This post is specifically directed towards our new Prime Minister, Julia Gillard – who has recently joined Twitter, in line with previous Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd.

Julia – (if I can call you that) – you are probably aware of the uproar in the community regarding your communications minister and his farcical mandatory internet filtering plan. Poll after poll after poll demonstrates well over 95% opposition to the filter amongst the polling sample.

Technical expert after technical expert have demonstrated that not only is the filter going to be largely ineffective, but the minister himself has no understanding of what he is even trying to achieve, yet he wants to spend buckets of taxpayer funds implementing it. When nobody wants it.

He himself has famously inserted his foot into his mouth on many occasions, warning us of ”spams and scams coming through the portal”, and even stating himself that ”you can’t regulate the internet”. His ineptitude is truly something to behold.

He lies about the plan – or at very least does not understand it himself – and constantly misleads the Australian people, while accusing anti-filter campaigners of doing the same. He regularly (potentially libelously) suggests the anyone who is against his filtering plan is in fact “pro-child pornography” – which of course is a treacherous statement.

If you want a bunch of extra votes at the next election, I suggest that you not only consider scrapping the plan, but in fact, I urge you to drop it. Most of all, this man has no place in this portfolio. Senator Conroy has done a good job with the NBN, but beyond that he appears to have no knowledge or understanding of the ICT industry.

Industry expert Mark Newton of ISP Internode, in a submission to the Joint Select Committee on Cybersafety sums the daftness of the entire plan up in the most succinct of ways.

Please save us from this lunacy!

Below is a list of articles that I myself have presented on the matter.

Stephen Conroy’s recent ”spams and scams coming through the portal” gaffe has created quite some traction for the campaign against his idiotic plans for the internet. I was about to post a comment on a news article this morning, and discovered that The Age newspaper has come up with a clever plan to protect at least themselves from scams and spams, traversing the portal:

Take a look at the Captcha for the comment system. “Wookes”? Or is that “Wookiees”? Perhaps Chewbacca is the way to prevent scams and spams? Maybe he just howls at them as they come through the portal, protecting us from their evil scam/spam portal plans?

No? I find your lack of faith disturbing!

Hopefully today, we on the anti-internet censorship side of the mandatory ISP filtering debate have learnt an extremely important lesson. There is no doubt that all of us wish to see the back of Senator Stephen Conroy, certainly from the communications portfolio at the very least. There has been much discussion since the rise of Julia Gillard to the Prime Ministership last week, regarding what she would do in the almost certain “cabinet reshuffle”. The question we’ve all been asking is “will Conroy keep the portfolio?”

There have been some very good articles discussing that very point. David Ramli came up with the excellent ”Why Kate Lundy Won’t Get Stephen Conroy’s Job”, and I myself went completely the other direction with my ”Why Kate Lundy Might Get Stephen Conroy’s Job”. Renai LeMay even went a completely different direction with his excellent article ”Ten Good Reasons Gillard Should Promote Conroy”.

Of course today, Gillard announced her “reshuffled” cabinet, with only very minor changes – and of course, Conroy keeping his communications portfolio. As much as we all wanted change, ultimately, this was not really much of a surprise.

So basically after months of campaigning against the filter, and the events of the last week providing us the best opportunity to see the door slam on Stephen Conroy, what has happened? Actually, nothing.

The poor showing of Kevin Rudd in the opinion polls recently, along with an apparent distaste for his leadership style within the Labor Party, saw the ALP powerbrokers make a move on Rudd while they still had time to improve their polling position before the election.

Most significantly, the massive backlash from the mining industry against the so-called “Resource Super Profits Tax” (RSPT) sealed his fate as the only sitting Prime Minister who didn’t survive his first term in office. The mining industry absolutely slammed Rudd everywhere they could. In print, on television, and on radio. Everyone knew about it, and it was costing votes. It cost Rudd his job.

So I ask the question – what have we learned, and what SHOULD we learn? Well, we need to take a leaf out of the mining industry’s book. They took a government policy they hated, put it in front of the Australian public, and created an issue out of it.

In the matter of a few short weeks, not only did they manage to oust a Prime Minister, but they managed to see a Prime Minister installed who is genuinely looking to review the entire RSPT policy!

We’ve been pussy footing around with “tell your mum” campaigns, and petitions to a government that we know aren’t going to listen anyway. I do not want to belittle these campaigns, as they do serve value towards the campaign, but people aren’t listening. Joe Public doesn’t see our plight in the media, so they don’t know about it, and therefore – ultimately – don’t even care about it.

The grassroots campaign we’ve seen up until now is important, but as the mining industry has shown us this week, unless mainstream Australia can see the mandatory internet filtering policy as an issue, the government will not see resistance to it as a “vote costing” issue for them. Remember, in the end, politicians are in office to stay in office, despite what they will tell you to your face, or in a press release.

Certainly, we don’t have the resources to mount a campaign the size of that which the mining industry pulled off, but what we are doing now is NOT working. In all the political analysis in regards to the changing of our Prime Minister, not once have I heard the internet filtering policy brought up as an issue.

So as a “vote costing” issue, it’s not an issue for the government, and until they do see it as costing them votes, the policy will still be with us. We need to change – and unfortunately, even a change in government does not guarantee that this policy will go away.

I read a most excellent article by David Ramli this morning, discussing reasons why Kate Lundy will not be getting Stephen Conroy’s DBCDE ministerial portfolio. The article makes a lot of perfectly logical points, and I’ll be the first to admit that the scenario it discusses could be absolutely exactly what eventuates.

Certainly, there are many in the Australian and worldwide community – myself included of course – who would love nothing more than to see Conroy lose the portfolio. The malaise that is his proposed mandatory internet filtering scheme, and his ferocious arm-waving attacks at internet heavyweights such as Google and Facebook, has shown that his ability to remain rational when his own position/opinion is analysed/attacked/criticised must be questioned, at least on some level.

As I have discussed in numerous articles, he has demonstrated that he does not understand many of the concepts he is trying legislate for, and that he often lies or is so blind to the things he does not understand, that any attempt by anyone who tries to demonstrate his lack of knowledge is labelled “a supporter of child pornography” or “misleading the Australian public”. There are ample examples where Conroy himself has shown to be misleading the Australian public.

Ask yourself what would happen to you with your own employer if you were continually caught out lying to, and misleading your management, and demonstrating a lack of understanding towards the tasks you were being asked to complete. You wouldn’t last very long. Of course, politics and politicians live against a completely different set of realities, often aligned to size of the cheque promised by various lobby and interest groups.

When it comes to the government’s so called “Cyber Safety Plan”, and the mandatory internet filtering proposal, the power of Jim Wallace and the Australian Christian Lobby certainly has a big impact on the debate, and the position Senator Conroy steadfastly holds, despite massive and still growing opposition.

Taking a look back at the past week of stunning events in Canberra, we saw the first sitting Australian Prime Minister to be dumped by his party before the first term of his government could be completed. The sudden departure of Kevin Rudd has surprised many, not the least of whom was Rudd himself.

In analysing what is approaching with the pending cabinet reshuffle by new Prime Minister Julia Gillard, and what many hope is the removal of Stephen Conroy from the control of communications policy, one must first look at why Rudd was removed.

His leadership style was clearly at odds with many in his party, and his policy set disturbed many Australian people, as well as previously loyal members of his team. The public opinion polls proved this, and sealed his fate. The Labor caucus, fearful of losing the upcoming election took action, and installed Australia’s first female Prime Minister.

In only three days, Gillard has already showed signs of easing on some policy matters, most notably the so-called “Resource Super Profits Tax”, proposed against the mining industry. She herself has said that the change in leadership was brought about because many in the party believed that the government was “losing its way”, and has signalled that policy direction needs to more closely align with public opinion.

Which brings us back to Stephen Conroy, Kate Lundy, and the mandatory internet filtering scheme. Gillard rose to the leadership with massive support from Labor’s right factions, in which Conroy is a major powerbroker. Given the support of the right, it may be distasteful to many in those factions to strip Conroy of his position.

However, if Gillard is serious about bringing support back to the Labor party with the removal of Rudd and some popular changes in policy direction, the filter policy should be firmly in the cross-hairs. She has a number of options.

She could replace Conroy with Lundy, who supports the filter in a non-mandatory form. This would garner a lot of public support, particularly within the ICT industry.

She could break the DBCDE into two, and give a new broadband portfolio to Conroy, as he has certainly got the runs on the board regarding the National Broadband Network, and getting Telstra to the table to compete in that project – and give communications and digital economy to Lundy – areas where she has demonstrated far more knowledge, experience, and understanding than has Conroy.

She could keep the department in its current form, and give the ministership to someone completely different, or split the department the same way as above, and give the new roles to two completely different people again.

Finally, she could keep the department as is, keep Conroy, but insist that the wildly unpopular mandatory filtering scheme is dropped.

Leaving Conroy in some ministerial portfolio – whether it be in his current or a modified role – would appease the factions. Lundy has garnered significant support from the industry to which the department dictates government policy, and would be a popular minister.

The battle line is drawn. Gillard now has to walk the tightrope between maintaining her support from the factions who lifted her to the top job in Australia, and raising the fortunes of her new government in the polls, as the federal election looms.