Page 4333 - Week 10 - Wednesday, 22 September 2010
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There is certainly room for the federal government to work with these software companies to provide a filter to families more cheaply or build one that can be downloaded free of charge. I think that would be a worthwhile exercise. There are other simple low-tech things like putting the computer in the lounge room or another area where you can supervise your kids’ web use or talk to your kids when they are using the web.
Let us look at where internet censorship actually does occur. We have all heard about the great firewall of China. Do we want to emulate it? According to Scott Ludlam, other countries that do it are Iran, Saudi Arabia, India and Burma. Is this actually the sort of company that Australia wants to be in as far as censorship is concerned? Colin Jacobs, the chair of the online users lobby group Electronic Frontiers Australia, said:
I am not exaggerating when we say that this model involves more technical interference in the technical infrastructure than what is attempted in Iran, one of the most repressive and regressive censorship regimes in the world.
In terms of the technical issues, there are many trivial ways to bypass the filtering, such as having a server overseas. The filtering also will not cover email or peer-to-peer networks and it will slow down access speeds for all users. The public results of the filter trial in Tasmania showed very large numbers of false positives, failure to block banned content and the potential for drastically reduced speeds. Without going into the technical details, the premise of this trial was also flawed. In real-world scenarios, we believe that the performance degradation would be many times worse and that there would be more false positives.
The real problems are social issues. Child pornography, international terrorism and crime are not problems which are caused by the internet. They are not problems that are going to be solved just by the internet. We need to look at ways to stop the production of these things because this is only one medium that they will be distributed in. We need to look at building tolerance and understanding between cultures. This is what is going to stop terrorism, not blocking access to websites. In days gone by, we killed off heretics and we burned books. Now we look at filtering the internet.
These are problems which have their roots in the sorts of societies that we live in. The answers to these problems lie in social change, not in a technical fix. What is being proposed by filtering is a band-aid, not a real solution. Thus, my amendment does two things: firstly, it calls upon the government to abandon the unworkable mandatory internet filtering policy; and, secondly, it calls upon the government to ensure that all new estates have cabled internet connections.
MS BURCH (Brindabella—Minister for Disability, Housing and Community Services, Minister for Children and Young People, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs and Minister for Women) (4.37): I thank Ms Porter for bringing this motion to the Assembly.
As Minister for Disability, Housing and Community Services, I am aware that my department and the community sector work with Canberra’s most vulnerable people.
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