Australia and the net filter

The Australian government have gone public with their China-style Internet filter which includes the following measures:

1. mandatory ISP-level filtering of Refused-Classification-rated content
2. a grants program to encourage introduction of optional filtering by ISPs, to block additional content requested by households
3. an expansion of an existing cyber-security program run by the government to improve education and awareness of on-line safety

Apparently this is all in the quest for protecting families and children – while in itself a worthy cause, this particular implementation is broken in a number of ways:

1. there are already suitable applications for parents to employ for content filtering as well many on-line search engines have filtering of results as an option ( and even standard in certain cases )
2. this won’t stop people from accessing blocked content ( read VPNs and proxies amongst other methods )
3. this program could mislead parents into a false sense of security that this is all they would need
4. who is going to manage the massive changes required on a daily basis to keep the filter up-to-date

All in all I think this is a misguided attempt at control of comms by an increasingly socialist-orientated government. Others like the UK and USA are showing similar trends and this is surely not healthy for the constitution-enshrined privacy and freedom that these governments would normally provide their people.