This article first appeared in The Canberra Times on Monday, 5 July 2010 and is re-published here with the newspaper’s permission.

opinion Last week one senator from Canberra essentially made the astounding accusation that another senator for Canberra wanted to “opt into child porn”. The antagonistic parties are former Daramalarn student and current Minister for Communications, Senator Stephen Conroy and current ACT Senator, Kate Lundy, both members of the Australian Labor Party.

For a long time, Lundy has been quietly arguing for the Labor Party to modify its internet filter policy to allow Australians to choose to opt-out or opt-in. When pressed on Lundy’s position by a journalist last Tuesday, who asked: “Do you have any indication from Julia Gillard about how she would consider any opt-out or opt-in amendments to the filter that Senator Lundy has been -”

Conroy cut him off, “We have election commitment that we will deliver on.”

The journalist persisted: “What’s your personal view of the opt out and opt in provisions?”

Conroy snapped: “I’m not into opting in to child porn.” And Kate Lundy is? That is one insidious rebuke for a member of his own party, of any party, and an elected senator of the Australian federal parliament.

As soon as Kevin Rudd lost his position, an impromptu campaign was ignited online calling for Conroy to be dumped and replaced with our very own Kate. The newly installed Prime Minister was deaf to the calls, instead opting for a minimalist cabinet reshuffle. The online public reaction was again massive.

The web sites of the ABC, the Australian newspaper and Fairfax publications all lead with headlines declaring Rudd had been left out of the reshuffle. Yet the comment sections attached to those articles immediately filled with calls for Conroy’s head. Journalists and their readers seemed to completely disconnect on topics. Few posters were interested in the fate of the ex-Prime Minister — they were howling the Communications Minister’s blood and asking why they did not get it.

Kate Lundy has managed to generate enormous goodwill amongst the online community by getting out and engaging with them over many years. One of her staffers, Pia Waugh, is also held in high regard.

Late last year when working for the Department of Health and Ageing, I was dispatched to a National Press Club conference on Web 2.0 initiatives in government. One of the attendees sat down at my empty table and struck up a conversation between speakers. They were not wearing a name badge. We spoke at length about IT issues, the influence of games on other media, the proposed internet filter and I was impressed by their level of knowledge and understanding of the many issues involved.

“Excuse me,” I asked, halfway through the chat, recognition slowly dawning, “You’re not Kate Lundy are you?”

Of course she was and she left enough of an impression on me then to blow her trumpet now. Which makes Conroy’s outburst seem even more bizarre.

We are all used to the Minister for Communications accusing anyone opposed to his internet filter of being a child pornographer. It often seems to be the only argument in his arsenal.

While Gillard may have opted for a minimalist reshuffle and Conroy may feel his membership of a right wing faction (who helped install the new Prime Minister) makes him safe, that outburst suggests otherwise.

Going to the extremes of rubbishing a colleague’s proposal with base name calling suggests Conroy is either rattled or supremely confident. Either way, accusing the likes of Kate Alexandra Lundy, Senator for the Australian Capital Territory, of wanting to “opt into child porn” is simply and absolutely ridiculous.

Myles Peterson is a writer based in Canberra. He Twitters at @MylesPeterson.

Image credit: kjd, Creative Commons

Related posts:

1. Lundy backs Gillard as potential for change opens
2. Conroy re-commits to filter, slams Lundy amendments
3. Joe Hockey and Kate Lundy: A new Democrats
4. Should Gillard replace Conroy with Lundy?
5. Lundy proffers opt-in filter option to Labor

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1. Matthew Hatton
   Posted 07/07/2010 at 12:18 pm | Permalink | Reply

   They keep saying that it’s coming, but honestly, I still believe that this issue is dead and the filter is never going to see the light of day.

   On the other hand, Cun….Conroy seriously needs to go. It’s pretty clear that he’s not just toeing the party line about this. It’s something that he is personally invested in, without any willingness to acknowledge the gaping holes in his logic or seeing any way of providing a compromise. He’s a moron.

2. None
   Posted 07/07/2010 at 12:26 pm | Permalink | Reply

   > It’s pretty clear that he’s not just toeing the party line about this.

   It’s pretty clear to me that if he had overstepped any boundaries that Rudd would have brought him into line.

3. Jason Bennett
   Posted 07/07/2010 at 12:39 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Conroy answers to a higher authority.. the ACL.

4. Clytie Siddall
   Posted 07/07/2010 at 1:30 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Also, where’s the election commitment? Before the election, the ALP “committed” to an optional filter. After a back deal with Fielding, suddenly the filter became mandatory. Voters did NOT elect the ALP on that premise. Conroy is palpably dishonest in saying so (quite apart from being rude, ignorant, insulting and internationally embarrassing, of course).

5. Mutat
   Posted 07/07/2010 at 2:02 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Will the relief and joy felt by many when Julia announced her “affirmation” be enough to minimise the pressure placed on educators through the release of myschools, the mismanagement of school building funding and her continued support of Conroy? Same wolf just a better looking sheep. To use the words of another leading woman who is also known by her hair…. Obi Julia Kenobi…. you’re our only hope.

6. Peter Holland
   Posted 07/07/2010 at 3:49 pm | Permalink | Reply

   as I have had pointed out to me many, many times over, if the filter was such a great thing, why didn’t it get implemented years ago?

   answer, because the Security community doesn’t believe that the filter is right. And if they don’t believe in it, how can the rest of us?

7. Myke
   Posted 07/07/2010 at 4:20 pm | Permalink | Reply

   “opt into child porn”

   Getting harder to give credence to anything this dill says. It’s so moronic I feel the need to respond in kind with name calling.

   Oh Dear.

8. Steve
   Posted 07/07/2010 at 6:02 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Isn’t this very close to libel?

9. Robbo
   Posted 09/07/2010 at 11:34 pm | Permalink | Reply

   Renai,

   None of your campaigning efforts are doing anything to help Lundy. It’s hopelessly naive (and arrogant) to believe that the Labor party is going to drop a cabinet minister diligently pursuing party lines after a long political career in the trenches covering the hard yards in junior roles, because of a few cheap shots from a blog posting silly biased commentary and mis-contextualising videos.

   You just come across as rabid and no-one will listen.

   Really, what was the point of presenting the fact that Conroy isn’t IT minister as news? Just because you didn’t realise he’s not IT minister doesn’t make it news.

   It just makes you look like a loon. You’re just not achieving anything. That’s why Conroy told Jenna that the campaign wouldn’t work at the press conference.

   He’s been polite and good humored with you guys, and he invites you to the press conferences, but you don’t see any value in that. You’re his harshest critics and yet he’s asking you along and yet he remains the big bad censorship monster and you kick him with these cheap shots at every opportunity

   Really Renai..grow the f up. If you want this start-up to go anywhere stop simply pandering to the angry technoratti that frequent your site and start being a journalist and stop being an activist.

   • Myles Peterson
     Posted 10/07/2010 at 6:40 pm | Permalink | Reply

     Hi Robbo

     To be fair to Renai, he did not write the above, I did. It was an opinion piece that first appeared in The Canberra Times.

     I have grown tired of Conroy dismissing any debate with his “child porn” mantra and when he used it AGAIN in the context of a line of questioning about Lundy’s proposed changes, I decided to point out what a ridiculous statement it was. As stated in the piece, I have great respect for Senator Lundy and objected strongly to the implied slur.

     “I’m not into opting in to child porn.” None of us are. And the constant use of that message, by Conroy and proponents of the Australian Christian Lobby, is clouding the debate.

     Renai is doing us a great service with this independent media project and if you don’t like it – use the filter we all possess, your judgement, and don’t read it. I will continue to read Delimiter because it often delivers breaking news I am interested in, information legacy media often ignores.

     Cheers,
     Myles

     • Robbo
       Posted 11/07/2010 at 4:59 pm | Permalink | Reply

       Myles,

       You make a fair point but my comment wasn’t based on a single opinion piece. It’s hard not to see what Delimiter is doing as anything but a campaign. It’s activism, not journalism.

       I probably shouldn’t have worded it so harshly, I accept. For that, I apologise. But the cooler-headed point I’m trying to make is that while none of us want the filter, this sort of approach isn’t helping achieve the aim of defeating it.

       A lot of what Delimiter posts on the issue are nothing more than thinly-disguised petulant jeers. The story about Conroy not being IT minister was a non-story. It’s tone and substance was more reminiscent of a mocking, schoolyard mob than the product of well constructed lines of journalistic interrogation.

       Seriously? Why is it so unreasonable for Conroy to politely point out that he’s not IT minister and that Kim Carr is and has been for some time? Why does that need to be answered with this childish mockery? It just makes the mockers look bad, not him.

       And that’s not helping anyone because it gives Conroy the ammunition he needs to sideline the anti-filter discourse as lacking credibility.

       As for your column… how did you reach the conclusion that his answer was a slur against Lundy?

       Reading the Q&A as it’s presented here, it sounds like he was curtly trying to make a simple point – Why on earth would anyone go to the trouble of building a filter designed to block access to illegal net material and simply give its would-be consumers the ability to opt-out?

       Once you decide that building it is a good idea (I’m not saying it is), and you set about designing the legislation for it, then giving people the ability to opt-out just defeats the purpose of it? Makes sense yeah?

       So I don’t think he was inferring that Lundy likes kiddie porn…I think he was inferring that her amendments for the filter, given its purpose, are a bit silly. On those terms I’d have to agree. Logical/Fair right?

       And whether you like it or not, Labor got its mandate at the polls in 2007. It’s the only legitimate mandate we have to go on in a democracy such as ours. And they may lose it at the next election in the coming months. And the coalition is saying little about the filter because they know it’s better to let the negative politics around it play out against the government than step into that particularly sensitive arena and risk confusing their conservative base about the party’s identity.

       The fact that they know they may soon find themselves having to cut deals with the christian lobby also can’t be far from their minds :)

       Conroy likes to dog whistle the anti-filter sectors of the media because the he can keep the debate in the arena he can win. The more emotional and irrational the discourse the easier it is for him to monster the rational arguments that would truly pose a threat to it.

       It’s a bit like when the Hewson-led coalition realised that there was political advantage to be had in provoking Keating to publicly monster their fiscal policy – in the middle of a recession no-one wanted to hear him econocratically knocking any idea to fix things. It went down badly.

       And that, in a nut, is what I find so annoying about the way the Delimiters of the world approach the situation.

       They should neutrally identify *genuine* folly and danger in the filter scheme, and base their lines of inquiry on them.

       All this technical stuff about slowing down the net and “putting a child-safety lock on the internet” is a nonsense that Labor can spin… the tech sector made a mistake when it tried that rhetoric because then all that the government had to do was prove it wrong. And they did. Where to for rebuttal then?

       • Myles Peterson
         Posted 11/07/2010 at 6:55 pm | Permalink | Reply

         Thanks Roboo,

         You make some good points. I agree base name calling is not going to resolve the debate (which was the point of my piece).

         This issue causes more heat than most so we should probably all take a deep breath before commenting, myself included.

         Cheers,
         Myles

       • Renai LeMay
         Posted 11/07/2010 at 9:15 pm | Permalink | Reply

         Hi Robbo,

         I take your point — it has some degree of validity, and I would agree that Delimiter has taken a somewhat antagonistic approach to Conroy, especially in the past week — when Conroy has held a press conference almost every day. We have taken a harsher approach than you would normally see in the media towards a sitting minister.

         I personally have had some self-doubt about this approach. After all, I reasoned to myself, there has been a stack of criticism against Conroy’s policies, and perhaps we should limit our coverage to that.

         But the truth is that there are several very valid reasons why we have taken this approach, and will likely continue to do so.

         The first and foremost reason is that I have questioned readers extensively about this approach, and almost all readers who I have spoken, emailed or Twittered to about this strongly support Delimiter continuing to take it to Conroy in the strongest terms possible.

         This is fairly unusual. Usually when a politician takes a stand on something, there are views on both sides — some readers are for, and some against. In this case, I would say that it is something like 95 percent for continuing to attack Conroy and 5 percent against.

         Secondly, as I pointed out in this commentary, Conroy’s tenure as a Minister has been riddled with controversy — both of his own intentional making (such as his spat with Google and iiNet), and through his mis-speaking, which continues.

         http://delimiter.com.au/2010/07/02/wake-up-and-smell-the-democracy-stilgherrian/

         I wrote”

         However, if you examine Conroy’s performance on a more granular level you will find that it contains a litany of disturbing missteps.

         The Opposition has — rightly and consistently — pointed out that the Government never drew up a full cost/benefit analysis before approving the NBN policy, and debate continues — three years after it was first put forward — on the question of to what extent Australia’s economy will truly benefit from universal high-speed broadband.

         Conroy has consistently refused to release information about how the policy is being implemented. We know very little about the internal operations of NBN Co, and it was only after Greens Senator Scott Ludlam forced a motion in parliament that the Government consented to release a — harmless — detailed study into the NBN.

         Then there is the matter of how Conroy has dealt with the sector which he is responsible for setting policy over.

         This is a minister who has potentially prejudiced one of Australia’s most high-profile copyright trials, who has used parliamentary privilege to publicly attack search giant Google for its accidental collection of Wi-Fi payload data, and who has been negotiating behind closed doors with Australia’s largest telco for months on a monumental deal which will shape the whole future of Australia’s telecommunications industry — in complete secrecy.

         As a member of the press it is my responsibility to hold him to account for these missteps.

         And lastly, there is the matter of Government policy.

         This Labor government is putting forward several controversial — and, dare I say it, just plain wrong — policies that will harm Australia if they are implemented. The filter policy, the data retention proposal, ACTA and potentially a three-strikes file sharing policy — these are all things that Australia’s technology community — on whose behalf I write — are against.

         Conroy is the Minister responsible for these policies, and as such he is the avatar that must debate them in public.

         Two more things.

         Firstly, I would think it a truth self-evident that a Minister with a deep understanding of technology — such as Senator Kate Lundy clearly possesses — would do a better job in the technology portfolio (which Conroy clearly holds, no matter the arbitrary “IT” lines that have been drawn up — than one who clearly doesn’t.

         And Conroy does not understand his portfolio — as his “spams and scams” comments and others clearly demonstrate.

         Lastly, why do you assume that Delimiter’s journalism is just about information? Journalism has always been about information AND entertainment. Yes, there is a degree of tabloid thinking about the way we cover things sometimes, but then there is room for a more ‘tabloid’ publication online in Australia’s technology sphere — haven’t you read the Register in the UK?

         Cheers,

         Renai

10. Clytie Siddall
    Posted 10/07/2010 at 5:04 pm | Permalink | Reply

    My, my… Robbo, you sound a bit angry yourself. It isn’t very effective to accuse someone of ad hominem attacks while launching one yourself.

    Regardless of Conroy’s level of courtesy (which is certainly debatable, e.g. his privileged attack on Google in the Senate), the fact is he has consistently refused to listen to industry experts. This is simply bad practice for a minister. It’s also frustrating for people in that industry, as he is regulating it without regard for the facts.

    His complete disregard of voters’ lack of mandate for his censorship scheme and their continuing protest against it also inevitably causes frustration in the electorate.

    I don’t think you’ll find many people celebrating his politeness in inviting people to press conferences (paid for by the tax-payer, and part of his job), while he continues to force on us a misguided policy we don’t want. As someone said on Gizmodo today, Conroy is putting a child lock on the entire Internet. Even if you have a computer accessible to children (and many people don’t), this is an annoying and unreasonable limitation.

    As for Renai and Delimiter, AFAI can see he does an excellent job of keeping us informed of tech news affecting Australia. Like any news site, Delimiter also has opinion pieces (clearly marked as such). If you object to someone’s opinions, you can certainly say so, but don’t deny their right to express those opinions.