Stan Beer
Thursday, 19 March 2009 19:07
Opinion and Analysis
Page 3 of 3
Anyone who publishes a link to a banned site risks a
$11,000 a day fine. I'm sorry, but how are we publishers supposed to
know what sites are banned?
Now I'm no longer sure that Wileaks isn't banned.
So I removed the link to the site that Adam Turner inserted in his
article. I don't want to risk an $11,000 a day fine.
So we now have a problem in this country. The Government, represented
by Stephen Conroy, feels that it has the right to censor what the
Australian public can access on the Internet in the same way that
totalitarian governments do.
What's more, it believes it has the right to be unaccountable for what it censors, with no recourse for the censored parties.
That's not a democracy.
Senator Conroy has even gone so far as to brand dissenters to this outrageous policy as being soft on child pornography.
Well Mr Conroy, as a concerned parent of two teenage children, I resent
that as much as I resent paternalistic governments that butt in when
they're not wanted or needed.
Education not censorship is what is going to protect our children from
the net nasties and the sooner the Government and Stephen Conroy learn
this lesson the more chance they'll have of staying in power for a
second and maybe even third term.
We don't need a climate of fear in this country. McCarthy died decades ago - and that was another country.