Good Cop, Bad Cop?

The Government certainly knows its politics.

Stephen Conroy has been completely and thoroughly vilified by 11 months of rage against his ISP filtering policy. So, if you want to soothe the masses and take the heat out of this coming Saturday's street protests, why not choose a different minister, the likeable Lindsay Tanner, to host the Government's new "hang out and listen to the people" blog

If this is a sincere attempt to listen and not simply a snow job, then good on them.

However, I am yet to be convinced that we should be ready to trust this new touchy, feely Government. After all, this is a Government that doesn't trust its adult citizens to use the uncensored Internet responsibly. This is the Government that doesn't mind violating the Conroy Rule with gay abandon.

In my view, the Government must do at least the following: thoroughly and completely repudiate its previous support for a mandatory ISP filter. And, if it has the integrity to do so, it should apologise for continuously labeling opponents of the filter as supporters of child pornography.

Please don't stand down just yet folks. We need more than well-managed PR. We need a concrete repudiation of the Government's policy by the Government itself. Or, we need to see the trial fail, and let the Government sneak out the back door.

A courageous, principled leader would choose the former. A weaker, unprincipled one the latter. How about it, Kev? What kind of leader are you?

---

publishing status on government forum: submitted 12/08 20:07, not published

Received: by www.dbcde.gov.au (Postfix, from userid 48) id 2C61152D47DD; Tue, 9 Dec 2008 20:07:59
 +1100 (EST)
To: jon.seymour@gmail.com
Subject: DBCDE Website - Future Directions - Feedback Form Submitted [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]
MIME-Version: 1.0
From: DEBlog@dbcde.gov.au
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: text/plain;
 charset=iso-8859-1
Message-ID: <20081209090759.2C61152D47DD@www.dbcde.gov.au>
Date: Tue,  9 Dec 2008 20:07:59 +1100 (EST)

Thank you for submitting feedback to the Digital Economy Future Directions blog.