Jarrad

Firstly i'd like to echo the comments of many in congratulating the government on this open forum approach to feedback. this sort of consultation should be more widely adopted and an only help to enhance our democracy.

With that said, I, like many others cannot comprehend where the government came up with this idea. much like the governor of south australia and his instance that video games are for children and thus would never need an R classification, this web filter seems to be the concept of an individual or group that is drastically out of touch with technology and global progress. internet speeds within australia are already a joke by global standards and there are still areas of the metropolian area which do not have access to ADSL2+ and here we are debating a proposal which will drastically limit speeds. The arguement that people opposed to filtering support porn is ignorant at best. the simple fact is that this money would be far better spent in facilites and capability for our law enforcement agencies and regulators. As a graduate of security sciences and criminology i can say with a level of educated knowledge that any filtering system would obsolete far before it was ever rolled out and that the effect such a filter would have on the general population would be to further remove parental oversight of children on the internet. At current our society has an attiude that someone else should be raising our kids be it teachers, child careers or police and the responsibility and accountability is further and further removed from the parent. I'd personally suggest we use the funds to educate parents to the dangers of the internet and roll out end user software, like is readily availible such as net-nanny to be installed at the discretion of parents, schools and those who feel the need. This level of censorship is impractical and ultimately unconstitutional in my opinion. lets stop trying to solve every problem our society has by using legislation and move towards education and self-accountability. increase the sentences for child porn, child molesters and associated activities and increase the police agencies ability to track and arrest these people. lets use smarter laws, not more laws.