The Clean Feed Internet Filter is Dead: Long Live the Queen

I refer tongue in cheek to the Queen, but the personal imprimateur of Australia's new Prime Minister Julia Gillard does have a feel of sovereign power about it. 'What a difference a new Prime Mininster makes' is an equally apt headline for this abrupt change of policy by the Australian Labor Government.

CAPTION: Prime Minister Gillard changes Sen Conroy's mind

Yesterday, as Australia was nearing close of business for the week, a 'former 'arch enemy of Exit International, Communications Minister Senator Stephen Conroy, announced that the Government's Clean Feed web filter would not go ahead; at least not until the Refused Classification guidelines - those allegedly used to compile the Government's secret blacklist of banned websites - were also re-examined.

So, instead of Exit's Peaceful Pill website being blocked by Christmas, the new direction heralded by the Gillard Government has bought the organisation time. This change of policy is expected to lead to a delay of at least 2 years in any government censorship actions. Quite possibly, the Clean Feed will now never become law in Australia.

As the Sydney Morning Herald reported the breaking news on Saturday 10 July, " [t]he Gillard government has moved to limit the political fallout from its controversial plans to filter the internet by deferring its proposals indefinitely."

In attempting to explain this change of policy, Minister Conroy has claimed that the Government must ensure that the classification system "correctly reflects current community standards".
Too bad that was not a requirement before. If it had been Exit's precious resources would not need to have been diverted to a national tour of Hacking Masterclasses where we taught our members how to by-pass the proposed filter with web proxies and virtual private networks.

The news that the filter is on its way to being buried for good, has also been welcomed by ISPs and by the King of the online world, Google, who has been consistently critical of the secret blacklist because it was a slippery slop towards limiting Australians' access to legitimate content, eg. euthanasia material.

While Julia Gillard has been reported as still supporting the filter where it applies to child pornography, the Government has also announced that a national stakeholder group will be established as part of the combined Commonwealth - State review process. Exit will now write to the Minister requesting membership of this group. After all, our perspective is unique. The banned Peaceful Pill Handbook is one of only two books to be outlawed in this country for nearly 40 years (since 1973).

At the current time, the Government's Refused Classification category covers material that is deemed 'revolting' and 'abhorrent' and which 'offend[s] against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults'. It also covers material that 'promote[s], incite[s] or instruct[s] in matters of crime or violence'.

Given the amount of crime depicted on TV, in popular film, crime novels etc, it seems nothing short of black magic to deem the carefully written and compiled Peaceful Pill Handbook instructional in crime and hence legitimate for such special censorship treatment.

Exit will notify members of developments on this issue. We would, in time, urge everyone who believes it their right to access the best end of life information on and offline to contribute to the national review of the Australian classification process. A fine of $275,000 and/or 10 years jail for the sale, hire or public exhibition of a book seems archaic to say in the least.