ISP filtering policy is not evidence-based

For anything to be blocked, the URL must pass through the Australian Media and Communications Authority (ACMA). Eighteen months ago, Google said it has counted more than "a trillion unique URLs, and the number of individual web pages out there is growing by several billion pages per day". With such rapid change, how can the government even claim to block 1 per cent of "bad" content with a human edited blacklist? And if the filter will be so ineffective, how can it be justified?

“So you're saying we shouldn't even try at all then?” Conroy might retort.

Not only is that an incredibly bad argument , it's also dead wrong.

(Too often governments will do anything because doing nothing - even when nothing is the best response - is a harder message to sell to the media. One of my favourite quotes is from the author Peter Drucker, who said "there's nothing so useless as doing efficiently that which should not be done at all".)

The Government is already directing much-needed resources to the Federal Police, who, in association with the relevant international organisations, can directly target the real-world social networks of child pornography. The broader Internet industry - along with a dedicated task force of the Federal Police - have already got effective, working policies and procedures in place.

Whirlpool's survey indicates that our community would like to see government focus its efforts on educating parents (83 per cent) and children (65 per cent). While some effort has been made in this direction already, a much greater emphasis on cyber-safety education and engagement programs would have a very real and positive impact on our youth.

I also think there's also a role for the government to incentivise ISPs to offer parents the choice of configurable content filters running at the ISP. If parents want to provide a comprehensively filtered experience to their children, the choice should be there - a choice that shouldn't rely on dealing with desktop filtering software which requires a level of technical knowledge to install securely.

The policy is opposed by so many business and consumer groups, that one wonders if there's any support for it outside of the government and the under-informed general public.

The child protection group Save the Children opposes the filter as being ineffective in protecting kids from online dangers. The statement was co-signed by numerous civil liberties groups and the National Children's and Youth Law Centre.

Google Australia said "moving to a mandatory ISP filtering regime with a scope that goes well beyond [child sexual abuse] material is heavy handed and can raise genuine questions about restrictions on access to information".

The New South Wales Director of Public Prosecutions slammed the policy. "Crime prevention methods need to be practical. The talk of filters and blocking mechanisms, ultimately in a society like ours, would have only limited if any success."

Even Labor senator Kate Lundy has been openly critical of the filtering policy, though not only do her proposed amendments fail to address the underlying problem of waste (ISPs will still be forced to deploy a huge amount of costly infrastructure) it compounds it with significant new complexities.

With such broad opposition and an election looming, one wonders why the policy hasn't already been scrapped.