Mr Joe Hockey, Australia’s Federal Shadow Treasurer, said yesterday that a Coalition government would abandon the present government’s mandatory internet filter plan and instead go back to the Howard government policy of offering free end-user filters to parents.

Shadow Minister for Communications, Tony Smith, added that a mandatory ISP-level filter scheme “would not be workable or effective”. 

A well-heeled lobby has been spreading myths about how:

(1) ISP-filtering would unacceptably slow broadband reception

(2) ISP-filtering would convert Australia into a police state where freedom of speech will disappear.

Many experts say that myth number (1) simply isn’t true.

Myth (2) could only apply if we stupidly let it happen.

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The above arguments are, in fact, not the point.

The point is that if porn, advocacy of violence, crime, suicide etc. endangers vulnerable net users, including children, we must use ALL possible methods to eliminate it.

The Coalition arguments insult our intelligence.

Government policy is not merely to filter at ISP level, but also to encourage parents to do their bit, plus additional funding for Police to intercept peer-to-peer exchange of illegal material and to apprehend offenders, plus extending filtering to offshore-sourced content as well as domestically-hosted content.

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The Coalition is turning a blind eye to reality.

Australia’s children are increasingly not safe — they face increasingly the likelihood of being exterminated or sexually exploited or recruited into perverse lifestyles . . . .

The Australian Crime Commission reports escalating sexual exploitation of little children by older children.

The Greens Party advocates putting adoptable children in the care of pairs of homosexual men.

Greens (and many Labor MPs) favour late-term abortion — children old enough to be born alive, needing only to be delivered intact, dismembered in the mother’s birth canal.

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The ALP is showing common sense on the internet-filter issue.

The Coalition merits only our disgust.

Many thinking voters are looking out for morally-OK independents to vote for and — in the Senate — will perhaps support smaller parties such as the DLP, Christian Democratic or Family First.