A new government program protecting kids from Internet nasties is not Big Brother but more like Big Mother, Olympic swimmer Kieren Perkins said.

The gold medallist was with Federal Communications Minister Helen Coonan today to promote Net Alert -- Protecting Australian Families Online -- in Sydney.

Perkins, a father of three, said when his kids became Internet savvy it was the most daunting part of his parenting life.

"My first big hit was when my daughter at seven was downloading videos from YouTube. That was when I really realised she was being exposed to things I had no control or say over, and that, as a parent, is one of the hardest lessons you learn," he said.

"It's not negative, a Big Brother. More like Big Mother, protecting you and your kids from what's out there."

The US$189 million initiative provides Internet content filtering software to all families, schools and libraries in Australia.

However, Coonan has already admitted that the Government's filter is not totally effective after a Melbourne schoolboy took just 30 minutes to crack the porn filtering software.

At the time, Coonan said: "There is no silver bullet that can protect children online ... Sadly, just as a seatbelt will never prevent every fatal car crash, as the government has always maintained, no filter is foolproof. But a computer with a filter is infinitely safer than one without."

The government has already piloted Web filtering technology three times in the past. Following the most recent trial, in 2005, Coonan acknowledged problems with the concept saying: "Each report has found significant problems with content filter products operating at the ISP-level ... The Australian trials have also found the effect on performance of the Internet by ISP filtering to be substantial and a lack of scalability of the filters to larger ISPs."

The NetAlert -- Protecting Australian Families Online program will also see publicity campaigns stepped up, including a AU$22 million awareness scheme to "inform parents and carers of children about online safety issues and provide information about where they can go to receive support and assistance", and 10 new ACMA Internet safety officers who will visit schools to talk about online dangers.

"We're trying to empower parents, to help kids maybe finding some aspects threatening in their lives, and overall making the Internet a benefit and not a negative," Coonan said today.

Labor's communications spokesman Stephen Conroy has previously criticised the government's filtering plan and believes it won't protect Australian children from accessing inappropriate material online.

The Opposition has its own plan to stop children accessing X-rated or illegal Web content, which it will bring in if elected. Speaking earlier this month, Conroy said: "We have said we support all government measures -- we support filters and we're proposing mandatory ISP filtering similar to that used in the UK."