alp

The ALP’s grand vision of a “clean feed” Internet safe for Aussie kids is meant to filter out — what, exactly? Labor’s pre-election policy [PDF file] seemed to give the proposed ISP-level filters wide scope indeed, blocking content “inappropriate” or “harmful” for children — however that’s defined. But evidence given to Senate estimates last night suggests it’s little more than what’s already in place.

As I’ve written in Crikey before [1, 2] debate is clouded because sometimes people talk about Internet filtering in terms of child pornography and other very-illegal “prohibited content”, and other times it’s about material as wide-ranging as websites promoting anorexia as a lifestyle choice.

Communications minister Stephen Conroy hasn’t helped by labelling free speech advocates watchers of kiddie porn.

Last night Senator Conroy confirmed that the trial of ISP-level filtering is on schedule. The contract has been issued; the report’s due back on 30 June. But what’s actually being filtered, beyond ACMA’s existing blacklist of about 800 URLs of “prohibited content”? No-one knows. A Ms O’Loughlin from ACMA told us they “haven’t completed discussions” with the Minister’s office about that.

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Here’s a nice twist linking this week’s discussion threads. It turns out that Labor’s Internet filtering policy was largely driven by petitions to parliament — the very petitions which Chairman Rudd plans to make more effective.

Irene Graham (pictured), who commented here as “rene”, has been following censorship issues for years at libertus.net. In a post to Link she reminds us that back in October 2006, Senator Stephen Conroy was presenting a petition to parliament:

In March, Kim Beazley announced that a Labor Government would require all Internet Service Providers to offer a ‘clean feed’ internet service to all households, schools and public libraries that would block access to websites identified as containing child pornography, acts of extreme violence and x-rated material.

In the Senate today, I tabled a petition signed by more than 20,000 Australians endorsing Labor’s policy… [which] clearly shows that this view is widely shared in the Australian community.

However those 20,646 signatures were gathered through churches, hardly “representative”.

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What a stupid fuss last week, just because NSW Premier Morris Iemma referred to someone as a “f—wit”. Really, it’s the kind of language you can hear on the bus any old day. But the fact that it got into the media demonstrates Iemma’s basic incompetence.

The Sydney Morning Herald quoted Iemma’s words last Saturday. He was talking with Victorian Premier, Steve Bracks:

Bracks: “Any issues at home in NSW?”

Iemma: “Today, um, well this f***wit is the new CEO of the Cross City Tunnel and has been saying, ‘Oh, well, what controversy? There is no controversy.’”

Iemma’s manner was “relaxed and jovial”, says the Herald. The comment was “off-the-cuff”. In other words, it exactly the sort of thing an Aussie block would do to express his frustration.

Big deal.

What the NSW ALP should really worry about is the incompetence this demonstrates.

Iemma says he didn’t realise that the microphones were turned on. But one of the first things you learn in the media is to assume every microphone and every camera is live — unless you know specifically that it’s not.

Is Iemma really such a newcomer that he doesn’t know this? It shows what happens when you choose a Premier based on factional deals rather than assessing his or her skills.

But hey, who could the NSW ALP pick that’d be any better?