Idealist; one guided by ideals;

Mr Turnbull,

I am writing about an issue that refuses to go away, despite the ludicrousness and complete stupidity of the policy plan.

Green Light for ISP Filtering Trials

If Australia is to go ahead with its current plan to begin filtering the internet of ‘illegal’ sites (as defined by whom?) then we will be joining the ranks of such human rights abusers and bastions of censorship like China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and others in the illustrious bunch.

Please do not allow the Opposition to be drawn into this ridiculous quagmire of issues- and morals-based politicking.

Even if we allow that the certain areas of the internet need to be ‘quartered off’ from certain sections of the population, there already exists wonderfully more advanced, tested, and improved technology to do so. Software, both open source and proprietary, exists and has existed for many many years to combat the problem of children straying across information and spectacles they shouldn’t. The software is immensely popular and sells very well through companies like Norton and McAfee. In fact, it often comes bundled with the family computer at purchase.

To claim that it is the government’s responsibility to oversee and ‘protect’ us from illegal content on the internet is both a disregard to personal freedoms and free will, and a meddling in the supposedly free market we claim to uphold. The product and services to ‘rope off’ sections of the internet already exists on an individual or group basis – this software is already habitually employed all across Australia’s schools and universities. It works perfectly well there.

There is no reason for the government to commit to such an expensive, morally-ambiguous, issues-based cheap shot.

A better use of the Government’s money (which I might add is also taxpayer’s money) if this is truly an issue that needs to be dealt with (which I hazard it might not be) would be to subsidise the purchase of an Australian-made individual filtering program (like those provided by McAffee or Norton) for families within a certain income bracket. This would immediately pump some money into the economy, ensure the money stays in the country, while supporting Australia’s role as lead innovators globally.

Please do not allow the Opposition to be drawn into this ridiculous quagmire of issues- and morals-based politicking. This is not good policy, and you know it.

Regards,
Michael Clay