A new conservative Australian political party thinks it has a charming idea to help keep the Internet porn and other "offensive" content out: they've called for an "annual levy" (read: tax) of $7-10 on all Australian Netizens to fund a $45 million mandatory national Internet filtering scheme.
Family First, a conservative party which holds one state seat in South Australia and is believed to have close ties to the Assemblies of God evangelical movement, wants the Net filtered at the server level, on grounds that children exposed to Internet porn "could" exhibit "disturbed, aggressive, or sexualized behavior."
Those who think conservatives around the world think like American conservatives in terms of shying away from further government spending and taxing should ponder that Family First admits the cost of a mandatory national filtering scheme "could be prohibitive for small [Internet service providers]," but the scheme should still go forward because that cost "is a small price to pay" to protect Australian children.
"As a society, we have acknowledged the need to regulate other media and prevent porn peddlers from accessing children and adolescents," according to a Family First policy statement which went on to hint that they seem to think there are "too many" small Internet service providers – an argument that might prove anathema to, for example, conservatives in the United States and Britain, even if those countries' conservatives would otherwise sympathize with their wish to cut porn off at the server pass.
"Why is the Internet industry allowed to avoid responsibilities on this?" the policy statement continued. "[It] may have the result of putting cost pressures on some of the smaller ISPs, but there are arguably too many of these at the moment, and adequate competition could be maintained with 30 ISPs rather than the hundreds in existence now."
Family First for now has only extremely limited presence in Australian government, holding one state seat in South Australia but seen as a strong possibility for a Senate seat after what Australian press reports say was a round of preference deals with all major parties but the Greens.
