“The Government does not view the ISP filtering debate as an argument about freedom of speech.…there was never any suggestion that the Australian Government would seek to block political content…. claims that the Government's policy is analogous to the approach taken by countries such as Iran, China and Saudi Arabia are not justified.”

You mean you think such claims are unjustified. Your proposal clearly proposes that ACMA will block any sites they deem “unwanted” without oversight and without redress. It may be that the Government does not currently wish to block political content of any sort, but there’s nothing stopping them doing that later, is there? The recent Wikipedia fiasco is a great example of why your proposal will be ineffective.

Furthermore, it is clear from the debate in regard to computer games that ACMA’s ratings are out of touch with the general community. As a result of the online classification regime, ACMA’s list of sites to filter will quickly grow to include almost all adult content, which will remove one tier of the 2-tier system.

“…despite an $84.8 million government program and $15.5 million in advertising, only about two per cent of households with dependent children are using a filter…”

Somehow, you added 2 and 2, and got 7. The fact that only 2% of households with children have installed a filter despite it being freely available to all clearly that indicates there is little or no demand for such a filter. Parents who are truly concerned about their clhild’s wellbeing do not rely on such ineffective methods, but instead choose to educate and monitor their children’s online behaviour. Instead, you seem to have decided to interpret the low take-up rate of PC-level filters as an invitation to enforce ISP-level censored internet for every single Australian citizen. How you made that leap of logic is beyond explanation.

Your argument that “many parents do not have the technical skills or knowledge to install and manage PC-level filters” is pathetic in the extreme. A step-by-step explanation of the installation process on the website would result in a 99% successful installation rate, and an automatic update (like anti-virus software) would keep the filter up to date with ACMA’s blacklist. It’s a perfectly workable solution for those who think that filtering is an acceptable alternative to actual parenting.

”Technology that filters peer-to-peer and BitTorrent traffic does exist and it is anticipated that the effectiveness of this will be tested in the live pilot trial.”

Does this mean the government will move to filter peer-to-peer networks and BitTorrent traffic as well as HTTP traffic? Do you anticipate this will then be extended to email, instant messaging and other internet traffic protocols? Are you about to instruct Australia Post to open all of our letters to see if we’re posting naughty pictures to each other? Will our VOIP phone calls be monitered for dirty talk? How much privacy and freedom do you expect us to give up “for the sake of the children”?