No Mail Please, We’re The Government! [Australian Internet Filtering]
WHEN you send a Government department an email or a letter relating to
a piece of legislation they’re trying to pass that you wish to comment
on, you’d generally expect either a response noting your input, or no
response at all.
What you don’t expect is to be referred to email your local MP of whom is
a member of the Opposition, and holds a Shadow portfolio in no way
related to the issue at hand.
The response I got from the local MP was even sadder.
Two days ago I sent a stock standard objection letter with regards to
the Mandatory Internet Filtering proposal from the nocleanfeed.com
website. I sent it off to Stephen Conroy’s office, seeing as he’s the
Senator responsible for the relevant portfolio. The same day I
received a response suggesting I contact my local member with my input
as I’m in his electorate. A pretty weak effort for a Government trying
to pass such radical legislation after sledging the previous
Government for much the same thing with WorkChoices.
So I contacted my local member, Ian Macfarlane, Member for Groom, and
Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources. Mr Macfarlane responded to
my email almost as quickly as Mr Conroy’s office did, except Mr
Macfarlane responded personally with quite some strange comments:
“Thanks for your comments. Your comments have been noted.
Unfortunately parents are not accepting their responsibility to
protect their children from unsuitable internet sites and thus the
government has decided on this plan of action.I accept your concerns that it will slow the system and be largely
ineffective.”
Hold on, which is it? The filter is necessary to protect the children
of their irresponsible parents, or it’ll be slow and ineffective? Not
only that, how strange to make such a broad generalisation about
Australian parents failure to “protect their children” from unsuitable
content.
Still, points for at least responding to my email quickly and
personally without fobbing me off.
UPDATE:
I was contacted once again by the Shadow Minister with the following response:
Our plan was to distribute internet filters to individual families free
of charge. Labor’s heavy handed approach will affect everyoneIan Macfarlane
Member for Groom
Shadow Minister for Energy and Resources
- Michael
Ummm WTF @ last Letter What about the adult? They are doing there job, The Government is Not Acknowledging them so they can waste money On something That will seem to help But In reality Make us pay more AND won’t even work.
If they pass this No clean feed thing i will move out of Australia and go to somewhere with good internet.
OMG, this is like a freakin soap opera, just gets wierder by the day. What seems insane to me is the apparent lack of evidence to support the need for a filter in the first place.
How on earth do the government know what children are exposed to online ? Are they simply assuming, or reacting to letters from a couple of angry parents ?
If your going to spend the time and resources of thousands of people across australia costing the tax payer millions of dollars, you better have a concrete reason for doing so. Right now their justification for even considering a filter seems extremely flaky.
If I was a parent today, I’d be running Windows Vista and using the parental controls to limit the content, time, games and movies my child could watch on the family computer. Not only that but review logs of their history to ensure what they’ve been accessing is appropriate. Also the computer would be located in the lounge room in full view of the rest of the family. It’s time parents took on the responsibility for thier child.
As for the argument, well they may go over to their friends house and look at bad stuff, to that I ask, what would u do if u know the parents of your childs friend, was letting them watch M15+ DVD’s. You’d very quickly stop your child from visiting.
As for stopping the child porn, if a website is hosting it, shut it down, if files are being traded by P2P, then subpoena the ISP and tack down their IP address and the user and prosocute. I see a news item every six months about the police busting more and more people, so clearly that system is working.
My thoughts.
This is what my MP is doing: http://blogs.abc.net.au/articulate/2008/11/too-vulgar-for.html
On the upside, he responded to my email with a written letter acknowledging my concerns, though only really answering with the same sort of response as Conroy used in question time the other day.
This is exactly why I was all for the filter when I first heard about it. The initial announcement and promises of conroy were that it would be a filter for kiddysafe stuff, or opting out to no filtering at all. Most parents are ignorant when it comes to computers and don’t even know about the current opt-in scheme, so something they have to opt-out of if they don’t want is perfect.
The moment it was learnt that there is no opt-out, only an opt-lesser I turned against the idea. This combined with the fact it will be near impossible to get sites off the blacklist makes it an idea I am completely opposed to.
The problem is, the parents will have to pay more for internet, therefore have to work more, therefore have less time to look after the children. How about making things cost less so we can work less and have more time to spend with our children?
I dare say that claims by any elected MP that “parents are not accepting their responsibility to
protect their children” would cause an uproar and headlines in most of your daily newspapers. Surely if we were to forward this comment by Ian MacFarlane onto the press it would trigger a wave of concern by parents groups saying that they are offended by his comments and that they “can protect their children just fine!” and want their representatives to get off their backs and stay out of their lives.
@DDsD
In the process of informing media outlets.
I think it would’ve been better if he had sent a generic reply.
What is he crapping on about anyway, are the government going to be taking children out of homes and raising them collectively now? Kevin rudd needs to address this before Australian broadband becomes more of a laughing stock than it already is.
I think this explains a lot about the current Australian government.
On a side note, you really need to get some digg links on the bottom of these pages. In the mean time:
http://digg.com/political_opinion/No_Mail_Please_We_re_The_Government_Aust_Internet_Filter