Yes it’s happening again! The Helen Lovejoys of Australia are rising up in moral panic and pushing for the protection of Australian children. And once again the scourge in their sights is pornography.
In the final parliamentary sitting week of 2015 the Australian Senate referred the following matter for inquiry:
Harm being done to Australian children through access to pornography on the Internet
The referral by Joe Ludwig (ALP), John Madigan (Ind), Joanna Lindgren (LNP) and Chris Back (Lib) was passed without dissent from any senators.
Reading as though it had been drafted by Collective Shout the referral states that “online pornography is increasingly violent in its content” despite this claim being much disputed. It makes claims without evidence that “violence against women is often linked back to early and repeated exposure to pornography” and that “violence towards, and abuse of, children is often linked to early and repeated exposure to pornography.”
Sadly not a single Senator (be they Liberal, Labor, LDP, Greens or Independent) questioned these assertions.
The referral wants to address these “harms” by looking at
(a) trends of online consumption of pornography by children and their impact on the development of healthy and respectful relationships;
(b) current methods taken towards harm minimisation in other jurisdictions, and the effectiveness of those methods;
(c) the identification of any measures with the potential for implementation in Australia; and
(d) any other related matters.
Items (b) and (c) offer little doubt this is the start of an official push for a UK style opt-out porn filter.
Unsurprisingly the Australian Christian Lobby welcomes the inquiry. After marriage equality, mandatory filtering of the internet is one of their favourite topics and they have long called for a UK style porn filter. It continues the millennia long obsession by Christianity of what you do with your own body. Don’t have sex until marriage. It’s a sin. Don’t touch yourself. It’s a sin. Don’t watch anything that might encourage you to touch yourself. Yes, that too is a sin.
However like most efforts to control what we do with our bodies, a UK style internet filter won’t work, but it will have unintended consequences.
Teenagers have long accessed material restricted to adults and an internet filter won’t stop teenagers sharing pornography. Where their ancestors shared magazines and VHS tapes, teens will share pornography via flash drives and peer to peer programs. Teenagers will still be sexting each other and sharing porn on apps like Snapchat and KIK. And there are many children more technically literate than their parents and if a porn filter is enacted we can guarantee one of the top internet search inquiries the next day will be “How to get around Australia’s porn filter.”
A pornography filter will block much more than dirty pictures and videos in an attempt to “think of the children”. In the UK information about file sharing and music downloads has also been blocked. In Scotland the websites of 54 charities dealing with issues like drugs, sex education, smoking, mental health and domestic and child abuse have been blocked. Sites relating to alcohol, gambling, sexuality, feminism, maternity leave and dating have also been blocked, as have many popular blogs. Bizarrely even the website for a Porsche dealership was blocked.
Non-pornographic gay and lesbian sites and sex education content has been blocked, and that should concern all of us. The internet provides a lifeline for young LGBTIQ Australians. On the internet they can find support networks, peers, and content they can relate to that they don’t see in our hetero dominant media. For young LGBTIQ Australians over-represented in suicide statistics this is a matter of life and death.
We know that education works better than ignorance, but an internet filter that seeks to block information will promote ignorance. If the senators are sincere in their desire to help children deal with the questions that arise from viewing pornography, then incorporating discussions of pornography, consent and bodily autonomy into the sex education curriculum is essential.
We expect Fred Nile will make an extensively researched submission to the inquiry and we urge you to make a submission as well.
In doing so, think of the type of society you want children to grow up in. A society where civil liberties, information and education are promoted or one where the nanny state and private companies decide what you can see and who you can contact?
The closing date for submissions is 10th March 2016
