Bernard Keane’s Talking Points: ditch the filter, and quit blaming Rudd/Tanner
If Labor had any sense it would use the higher profile of the election campaign to go all the way and entirely ditch its execrable internet filter policy, maximising its vast advantage over the Coalition in the digital economy space. It was long mooted that Kevin Rudd and his social conservatism were behind the policy […]
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- If Labor had any sense it would use the higher profile of the election campaign to go all the way and entirely ditch its execrable internet filter policy, maximising its vast advantage over the Coalition in the digital economy space. It was long mooted that Kevin Rudd and his social conservatism were behind the policy — though Stephen Conroy has always insisted he’s an enthusiastic supporter of it.
- Retaining the filter as developed by Conroy to date, continuing the review of the Refused Classification category, but making it ‘opt-out’ would address most of the concerns opponents have about it while still enabling the government to offer a ‘family-friendly’ policy. The opposition is hopelessly conflicted on the issue.
- With the Coalition promising a crackdown on knives and gangs, perhaps Tony Abbott can go all the way and start promising a ‘cop on the beat’ (or, better yet, a ‘tough cop on the beat’, not just an ordinary one) in every suburb in the country. But he’s not the first Coalition leader to go down that route. John Hewson paused from selling Fightback in 1993 to promise a crackdown on crime, making for an alarming detour into reactionary populism by the feral abacus.
- There are few within Labor who seriously think it was either Rudd or Lindsay Tanner (whom Alan Jones came litigiously close to blaming yesterday) behind the leak. Several fingers are being pointed at other senior ministers so far not mentioned in dispatches.
- Labor had a better campaign day yesterday with its disability announcement. Bill Shorten might be a blood-soaked political operator but he has proved a passionate and inspired advocate for disability issues. But will the passion and focus on the new disability strategy last into a second term if he’s promoted? Abbott and Shorten’s opposition counterpart, the foolishly underutilised Mitch Fifield, had to respond with “watch this space”.
About the Author
Bernard Keane
Politics Editor @BernardKeane
Bernard Keane is Crikey's political editor. Before that he was Crikey's Canberra press gallery correspondent, covering politics, national security and economics.
Bernard, although a nice political solution an “opt-out” filter doesn’t solve the engineering problem. It still means that ISPs need to install slow and unreliable filtering equipment. That means the worst effect of the filter — that the Internet will decrease in robustness at a time when safety of life systems increasingly require the Internet to be available to function well — will still happen.
There are ISPs today that offer a filtered Internet service. Those that wish can use those ISPs. Others that need a more reliable Internet can select more suitable ISPs. Requiring all ISPs to offer an opt-out filter removes the ability to choose a more reliable ISP.
Of equal concern – but currently receiving little media attention, is the proposal that ISPs be required to record the internet usage of all their customers.
SMH article here: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/technology-news/no-minister-90-of-web-snoop-document-censored-to-stop–premature-unnecessary-debate-20100722-10mxo.html?autostart=1
Scanned image of highly censored document here: http://images.smh.com.au/file/2010/07/23/1710367/Secret-Document.PDF
As far as the Labor leaks are concerned, it’s ludicrous to suggest that the Gang of Four never breathed a word of their inner-Cabinet meetings to any of their advisors or personal staff. There would be many in the political food chain who were privy to confidential matters discussed by Rudd, Swan, Gillard & Tanner. Any one of them could have picked up the telephone to Laurie Oakes.
Who cares who leaked, we will all have forgotten about it in a few weeks’ time. There are other more pressing matters and we should not be distracted from far worse evils than leaks ie: the appalling internet filter policy, no carbon price etc…
Bernard,
Since Labor is doing so poorly, perhaps it is time to critically evaluate whether the Opposition has what it takes to from a government. (We should be trying to make that assessment of the Labor Pary anyway when not distracted by the latest sound bite.) When Tony Abbott’s role was to minimise the loss of seats that the Coalition seemed headed for, some of their less well formed ideas could be accepted.
As neither party are really willing to discuss “policy” or future strategies in government, I would suggest that the electorate is in needs of intelligent rational assessment of the parties’ likely front benches as well as policy strengths, weaknesses and inconsistencies. If the critical media can carry this out so that the data can be evaluated and published, we might get some rational discussion over the next few weeks.
Historically, the parties have been using the late campaign launches for more recent elections as a way of avoiding providing answers on their policies until it is too late to get the evaluation into the public realm.
It is time for you guys to set the agenda for the next 3 weeks f the campaign. I don’t believe that the print and internet media sectors need to be victims of the managed sound bite in the same way that the television news.
The Internet filter is without doubt the most moronically bad public policy the ALP have conjured up in decades. But Stephen Conroy can’t just let it die a natural death is because it’s become a cause célèbre amongst his fellow catholic control freaks. Should his crusade to get it up (pun intended) fail, he will be a social pariah at this year’s church fete and probably on God’s shitlist forever.
If I was that imaginary godlike voice in his head, I’d be inviting him to drop it like the red hot steaming turd that it is and focus his limited energy on doing a better job selling the comparative advantage of the NBN
I’m really starting to wonder about your obsession with reporting all the latest hot gossip about the removal, Bernard. Would I be correct in assuming that you have DVD collection of every episode of “Days of our lives’ ever made?
@Mark
Nice idea but you’re forgetting the minority of Australian journalists who dont already have some corporate axe to grind tend to see their primary purpose in life as being to hold the government to account. Critiquing the opposition is the governments job, right?
Anyway, journalists are getting some of their best material out of Tony Abbott’s daily deluge of toxic talking points – why on earth would they want to bite the hand that is currently feeding them their best lines