Think of the porn, censor the children. Oh, wait, that should go the other way around. And the bestiality. Gotta get the bloody bestiality back where the kids can’t see it — out in the back paddock where it’s a private matter between a  man and his livestock. The current (KRudd) Australian Labor government just doesn’t want to give this one up.

So that communications minister Stephen Conroy announces legislation to Censor The Internet And Keep Australia Pure will be introduced….just before next year’s election. Bearing in mind that opposition leader Tony Abbott is an outspoken wowser with a support base of religious nutjobs, it isn’t a huge stretch to see the strategy behind the move.

Putting aside the possibility of the legislation getting through both houses of parliament and actually going into effect, which is scary enough, what worries me more than the possibility of a national-level internet (really World Wide Web) filter  is the opportunity the Rudd government has just handed “Mad Monk” Tony Abbott.

They must be assuming that Abbott and the Liberal Party will support the legislation. Which they might. But if they do, will the antediluvians and troglodytes have any reason to change their vote to Labor, who after all still support the right to abortion, birth control, schooling for girls, etc?

And they also might not support it. Abbott’s response to minister Conroy’s announcement was notably guarded. There are certainly Liberal MPs who don’t want it. And Abbott, well, what he wants is to be Prime Minister. Very, very much. If he can learn to subdue his personal agendas to the demands of his ambition, learn patience and mature in guile, he could recast himself. Be seen to put his own extreme views aside in the name of supporting the views of the majority. Be a bloke of the folk, just like John Howard. And get elected, just like John Howard. And then gradually, when the door of opportunity opens, shove his own agenda through it onto the country, just like John Howard.

If Abbott plays his cards right, he could conceivably pick up a fair few swinging or simply furious voters.  If those voters are in marginal seats, there’s your election. The Exclusive Brethren will be happy, and the rest of Australia will be wondering what they’ve gone and done.

Or am I wrong? I’ve been away from home for four years now, and haven’t spent long enough on visits to pick up the pulse of the zeitgeist. Has the place really changed that much? Has a tide of wowserism swept in, and a tide of stupidity too? Because censorship will not make the internet a nice place for children to play, and filtering the web will not stop the electronic circulation of child pornography and other criminal material. Errors are inevitable (a leaked list of “planned” sites to ban included a dentist’s web page) and the scope for abuse enormous. It really isn’t too hard to understand this. And it’s easy to be either appalled that our federal government doesn’t understand, or offended that they think we don’t, however you interpret their actions.

I hope that at next year’s election KRudd & co do get back in, because the alternative is dismal.  But I hope their majority is so thin that their arrogance won’t be able to squeeze through it.