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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (24 May) . . Page.. 1736 ..

MR HUMPHRIES (continuing):

That in itself is also a significant turnaround on the part of the federal government, because on 18 December 1996 the minister for communications, Senator Alston, in writing to at least one of the gambling and racing ministers of Australia, said in respect of Internet gambling:

That was the view of the federal minister in December 1996. Now apparently they have changed their mind. Ms Tucker appears to have changed her mind as well on the subject of regulating the Internet. I think those who have had this Damascus-like conversion need to answer a fundamental question. This is the question in particular that the Commonwealth could not answer when it came forward to the council meeting and proposed the ban. The questions is: how do you effect a ban on access to certain sites, many of them overseas-based sites, by Australian Internet users? How do you prevent somebody from getting that access?

The Commonwealth tried to answer that question by coming to the meeting with an expert from the CSIRO to brief ministers on what the Internet could and could not do; what could and could not be done with respect to the Internet. I have to say to you that I was sitting next to ministers from Queensland and Tasmania, and after the briefing they both turned to me and said, "Well, that proves it; they can't do it, can they?" And we all agreed. The briefing proved in fact they had no clear idea of how an effective ban could be put in place.

Mr Moore: They can't.

MR HUMPHRIES: Mr Moore says they cannot do it. The Internet is an international phenomenon. You prevent access to it by taking away somebody's modem. If the Commonwealth want to come along with a pair of snippers and cut everybody's modem-the libraries and the workplaces, and all the other places in the community from which the Internet is accessible-they will succeed in getting the ban in place. Short of that, I cannot see how they will do it. I asked the Commonwealth to explain clearly how they would do it. They said that they could not, that they want 12 months to think about how they could do it.

I put to the Commonwealth at that meeting that the evidence was already clear that it could not be done. They had already tried to do it, not in respect of gambling but in respect of so-called Internet sites of a pornographic or offensive nature. Under legislation which was passed in the middle of last year, sites were ordered to be taken down to prevent Australians having access to them. Fair enough; perhaps a laudable intention. What the Commonwealth has actually achieved with that is spectacular failure. Something like three million sites around the world are estimated to qualify as offensive or pornographic sites.

Ms Tucker: Twelve million pages, actually.

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