I actually got called up for a survey for this a couple of months ago...
The line they will be using in the media and against the other mob will be similar to Dubya's "if you're not with us you're against us" - i.e. Any political opposition to the filter will be discredited by spin saying that they are supporting child pornography by not submitting to the government's plan. We've seen a little bit of this already and the survey I took included this question: "Do you believe it is important to safeguard children from objectionable content on the internet?" Yes or No? No place in there for "yes, but I think it is the parent's responsibility, not your stinking government's". So you'll most likely hear in the media over the next month or so that "In polls, Australians have overwhelmingly expressed their support for the clean feed." It's rigged for maximum political point scoring.
People talk about freedom of speech in Australia. WE DO NOT have it. It's not in the constitution and our government (particularly in wartime) has had the power to become as fascist as it wants to be. Examples are Conscription during WWI, National Security Regulations during WWII and the Sedition and Anti-Terrorism legislation during the Global War On Terrorism.
I think it might almost be time to take out the garbage. Hopefully when the internet is slowed... right... down... and it starts to effect commerce systems and everyday transactions in Australia, folks will get off their fat arses and take some righteous action.
We all know that the filter has NOTHING to do with child protection and everything to do with stopping Australians from getting overseas news which may differ from the official Australian government line. Wikileaks.org has already shown us an early draft of the dreaded "secret" blacklist of websites and apart from supplying a convenient list of deviant websites for sickos, it also gave us a glimpse of politically-sensitive censorship. Euthenasia, gay marriage, whistleblower sites are all included in the initial draft. Is it illegal to READ about euthenasia? Is it illegal to READ about homos getting hitched? Is it illegal to READ Cryptome.org, Secrecy News or Wikileaks? Negative. It's perfectly legal, but they don't want us to read this material because it MAY give the .gov.au some bad press or make people think. Can't have that now, can we?
Welcome to the start of the Revolution.
