Ever since the explosion on the boat full of Afghani refugees, the news has been full of scaremongering again. They're faithfully reporting how we'll be overrun with asylum seekers because the new goverment has changed policies.  I'm calling it scaremongering because they never report on the actual total number of asylum seekers Australia gets or, for that matter, the relative amount compared to other countries.

Dear Minister Conroy,

I'm an IT professional living in Melbourne and I have been following discussions about the proposal to filter all internet traffic coming into Australia. This proposal has me both worried and somewhat bemused.

The worry stems from a lack of any clear information on what "illegal content" is and no way of determining what sites would be blocked. Support group websites? Politically inconvenient sites? Overseas news papers? Proposing such broad censorship laws in the name of protecting children is wrong. The state is not a parent.