You can now watch the filtering debate between Bernadette McMenamin (Childwise), Anthony Pillion (Webshield), Geordie Guy (EFA), and Mark Newton which took place at the Kickstart 2009 media conference on the weekend. Check out the debate here.
McMenamin still doesn’t understand why so many are opposed to mandatory ISP filtering if they know it doesn’t work. “If it doesn’t work” she asks, “What are people worried about?” A scary question when you consider it comes from a person whose role provides them with the opportunity to protect children. How many times does she need it answered?
5 comments
Bob Bain says:
Feb 24, 2009
Interesting. From my recollection (which is normally quite good) the ISP filtering proposal arose as an idea from the (then) leader of the Australian Labor Party in opposition – Kim Beazley – who expressed concern as “all the violent content on the internet” and suggested ISP lever filtering as a solution.
Prior to this the Australian Labor Party in all it’s representations suggested a liberal approach to censoring the Internet and pointed the finger at the Australian Liberal Party as being out of touch on matters of censorship – ignoring the fact that it was the Australian Labor Party who introduced bans on X-rated material in 1984 and reinforced it with additional legislation supposedly uniform throughout Australia in 1995.
Some of those concerned about child welfare appear quite “liberal” with regards to “adult pornograph” and this includes Hetty Johnston in addtion to the speaker in the video presented.
It is clear to me there is a belief by child protection advocates that this filter is being desinged for them. It isn’t. It’s being designed in an attempt to bring the Internet from around the globe into line with Australian Classification standards across all media.
There was a point in the video of how a single glitch could affect the entire network. As an analogy I attempted to return by City Rail (a network) this evening but a substantial portion of the network was rendered inoperative by a female threatening to throw herself off a bridge in front of a train at Westmead. This disrupted a substantial portion of the City Rail (NSW) netework and inconvenienced thousands of people.
Bob
Bob Bain says:
Feb 24, 2009
Addendum to my comment about the original intent of the ISP filter (and apologies for the spelling in the earlier entry)
From the net…
“Under the policy, announced by Opposition Leader Kim Beazley, international websites would be banned by the Australian Communications and Media Authority if they contained graphic sexual or violent material, rated R or higher.
The policy is said to protect the two-thirds of Australian households where no internet filters are in place because of a lack of technical knowledge or cost.
Kim Beazley said all households would be included in the policy unless there was a specific request for access to such material.”
source..
http://www.pixeljoint.com/2006/07/22/1844/kim-beazley-no-porn-or-violence-on-australias-nets.htm
Did he mention child porn ? No I don’t believe he did.
This is where the current policy originated.
This IS what the policy is ! !!!!
Bob
Matthew says:
Feb 25, 2009
What amazes me is why she wonders why there is so much vitriol towards her then in the next breath belittles those who are against the filter as being a group of a hundred or so. It’s just so frustrating when there is a mountain of evidence against the filters which is ignored by people like her and the best that she can come up with is “I’m thinking of the children, you’re not”. It’s the constant ignoring of actual evidence in favour of emotional and moral arguments which annoys me. I mean is there ANY evidence in favour of the filters? Anything? I’m serious, I’ve not seen a damn thing which paints them in a positive light.
Bob Bain says:
Feb 28, 2009
In my earlier reply to this post I pointed out that it was ALP leader Kim Beazley who put forward the Clean Feed and Mandatory Internet filtering proposal. Although all references to this appear to have been expunged from current ALP websites I run Google Desktop which records and caches information.
I have discovered that records of fact are sometimes changed or deleted if they don’t suit the current political climate.
I have recorded the origins of the ALP cleanfeed proposal at my LiveJournal page:
—————–
The origins of the ALP’s “Clean Feed” proposal (from Google Desktop cache)
http://bobbain.livejournal.com/300043.html
Bob
Bob Bain says:
Feb 28, 2009
If the ALP is claiming a mandate on the CleanFeed policy please find the CleanFeed proposal under the 2007 policy documents archived here:-
http://www.alp.org.au/policy/2007policydocs.php
“The complete official ALP policy documents for the 2007 federal election are listed under ‘downloads’ on this page.”
I can’t locate the Clean Feed policy document. It may be buried in one of the 23 .pdf documents on that site.
Bob