Stephen Bell

I feel quite offended at reading this in an apparently democratic nation. The tone in the initial blog makes it seem as though public consultation is a novel idea that the government is gifting to the people, ie it seems as though the Minister considers public consultation as a special bonus to us citizens. Well I do believe we are in a democracy, and as such all of you elected officials are there as a representation of the public and consultation should be fundamental and intrinsic in everything the government does. Unfortunately the government seems to act as though they are above the public and have provided us with this blog to make it seem as though they are being involving. On the issue of the supposed "Internet filtering". This is not an internet filter; it is designed to filter the Web which is only a very small subset of the internet. If we look at how piracy and pornography spread 2-3 years ago (ages in the IT industry) it was primarily Web based, but not anymore. By using sub-web technologies like P2P file sharing and darknets this content is being spread on a completely different level to the World Wide Web. Blocking websites in the hope of stopping dubious content spreading to Australia is akin to trying to stop illegal immigration by only checking passports at the airports and ignoring coastal patrols. Minister if you really want effective community consultation in relation to stopping internet crimes; spend some time with the people who are committing the crimes. They could show you in 1 hour more about how the backdoors and pirates work than any do-gooder public servant could in a 1000 page report that gets delivered years out of date.