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End censorship in Australia

Contents

• Introduction
• Why is there so much censorship in Australia?
• Resources
• Examples of censorship
• Reasons to end censorship
• Proposed changes to legislation
• Help to end censorship
• Legalise the sale of sexually explicit videos

Introduction

Australia is particularly vulnerable amongst Western liberal democracies because it has no constitutional or legislative protections for freedom of expression. Legislators can do as they please, demonstrating that democracy without the protection of individual human rights degenerates into mob rule. Censorship in Australia has been increased by the socially conservative Liberal/National coalition federal government. The Labor party, which is in power in all states, also has socially conservative elements in both its right and left factions; no state government has acted against censorship.

Some believe that technical measures such as Freenet will be sufficient to make a mockery of censorship of the internet, and thus bring down censorship as a whole. I think that this is not correct, because such systems are only accessible to a technologically skilled and censorship-aware elite. Most members of society will not be able to access such systems, and free access to information will once again be the preserve of the elite.

For example, a system of mandatory web filtering at the ISP level would seriously damage free expression on the net, and retard the development of our information society. Australia would then truly be a Global Village Idiot. The Broadcasting Services Act 1992 (as amended in 1999) already gives the Australian Broadcasting Authority the powers to impose such a system: only their acceptance of the current industry code of practice prevents their intervention.

• In May 2004 a review of the operation of the "Online Services" schedule of the Act was completed and found that mandatory ISP-level filtering was not yet feasible.
• In December 2004 the reelected Coalition government rejected mandatory internet filtering in favour of greater parental education.
• In March 2006 the Beazley-led Labor opposition announced a policy to force ISPs to filter the internet. (Comprehensive and damning EFA analysis.)
• In June 2006 the Coalition government rejected ISP-level filters (for now), in favour of increased education and fully-taxpayer-subsidised PC-based filtering software (optional end-user filtering). Labor's policy remains.
• In December 2007, the newly-elected Labor government reiterated its plan to force ISPs to filter the internet. Note that the Labor party persists in using the term "mandatory filtering" to refer to their plan to require ISPs to offer an opt-out filtering service, that is, the scheme would be mandatory for ISPs not users. This is presumably a political stratagem designed to mislead religious constituents with poor reading comprehension.

Why is there so much censorship in Australia?

"The key to political power in Australia today is having the support of the most conservative, most anxious, chunk of the electorate." - p79, "The High Price of Heaven," David Marr (Allen & Unwin, Australia, 1999).

Resources

The best anti-censorship website in Australia

• libertus.net: Irene Graham's comprehensive site on censorship in Australia

  Irene is executive director of Electronic Frontiers Australia and lives in Brisbane. From a censorship point of view, Queensland is Australia's heart of darkness.

  Irene's site is the very best resource on censorship in Australia, and is absolutely essential reading for anyone with an interest in this subject.

Australia

• Electronic Frontiers Australia
• Censorship and Classification in Australia, a briefing paper from the Australian Parliamentary Library.
• Danny Yee's pages on internet censorship and civil liberties in Australia. Danny lives in Sydney.
• Anthony Larme's Computer Games Censorship Collection. Anthony also has many other resources, including the banning of Phantagasmoria and his personal experience of the selection process for Australia's censors.
• Refused Classification - Film Censorship in Australia
• The Office of Film and Literature Classification: Australia's censors. Read the classification guidelines yourself. The database of classifications is available online.
• Helen Vnuk's book Snatched: Sex and Censorship in Australia (Vintage, 2003) is compelling, well-researched, and to-the-point. I recommend it to anyone with an interest in censorship. Helen is the former editor of Australian Women's Forum. Danny Yee has reviewed this book. Here is an interview with the author.

International

• The Electronic Frontiers Foundation, based in the United States.
• The Melon Farmers' Video Hits: censorship in the United Kingdom.
• The Free Expression Project provides empirical research relevant to censorship. Of particular note is a court brief on media violence filed by 33 media scholars, available in HTML or PDF. This brief is a superb review of research into media violence up to 2002.