Too Busy For Words - the PaulWay Blog

I, like pretty much everyone now, am opposed to the Australian Federal Labor Party's 'Clean Feed' mandatory internet filtering proposal. It won't stop paedophiles getting access to child pornography, it won't protect children from abuse, it won't stop people getting access to illegal content or content on the Refused Classification list, and it will almost certainly generate a huge number of false positives, blocking much legal content. It will slow internet access down, it has enormous potential to be abused for political or commercial gain, the list of refused classification sites has no judicial or public oversight, and Senator Conroy has avoided any actual definition of what goes on the blocked list. It's stupid, it's bound to fail, and no-one wants it.

So why, why, are Senator Conroy and Prime Minister Rudd continuing to not only support it but insist that it be put in place?

Every time this issue comes up, at work or with friends, that is the question on everyone's lips. Why does the minister continue to insist that it must be put in place? Why are they ignoring the overwhelming technical flaws in its implementation? Why do they even think that it will do what they say it will, when everyone else has positive proof that it won't? Why are they defying the wishes of the actual citizens who voted them in, 90% of whom don't want any internet filtering? Why?

I think we can conclusively say, from the evidence of Stephen Conroy's and Kevin Rudd's words, that this has gone beyond a debatable issue. They continually label everyone else's views as extremist and denigrate opposition as supporting the things they claim the filter is against. They continually ignore all the evidence that says that the filter will not work and insist that it will. This is no longer reasonable - this is dogma. They have an absolute and unwavering faith that the filter will work - that it must work - and nothing is going to change that view at all.

No protest will work. No petitions will sway them. No carefully crafted arguments will change their mind. Stupid attempts to DDOS Government websites will only make them more committed to ignoring all nay-sayers. Don't bother to blow up a bus or threaten to start shooting parliamentarians, it won't change their minds. In my opinion they will be ignoring their friends, their fellow Senators and Ministers, and they will be talking to all of them trying to convince them of the truth of their dogma, so while we should all write to our representatives in the houses of parliament - local, state and federal - little will be done by this; we will get form letters but the volume of complaints will make some small difference.

So what do we do now? How do you win an argument with a person who denies everything you say is true and calls you a supporter of the bad guys? How do we, the people of Australia, conduct a Representative Democracy when our elected Senators and leaders refuse to listen to us?

What do we do?