A Mum’s Take On The Clean Feed

Everyone’s busy shopping, finishing up a hectic final week at work and visiting with friends and family to celebrate the season. Steven Conroy is sitting in his office gleefully rubbing his hands, what better time could there be to roll out a new government policy that will affect everyone in Australia with access to an internet connection?

This evening the Australian government greenlighted the plans to go ahead with an internet filtering scheme.

From the SMH (emphasis mine):

The Communications Minister, Stephen Conroy, said today he would introduce legislation just before next year’s elections to force ISPs to block a blacklist of “refused classification” (RC) websites for all Australian internet users.

The blacklist, featuring material such as child sex abuse, sexual violence and instructions on crime, would be compiled using a public complaints mechanism, Government censors and URLs provided by international agencies.

[...]

“Most Australians acknowledge that there is some internet material which is not acceptable in any civilised society,” he said.

“It is important that all Australians, particularly young children, are protected from this material.“

There are so many flaws here that have been listed by plenty of other bloggers and websites, and I won’t even start on the issues that would arise from a public complaints mechanism, there’s no point in me repeating everything that’s already been said, and probably far more eloquently than I can put it.

What I can give you is a mother’s take on the whole thing.

My sons are growing up surrounded by computers. My almost two year old know that Mummy and Daddy use them for work, he has his own laptop to play DVDs on and he’ll even ask to watch a certain music video or film clip on YouTube – recently The Proclaimers have been on high rotation.

As odd as this may seem to his grandparents, it’s not odd for his generation. He is being raised in an age where the computer and the internet is king. The entire world is just the touch of a button away, and I’m quite happy to sit down with him and allow him to explore that world, under my supervision.

Not under the supervision of the government.

Because I am fully capable of looking after and monitoring my own children, I don’t need Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy to do it for me.

My issue lies with the fact that once censorship is brought in the lines become very grey. If my teenage son starts to think he may be gay and goes to seek an online support group to help him come to terms with who he is, will that be banned? If one of the boys decide that they’ve had enough of my heathen ways and wish to look into some religious groups, will those searches bring up red flags? If I ever have a daughter (or one of my sons doesn’t shrink wrap it) and she ends up in a situation where she needs to look into the options available for ending an unwanted pregnancy, will she still be able to see an unbiased argument from a range of different opinions?

In all of these situations I would hope that my kids would be comfortable in confiding in their parents, but I also know teenage-hood doesn’t work like that. If their first step is using the internet as a form of support through a difficult time in their life then I don’t have an issue with it, what I do have an issue with is the government cutting off that support, because some of those opinions may differ from what is considered “right” by the governing bodies.

I want my children (and of course myself) to have access to the WORLD WIDE web, not the PG rated version filled only with content that our government deems safe.

I like to think that I’m a capable mother.

Capable of teaching my sons what is and isn’t acceptable.

Capable of sitting down with the boys to teach them about internet safety.

Capable of looking after my family without Kevin Rudd and Stephen Conroy fighting a battle to “save the children”, a battle which does nothing more than infringe on my, and my family’s rights.

I strongly advise every Australian (or not) to contact their local representative and let them know that this is not a wise use of our tax dollars, to encourage them to move forward instead of back, and let them know that the rest of the world is laughing at us as a country.