australia. Can the Minister explain why he made this statement, in the light of the fact that in not one of those countries is the filtering system mandatory; and in fact the various systems in those countries are entirely voluntary, if they exist at all?

(Transcript via Hoyden)

Conroy simply does not answer the question and instead waffles from some prepared briefing about the filter until his time mercifully expires.

Ludlum gets to ask a follow-up (he does not simply repeat the original question, although it must have been tempting):

Thank you Mister President, and I thank the Minister for his attempt to answer the question.

I have a supplementary, in two parts, if I may. Will the Minister be providing a retraction to the Environment, Communications and the Arts committee as the answer he gave then was substantially different to the answer that was provided to that committee?

Will the Minister provide us a definition of what he means by "unwanted content" and where we might find a definition of "unwanted"?

Will the Minster acknowledge the legitimate concerns by commentators and many members of the public that such a system will degrade internet performance, prove costly and inefficient, and do very little to achieve the Govenrment’s policy objectives; and furthmore that the Government’s proposal for dynamic filtering is the equivalent of the Post Office being required to open every single piece of mail?

Conroy declines to answer any part of that either in his minute remaining - particularly not the vital question of what he means by "unwanted content" and how it is to be defined in practice. (He does claim that he'll be "happy to come back and provide the Senator with further information" - to be blunt, I'd much prefer he came back with answers...)

All I can say is, thank God we've got the Greens there. With the Liberals reluctant to hold the Government to account on what it's doing here (largely because it's the sort of thing they were gearing up to do themselves and would quite like to have in operation next time they're in power), the Democrats gone and the only other Senators, Xenophon and Fielding, being committed to censoring as much content as possible, the Greens are the only party actually standing up for our civil liberties.

Which is incredibly sad, really.