I am writing to respond to Jeremy Halcrow's disappointing assertion that the Christian Lobby has "lost the plot" on freedom of speech.
The Australian Christian Lobby is a fierce advocate of the right to free speech - particularly in an environment where some have recently sought to marginalise and even exclude Christian views from the public square.
Anyone following the debate about internet filtering will know that many vexatious claims about China-style censorship have been made in attempts to discredit the Rudd Government's plans to protect children from pornography on the internet.
Some in the internet industry opposed to filtering have trumpeted the fact that an anti-abortion website was placed on the ACMA (Australian Communications and Media Authority) blacklist.
The truth is that the website was not blacklisted. However, one page of it was blacklisted which contained violent images that could be argued did not comply with long-standing rules in the Broadcasting Services Act.
There was never any threat to freedom of speech and if ISP filtering posed this, ACL would not be supporting it. There has never been any suggestion by the Government that ISP filtering would lead to censoring material other than that which causes harm to children - a principle already well-established in Australian public policy through our long-standing film and literature classification laws.
All ACL is seeking is that the internet be subject to the same community standards.
ACL welcomes the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy's commitment to blocking Refused Classification (RC) material which includes child, bestiality and rape pornography.
However, we have made it clear to the Government that meeting their election commitment means that children must be protected from "legal porn" in the X18+ and R18+ categories, as the harm of this to kids (and adults) is well-documented in scientific literature.
The Government has always indicated that adults would be able to opt-in to receive legal porn. Whilst ACL and many experts do not believe legal porn is healthy even for adults, we have supported this position because it is a superior way to protect children and is in line with existing laws applying to other media.
The Government is conducting trials with a number of ISPs, including Optus, to examine the technical feasibility of ISP level filtering.
Given the great advances we are continually seeing in technology, ACL is very confident ISP level filtering will better equip parents to protect their kids from on-line pornography in both its legal and illegal forms.
Just as our current film and literature guidelines pose no threat to free speech, neither should ISP level filtering of online porn.
