COMMENTARY--In which the government stops at nothing to manipulate public opinion against all evidence and the advice of experts... again.

Most of us remember that in 1999, to gain support from key senators for the sale of Telstra, the Government put together a lame duck Internet censorship regime that didn't work, much to the relief of ISPs and porn freaks nationwide.

All went quiet for four years. The Government commissioned CSIRO to research the effectiveness of Internet filtering products. In September 2001, CSIRO found what everyone already knew: they don't work.

Then a few weeks ago a so-called independent think tank, The Australia Institute, released a report on Internet pornorgraphy titled Youth and Pornography in Australia: Evidence on the extent of exposure and likely effects. For two days it was front page news in The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age. IT Minister Richard Alston and the Prime Minister promised to look into it. Then, nothing.

As reported on ABC's Media Watch, the Institute released the report exclusively to the Fairfax papers because director Clive Hamilton felt "We would be sure it would be treated well in its first release." And how. The report's unsubstantiated claims were parroted in these newspapers without a shred of critical analysis.

Which is a real pity, because the report simply doesn't stand up. The only actual research conducted is a phone poll of 200 high school students aged 16-17 regarding their exposure to pornography. The remainder of the report is a literature review of other people's research into the effects of pornography and some lurid descriptions of the content of porn Web sites--no new evidence or research, in other words.

TAI's report starts off with the moralistic conclusion that Internet porn is corrupting our nation's children, and then sets out to prove it. If I remember anything from university, I'm pretty sure this is the wrong way around. The report "was motivated by a concern that young people are being exposed to... pornographic material... and that this exposure may be having long-lasting detrimental effects".

It also sets out to prove that children are inadvertently exposed to porn just by using the Internet: "[Children] can been [sic] drawn or coerced into viewing material they have no desire to see."

However, the report's own research does not bear this out. The poll finds that 38 percent of boys reported deliberately looking at porn on the Internet, but only two percent of girls would admit it. This is somewhat dubious, but is in line with societal patterns of pornography use. While both boys and girls admitted to inadvertently seeing porn on the Net, again the boys' figures were higher than girls'. This doesn't make sense--surely if porn comes to get you, it shouldn't matter whether you're male or female.

There are potential explanations--boys may be "inadvertently" exposed to porn while looking for more porn, or may look at Web sites with a higher risk of porn exposure, such as warez sites--but this is not discussed at all in the report. In any case, girls for the most part seem to have been able to avoid accidental porn exposure (only seven percent reported being unintentionally exposed more than once a week)--yet the report claims all children are at risk.

The report calls for the government to force all ISPs to install porn filtering software. CSIRO found this would increase costs for ISPs (which would be passed on to customers), would decrease performance, and still wouldn't work. Ignoring (or ignorant of) these objections, with the help of a compliant media, The Australia Institute has spearheaded another populist anti-porn campaign, just in time for Senator Alston's review of the current scheme.

The Government is renowned for throwing up smokescreens when it's taking the heat. Currently facing a very unpopular deployment of troops in Iraq, what better way to take the attention away than to get one of your mates to make some noise about pornography, where you can be seen to be taking a principled stand? This is a serious issue that deserves real debate--not shonky research, bad journalism, and political manipulation.

Even though it's only a smokescreen, the Government may still change the legislation if it can get some political mileage. I'm very much afraid we'll hear more in the next exciting episode.

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