"You can’t walk into a cinema in Australia and see certain things and we shouldn’t on the internet be able to access those things either." Does this sound reasonable to you, or does it sound a bit nonsensical? In either case, it probably won't surprise you to know that  the speaker was a politician - in fact, our new Prime Minister. With those words, the PM dispelled the thin hope that a change in leadership might lead to a welcome rethink of the internet filter policy.

Speaking on Darwin radio yesterday, the PM said in full on the subject of internet censorship:

But there’s also a set of concerns about the dark side of the new technology, if I can use that expression, and, you know, clearly you can’t walk into a cinema in Australia and see certain things and we shouldn’t on the internet be able to access those things either. So, Stephen Conroy is working to get this in the right shape.

By invoking the dark side, Gillard has no doubt unleashed a torrent of Yoda-themed jokes. Unfortunately, a change in rhetoric from a newsagent to a cinema hardly represents a revision in policy. What it really represents is a continued failure of imagination.

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