Censorship

It's time to bring out those debating shoes again, or more, the reasonable critic shoes. However, unreasonable, I may end up being.

Firstly, I would just like to say I am angry. I voted Kevin Rudd, and I am not ashamed to admit that, for the other option - was not at all desirable. But now, I'll end up with egg on my face. I have directly supported a political leader, in their endeavour to thrust religious, and self-righteous views onto us all.

I am fundamentally opposed to censorship of any kind, I don't believe it the right of the government to exercise our right to choose, on our behalf. Nor should anyone, remove our right to choose. While the Commonwealth of Australia Constitution does not stipulate such a right, explicitly or implicitly (by lack of a High Court ruling on the matter), these are rights generally thought to be, by most Australians, as basic and rightfully ours - regardless of institution or establishment. I am, admittedly, one of those who assume this as a right of my own, despite its lack of protection.

It seems incredibly backward, and incredibly insane, to block internet sites in any number, based on them being 'unwanted'. Given that no definition of the term 'unwanted' has been revealed by the government, I can't quite argue the logistics of it. However, I can say I am not comfortable with any person having the right to deem something as unwanted.

This is to prevent child pornography, and violent webpages being accessed, or at least that is what we are told. While I don't disagree with the concept of this, as these websites are abhorrent in many ways, and for many, many reasons... where will it stop? The only protection the High Court can give us is that our 'Freedom to Political Speech' is protected. Not our Freedom to Speech, just political speech.

I can't support anyone, government or individual in favour of this. It is honestly, an unnecessary, thoughtless, drain on federal funds. We are entering into a time of economic uncertainty, and the government is spending money on implementing software which doesn't guard against all avenues of child pornography, in fact it doesn't even guard against the number one avenue (in which 99.9% of child pornography is found).

Another down side is that it is likely to slow our internet speeds by up to 80%. Australia may be very advanced in some areas, for example, mobile phone technology. Being in Canada, I have learned that we're a little more ahead than Canada. But when it comes to the internet, we are very, very far behind. We already have slow, and extremely expensive internet. We are the only developed nation to have internet caps, and here we are slowing the internet down, on a mindless exercise. Particularly, given that Kevin07 was meant to implement policies in favour of improving national broadband.

And obviously, if the government are to be truly successful in restricting access to these websites, it should never publish them publicly. So that they can avoid being accessed even with the software, in case someone is smart enough to get through it (which most of us people who've ever used the internet for more than five minutes are). There's a giant issue with that, if we never know what we are not allowed to see, we are living in ignorance. I am not comfortable being ignorant. If I'm not allowed to access something, I want to know what it is I'm restricted from seeing, and for what reasons I cannot see it. On top of that, if there is no disclosure, how are we ever going to know if something that is very much 'wanted' has been deemed 'unwanted' by the powers that be?

Maybe I missed the memo, but when did Australia say it was OK, for the government to treat our country, and its people, like it belonged to them and it was for them to decide how to parent. When did it become OK, to realise the incredibly '1984' mentality in our Government?

It would be nice, but quite clearly not going to happen, for the Governor-General to step in, and not give assent to such legislation. Or simply depose of Kevin Rudd. Some people, in fact a lot, and many of which I know, would say this is going too far. But this idea, is going too far. Leave the censoring of unwanted material to ourselves, and the parents of young children. We are capable, have faith in your 'subjects'.

Mostly, ladies and gentlemen who read this from home, please don't sit back and let our government decide what we see. We already have enough censorship already, while you're at it, try and get rid of that too!