Minchin calls Conroy on late ISP filter

Communications Minister Stephen Conroy has hit back at Shadow Minister for Communications Nick Minchin's call for the Federal Government to end its ISP-level filtering "farce".

Conroy hit back at Minchin's criticisms of the government's plan. "Nick Minchin and the Liberal party should explain why they don't support using the latest technology to restrict access to child abuse content and other Refused Classification material," he said.

Minchin today launched a renewed attack on the government's live ISP (Internet Service Provider) filtering trials, announced in February this year, for being late, having unclear objectives and being too small to provide meaningful data. The largest of the nine ISPs that have participated in the live trials include Primus, Unwired, Optus.

"Almost two years after coming to office with a plan to censor the internet, Senator Conroy has not even managed to release results for long overdue filtering trials, let alone come close to actually implementing this highly controversial policy," Minchin said in a statement today.

The initial closed tests revealed improvements in filtering technologies, but also showed significant limitations. The closed tests were followed by live tests, which have covered nine ISPs and are expected to conclude by the end of this month.

"It is time for Senator Conroy to end this farce and produce his long overdue trial results for independent assessment. It is looking increasingly like the minister knows his mandatory internet censorship plan is simply unworkable, but is too embarrassed to admit it," Minchin said.

Minchin has seized upon questions over what exactly is intended to be filtered by the proposed system. iiNet, one of the largest ISPs to have flagged its intent to join the study, pulled out in March this year, with its managing director Michael Malone criticising the government for being too vague about its aims.

"Huge doubts also continue to surround the type of content Labor wants to filter and how it will compile a blacklist which would form the basis of its filtering regime," said Minchin.