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Comment by loewenskind | Hacker News Reader

Are you sure it's coming from there and not just leveraging it? Seems more likely to me that it's a power grab. The world took notice about what happened in Iran. I didn't hear any governments being thankful for internet anonymity when that broke out. In fact I've mostly been hearing about plans for "filtering" since then.

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I do think that it originates from there, yes. Although I'm sure there are also those who may not believe in the cause and are only using these issues for their own political purposes. I suspect for example that one of the main reason's that the "clean feed" idea just won't die despite massive opposition is that the government is courting the favour of Xenophon and Fielding in the Senate.

The only problem I have with the Fielding/Xenophon theory is that the government never talks about it, and both Fielding and Xenophon have a pretty bad track record when it comes to voting with the Government. Fielding effectively blocked the ETS, so I don't see the Government doing them any favours.

The other thing that worries me is you don't see the opposition hammering them on this. It's clearly unpopular with younger voters, and it could be a good chance, to pick them up. But maybe it backlashes against others who don't understand the issues and just hear 'OMG child porn!'.

Bottom line : I seriously don't know where the push for internet censorship is coming from, and I have creeping dread that it is actually bipartisan.

I get what you mean. Maybe I was inaccurate when I talked about the Xenophon/Fielding thing in the present tense. I think that if there was any idea of courting Fielding/Xenophon, it was attempted much earlier than the ETS business. I remember some months ago now, hearing that there was talk of adding gambling sites to Conroy's blacklist, without looking up where that talk may have come from, I could pretty confidently guess that it came from Xenophon. But not much came of it as far as I could tell, Conroy was too focussed on trying to demonstrate that his blacklist wouldn't suffer from any scope creep, and I'm sure this outcome must not have pleased Xenophon. As I alluded to previously, my feeling is that by now, the push for the "clean feed" is more ideology than political manoeuvring and I think you're right that by now the government would have given up on getting Fielding/Xenophon on side. I still think it's likely that they would have given it a go though.

I also think you're right that there is likely some bipartisanship on this issue and yeah that's pretty scary. But it's not really surprising is it? Considering the somewhat perfect storm of social conservatism that we seem to have all over the place right now. Conroy, Fielding, Xenophon, Abbott, Rudd, they all have that streak in varying degrees and must be only the tip of the ice berg. I'm just hoping that some of these guys maintain a bit of practicality and reason.

It's always the religious social conservatives who fret and worry that society is going to hell in a hand basket and it's their self appointed task to save the misguided and punish the wicked. That's the root of the push IMO and yep, it seems to be pushing up though both sides of politics pretty well right now.

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