Christian lobby slams 'œincomprehensible' filter block

Renai LeMay
Friday, 06 August 2010 12:15

IT Policy - Government Tech Policy

The Australian Christian Lobby has slammed as 'incomprehensible' a revelation by Shadow Treasurer Joe Hockey late yesterday that the Coalition would vote against Labor's controversial mandatory internet filtering project if associated legislation made it into parliament.

If the Greens hold the balance of power after the upcoming Federal Election in several weeks, the Coalition's block will doom the filter legislation in the Senate. Many anti-filter campaigners are already celebrating the news as the death-knell for the filter project.

However the ACL '” a non-partisan group which lobbies on behalf of Christian interests '” said in a statement that it couldn't believe the news. 'This announcement is incomprehensible on a number of levels', said ACL managing director Jim Wallace.

Hockey had said the filter technology simply didn't work, but Wallace said trials showed that it did. 'To have a system that orders takedown notices for Australian sites carrying Refused Classification (RC) material, but allow it to come in unhindered from overseas sites is simply illogical,' he said.

It appears that the Coalition plans to re-introduce its policy of providing PC-based filtering technology that parents can apply to their machines themselves. 'To imply that parents rather than the ISPs are best equipped to manage the technology by presumably introducing the discredited Net Nanny system, again simply defies technological reality,' said Wallace.