All Australians are free, within the bounds of the law, to say or write what they think about Australian governments or about any other subject or social issue as long as they do not endanger people, make false allegations or obstruct the free speech of others. The same applies to Australian newspapers, radio and television and other forms of media. Australians are free to protest the actions of government and to campaign to change laws.

- an excerpt from Life in Australia

When I migrated to Australia a few months back, Immigration provided me with Life in Australia, a 46 page booklet outlining the core values (including the one listed above) that ensure that Australia maintains its high standard of living as a free, democratic country; I was required to promise to abide by these values. As such, I was all the more shocked by yesterday’s announcement that the Australian government will move ahead with its ill-advised (and highly protested) plan to instill mandatory Internet filtering.

From a post I wrote a few months ago:

Don’t get me wrong, I am by no means in support of the sort of content that the ACMA seeks to repress (I think we’d all be a little better off without ‘Two Girls, One Cup’), but the idea of filtering the filth from the Internet is a perilously slippery slope. For one, you have to question how effective it would actually be, particularly because the content this aims to block is generally traded in underground forums and P2P rather than in public sites. And what about the margin of error? This certainly runs the risk of wrongly blocking sites – which is nothing less than a death sentence for a startup or small business.

But let’s be real here, it’s ascendancy not efficacy that’s the more problematic issue. Reporters Without Borders, an international organization that advocates freedom of the press, classified Burma, China, Cuba, Egypt, Iran, North Korea, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tunisia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan and Vietnam as ‘Enemies of the Internet’ for having “transformed their Internet into an Intranet in order to prevent their population from accessing ‘undesirable’ online information.” Australia is currently ‘under surveillance’ by the organization and if the mandatory filter is implemented, it will be the first western democratic country to have done so… I guess they could probably use a bill of rights about now.

How sickeningly ironic that Communications Minister Stephen Conroy made this announcement December 15th, which marks the 218th anniversary of the passage of the US Bill of Rights.

David Braue wrote on ZDNET that he believes the drastic change to ISPs scope of work is the biggest damage inflicted by the filter. Now, ISPs are legally obligated to filter Refused Classification content – and to offer, as Conroy put it, “optional filtering … to block additional content as requested by households”. That’s a whole new can of worms: if I want all web pages mentioning Pete Doherty, for example, banned, does that mean my ISP needs to give me my own custom feed? Furthermore, it sets a dangerous precedent for holding ISPs responsible for their users’ content – impeccable timing when you consider the ongoing court case between the recording industry and iiNet.

‘No worries’ doesn’t quite placate this one.