Key elements here are:

• expanding the Australian Federal Police (AFP) Child Protection Operations Team to detect and investigate online child sex exploitation;
• funding to the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions to manage increased activity resulting from the AFP work to ensure that prosecutions are handled quickly. 

We talk here about serious crimes, and 90 per cent of the activities of these criminals is not displayed on websites – it is transferred in files via email systems. None of this gets filtered out, so what are we trying to achieve here – catching criminals who are stupid enough to have their own websites? 

I realise that many of the people behind child pornography will use websites around the globe to whip up anger against the Australian legislation, so we have to evaluate such 'hatred' comments carefully in any decision to move forward.

The government should take law societies, university legal research organisations, and privacy and human rights organisations seriously when they warn against the complacency that the legislation will bring with it. The futility of trying to regulate technology and the dangers of starting to censor the internet – what exactly is ‘Refused Classification’ and is that consistent with other media content laws? – is a step that should not be taken lightly. Labor is setting a very dangerous international precedent here. 

So far I am not aware of any country being successful in regulating technology. Technology is a fluid thing and I am sure that within days of the launch of the legislation hackers will have broken the filter code. This could lead to ISPs being unprotected and being liable. Trying to keep ahead of the hackers will not be a small job and could become very costly. Technical regulation can become unstuck very easily and very rapidly. 

It's obvious that these sorts of issues should not be led by Ministers for Communications and their departments – these issues belong in the hands of the legal profession.