There’s a long list of political figures and government organisations that claim a mandate to filter the Internet. Senator Conroy, the DBCDE, the ACMA and the Labor party in general all flex and banter about how ‘the people are crying out for ISP filtering’. This was a surprise to me, I’d seldom heard anyone even know what it was let alone crying out for it. 

Still, the ‘mandate’ had to come from somewhere. Apparently it came, amongst other places, from this petition:

The Internet is a great educational tool. However children can too easily access pictures of violent cruelty and extreme pornography on the Internet. Labor wants a “clean feed” technology that can block access to these kinds of sites.

To the Honourable President and members of the Senate in Parliament assembled:

This petition of certain citizens of Australia draws to the attention of the Senate, the danger of children accessing Internet pornography and other Internet pages.

Your petitioners therefore ask the Senate to make laws that:

All Internet service providers be required to offer a “clean feed” Internet service to all households, schools and public libraries that blocks access to websites containing child pornography, acts of extreme violence and x-rated material.

by Senator Conroy (from 20,646 citizens).

Strangely, this petition was delivered at various other points between October 2006 and March 2007 , almost verbatim, by 

• Senator Calvert (3 citizens)
• Senator Ludwig (10,806 citizens)
• Senator McEwin (75 citizens)
• Senator Calvert (again, this time extended to ‘access to websites containing child pornography, acts of extreme violence and x-rated material.’) (18 citizens)
• Senator Calvert (this time as President of the Senate) (22 citizens)
• Senator Calvert (again as President) (16 Citizens)

Also submitted was an interesting little petition from Senator McGuaran, the only one that actually supports mandatory filtering, signed by a grand total of 15 citizens.

So far, it would appear that the number of citizens actually petitioning for mandatory filtering totals 15 people. Compare this to the 98,000 people that have signed the GetUp! petition (though at time of writing, the petition is yet to be submitted – God only knows why not).

For some reason Conroy has decided that there are calls for mandatory filtering that are beyond ignoring. Sure, 32,000 people asking for an offering of filtered content from ISPs is convincing enough, I don’t think anyone opposes an optional filter. 

The problem is that there are only 15 voices recorded officially by parliament as asking for mandatory filtering. Combined with the fact that Labor did not go to the election with mandatory filtering as a policy, I fail to see how there is any mandate for mandatory filtering. 

It would be interesting to see how many of those petitions can be linked back to Jim Wallace himself. I’m also interested to know why so many separate petitions have such incredibly similar scripting wording. 

Although Calvert’s name pops up repeatedly in petition submissions, there’s very little on the Internet about him. He’s a farmer from Tasmania that found himself on numerous top level committees as a Senator and represented Australia on a diplomatic trip to China. Oh, and he’s a Liberal. Not a lot in it and he’s had his day in Parliament – though I’d wager he’s mates with a couple of familiar names.  

If we knew who was behind scripting this petition we’d at least know who it was that framed this as a ‘clean feed’ debate. In the meantime, the writing’s on the wall. There is no mandate for this legislation.