Conroy's climate of fear

Stan Beer
Thursday, 19 March 2009 19:07

Opinion and Analysis

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.