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Monday, December 31, 2007

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A Thin Edge of the Wedge

I am a thin edge of the wedge man. I am wary of every intrusion of government in to my life. A little extension of power, no matter how well-meaning, inevitably leads to more of the same. The role of government tends to just keeps on expanding and was surely the origins of that saying about give them an inch and they'll take a mile.

A few lines in a story in the Murdoch tabloids this morning thus troubled me more than a little. Communications Minister Stephen Conroy was reported as saying everything possible had to be done to shield children from violent and pornographic online material. "We have always argued more needs to be done to protect children," Senator Conroy said. "We will work with the industry to get the best policy. Labor is committed to introducing mandatory ISP filtering."

Mandatory filtering by your Internet Service Provider; it sounds innocuous enough - just a way of preventing users from accessing prohibited content; a way of stopping children from having their minds perverted by looking at pornography. What reasonable person could object to that?

Under the Conroy plan, those nice people at the Australian Communications and Media Authority will identify the material to be filtered out and draw up a comprehensive “blacklist” of sites with pornography and what the News Limited story called other "inappropriate" material. To be able to access sites on the banned list people will have to contact their internet service provider and "opt out" of the censorship service.

Presumably anyone who does just that will end up on a list of potential perverts. Goodness knows what a future Big Brother Conroy might use that for.

The Labor Government will claim that it has a mandate for this first step towards extending censorship of the internet and true it is that Senator Conroy released a policy about it in the closing days of the last election campaign when it was safely missed by all but the keenest of anti-pornography campaigners.

Senator Steve Fielding of the Family First Party was in the small minority who noticed and he said yesterday he would be watching the Government "like a hawk" on the issue. "Australian families want more [internet protection] and deserve more than they are currently getting, and this is a real test for the Rudd Government," he said.

Suspicious people like me will think that the real purpose of the promised legislation is to appease Senator Fielding. From 1 July 2008 his vote will be of considerable importance to the Labor Government in a Senate where it will not have the numbers. The Family First vote will not be needed to introduce this particular piece of censorship, because the Coalition will surely support it, but it will be vital on many other matters.

Senator Conroy fancies himself as a numbers man and will be in his element in the wheeling and dealing in the Senate.

What that dealing will involve was spelled out this week by Senator Fielding and the incoming independent Anti-Pokies Senator from South Australia Nick Xenophon.

The Senator Fielding wish list contains a $1 billion fund to build new public transport infrastructure in Victorian outer suburbs and regional towns. The Herald Sun reports he is also lobbying for:

More Victorian doctors, with more university places for medical students;

Sweeping alcohol reforms, including bans on advertisements that link alcohol with success and health warnings placed on beer and wine bottles;

Stricter measures to protect Victoria 's multi-million-dollar fruit industry from fire blight and bans on the importation of New Zealand apples and pears; and

Reduced petrol prices and bank penalty fees.

It is no surprise that Senator-to-be Xenophon has restrictions on poker machines at the top of his list. He said yesterday there was clearly a strong move within the Senate for action to reduce poker machine numbers, with the Greens also interested. "This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to make inroads," Mr Xenophon said. "It's a national issue and that's why I made the jump from state parliament to the Senate." Senator Fielding and the National Party's Senator Barnaby Joyce were quick to pledge their support.

I just hope that Dietrich Bonhoeffer is not the only World War II Lutheran pastor that our good Christian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd strives to follow. It would be reassuring to find he understood as well the sentiments attributed to Pastor Martin Niemöller:

In Germany , they came first for the Communists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist;

And then they came for the trade unionists, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist;

And then they came for the Jews, And I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew;

And then . . . they came for me . . . And by that time there was no one left to speak up.

Somehow, I doubt it. We should get ready for a burst of wowserism in many areas as Government increasingly intrudes into our lives.