THE Gillard government will scrap its voluntary internet filtering grants program to save $9.6 million over three years.
A combination of reasons led to the decision, including moves by Telstra, Optus and Primus to voluntarily block child abuse websites.
"Consultation with industry has identified limited interest in the grants due to the increasing range of filtering technologies readily available to online users, including browser and search engine filters," the government says in the 2011-12 budget papers.
"Savings from this measure will be redirected to support other government priorities."
Labor intends to introduce mandatory ISP internet filtering -- a policy championed by Communications Minister Stephen Conroy -- once a government review is completed.
Treasurer Wayne Swan's fourth budget today is aimed at delivering $22 billion in savings to meet the government's surplus target in 2012-13.
2 comments:
This might save money but I think they also said they were spending $10M on some govt dept website so go figure.
I think the actual concern here is that they cut this money, but are still planning to spend a huge amount of money and other resources on implementing that mandatory filtering system. Even though the technical means to provide perfect filtering results do not exist and at the same time you only need a 30 sec instruction video accessible everywhere on the net to bypass the filter. High price to prevent Australian children to accidently click on the wrong page.
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