In brief: Despite Mark Newton’s clear explanation of what prohibited content contains, Director of the Australian Christian Lobby Jim Wallace told ABC Radio National listeners that Newton is telling ‘absolute nonsense’ when he says the Government wants to block legal material (yes I spat out my Weet-Bix).
Wallace says the only content the Government aims to block with the mandatory filter is child pornography.
Unfortunately, Mr Wallace either doesn’t understand what ‘prohibited content‘ consists of or he has outright lied on air as the ACL’s pro filter website states ‘Despite fear-mongering about censorship, adults will be able to opt in to view some forms of legal porn.’ Just some forms of legal porn Jim?
Wallace also says that all the Government is doing is applying the same laws we have offline off to online and that a 2003 Newspoll survey is still authoritative today.
He says this plan is about making the net safer for children and keeping vigilant against child pornographers.
Wallace’s comment that GetUp! was a proponent of the pornography industry and ISPs was promptly shot down by the host.
Update: Podcast available to download and listen to here and informal transcript here thanks to Ash K.
Update 11:02AM EST: Bob Bain directs us to listener comments on the ABC website.
Update 12:15PM EST: If you’ve listened to the podcast and read Jim’s article in SMH, you’ll know he likes comparing filtering to fridges. No Character Comic knows why:
