When shown images of female genitalia, it’s no surprise that Mr Scott is unable a lot of the time to give a definite and clear response as to whether the image would be banned. It’s another case of the ACB’s lack of clear guidelines resulting in some pretty inconsistent decision making. Mr Scott even acknowledges the fact:

Hungry Beast: I guess just a clear explanation of what genital detail means? Cos while I mean, there’s clear guidelines for you guys some of the words used are quite vague-

Greg Scott: Yeah yeah, well they’re vague for us too sometimes.

And don’t we know it.

Check out the blog of Hungry Beast reporter Kirsten Drysdale for some further insight.

A spokesperson for the Board said the overall appearance of persons in publications in conjunction with the context in which they are depicted, including text, props and poses were considered when making their decisions.

Donald McDonald, Director, Australian Classification Board

However, the Director of the Australian Classification Board, Donald McDonald, refused to answer repeated questions from this blog about the specifics of breast size in deciding on a person’s apparent age. Asked whether breast size was considered by the Board when determining age, McDonald said he had no further comment to make.

Adult with an I.D? No Dice:

In Australia the National Classification Code dictates that anything that describes or depicts a person who appears to be a child under 18, even if they are an adult, in a way that is likely to cause offence, must be banned. State Criminal Acts are stricter, with for example Victoria’s, South Australia’s and Queensland’s child pornography laws making depictions of adults that appear to be underage illegal.

Last week news broke that the Board was banning publications which contained models who appeared to be underage because of their small breasts. Although these rules are not new, it was not necessarily known what criteria the ACB was using to determine a model’s age.

Because the Board’s guidelines do not specify breast size or what appearance constitutes a person under the age of 18, the process for determining a subject’s age is likely to be subjective and inconsistent.

The ACB said that Barely Legal, Purely 18 and Finally Legal magazine titles were banned because they contained a person that appeared to be under 18, the Board said some of these issues were Refused Classification (RC refers to items banned for sale in Australia) because they contained offensive depictions of someone who was or appeared to be under 18 years. Other issues were classified RC for offensive fantasies involving rape and incest.

Huge public response:

In a press release issued last week by the the Australian Sex Party, and in further detail here, Fiona Patten described how during a Classification Board training session, which she and three adult magazine distributors and one publisher attended, the underdeveloped nature of a model’s breasts was cited as a reason for an image to be Refused Classification numerous times. A massive worldwide response to the story followed, with traffic placing so much stress on this blog that it suffered downtime on multiple occasions.

Colin Jacobs, Vice Chair of Electronic Frontiers Australia, said the Classification Board has a duty to be transparent with the public about what is being censored and why.

“A process as subjective as determining the apparent age of a model is really a very problematic basis for a classification guideline, and this demonstrates it perfectly,” he said. “We don’t blame the Board for enforcing the law, but we do blame them if they aren’t forthcoming on how or why they’re enforcing it in this case. The only reason censorship is compatible with democracy is that it’s transparent.”

The Australian Classification Board (ACB) has responded to accusations by The Australian Sex Party that material with depictions of women with small breasts has been banned. A spokesperson for the ACB told me today that publications which contain offensive depictions or descriptions of persons who are or appear to be persons under the age of 18 (whether they are engaged in sexual activity or not) must be classified RC.

They said the Board classifies publications on a case by case basis, in accordance with the Guidelines for the Classification of Publications, the Code and the Classification Act and that the Publications Guidelines do not specify breast size.

Female Ejaculation Bans

In response to accusations that films containing female ejaculation would now be banned, the spokesperson said the Film and Games guidelines do not specify female ejaculation, but it does specify that the fetish of ‘golden showers’ will be Refused Classification and have been in the past.

The ACB is yet to answer followup questions about whether it considers female ejaculation to be a golden shower.

The ACB said they do not and could not direct Customs and Border Protection officers to confiscate any material and that Customs and Border Protection have advised that they will only seize material that is Refused Classification or would be Refused Classification if it were to be classified.

What’s Been Banned

Fiona Patten from the Australian Sex Party (ASP) said she attended a ACB training session late last year where they showed examples of publications that had been Refused Classification due to the size of the woman’s breasts.

‘That information is not provided to the applicant when their publication is Refused Classification. When a publication classification is revoked sometimes a little more information is provided’ she said.

According to Patten some of the titles banned included Barely Legal (Hustler), Finally Legal and Purely 18.

‘The general comments on the publications mentioned were that the model appeared under 18′ she said.

However, the titles mentioned are all regulated and records of each model’s age are required to be kept by 18 U.S.C. 2257 and 28 C.F.R. part 75. These regulations are enforced by the FBI.

The ACB’s database of banned publications contains four references of banned copies of Barely Legal, one of Finally Legal, and two of Purely 18.

The Australian Sex Party (ASP) said Wednesday that the Australian Classification Board (ACB) is now banning depictions of small-breasted women in adult publications and films. It comes just a week after it was found that material with depictions of females ejaculating during orgasm are now Refused Classification and Australian Customs directed to confiscate it.

ASP’s Fiona Patten writes on her party’s website that they are starting to see depictions of women in their late 20s being banned because they have an A cup breast size:

“This is in response to a campaign led by Kids Free 2 B Kids and promoted by Barnaby Joyce and Guy Barnett in Senate Estimates late last year. Mainstream companies such as Larry Flint’s Hustler produce some of the publications that have been banned. These companies are regulated by the FBI to ensure that only adult performers are featured in their publications.”

Patten writes that such bans may be an unintended consequence of the Senator’s actions “but they are largely responsible for the sharp increase in breast size in Australian adult magazines of late”.

How can this be happening

The National Classification Code dictates that anything that describes or depicts a person who is, or appears to be, a child under 18 (whether the person is engaged in sexual activity or not) in a way that is likely to cause offence to a reasonable adult is Refused Classification.

State Crime Acts are also similar. Victoria’s Criminal Code includes the ‘or appears to be’ clause in its definition of child pornography and it doesn’t need to cause offence to a reasonable adult for it to be illegal.

Even if you are 18 years old but you look younger, taking a photograph of your breasts and uploading it to the Internet could land you or someone you know in serious trouble.

Keep in mind it’s highly unlikely that a naked photograph of a 30, 40 or 50 year old woman with small breasts would ‘appear’ to be child pornography on the basis of her breast size alone. Small breasts do not automatically mean something will be banned or is illegal.

A bad message

Australian adult blogger Ms Naughty says we need to look at what this ruling says to Australian women:

“Why ban small boobs? I can only assume it stems from paranoia that flat chests somehow stir up the pedophiles. And you only need to mention that “p” word to start a full-scale moral panic in Parliament.”

“Shall we put such hysteria aside and look at what this ruling is saying to Australian women? Basically, it’s classing a certain normal female body type as obscene. It’s declaring all flat chests to be automatically juvenile, something that should not be viewed by anyone because of a fear that it will stir up “base instincts” in certain people.”

“Can the Classification Board be any more insulting or sexist?”

Ejaculations

According to Patten, female ejaculations films are being Refused Classification on one of two grounds:

1. That the depictions are a form of urination which is banned under the label of ‘golden showers’ in the Classification Guidelines or
2. Female ejaculation is an ‘abhorrent’ depiction

“Films that show both male and female ejaculation have routinely been given an X rating since 1983″ said Patten. “The new ruling follows a boom in the numbers of adult films featuring female ejaculation since the pioneering research of Professor Emeritus Beverly Whipple was published in her book The G Spot.”

Content Refused Classification will be blocked to Australian adults under the Government’s planned Internet censorship scheme.

“There are over one million sites featuring female ejaculation and for Australia to be banning depictions and discussion of this important issue, takes us back into the Victorian era where they didn’t even believe that women could have orgasms.”

The ACB has been contacted for comment.

Website for the Greens blacked out.

Online Campaign Coordinator for The Great Australia Internet Blackout, Jeff Waugh, shared these figures today:

• 455 verified participating websites (this only includes those who pledged or informed organisers, others are yet to be tallied).
• Websites include (or included) iiNet, Booko, Australian Greens and Australian Democrats.
• The information popup which appears on sites participating in the campaign has been seen more than 270,000 times.
• There has so far been over 196,000 unique visitors to the Great Australian Internet Blackout website.
• Media coverage included a top story on SMH.com.au, as well as articles on ABC,  ZDNet, News.com.au and many more news websites.
• Drive time radio coverage.

Popular Penguin edition of Lolita

PostShop outlets pull Popular Penguin titles such as Lolita, The History of Sexuality and The Delta of Venus from their shelves after customer complaints. Why? A spokesperson said the titles were inappropriate for a mainstream shop like Australia Post. I guess libraries and Dymocks aren’t mainstream.

19. Australia Post refuses to mail postcards with girly bits.

Mail-sorting staff would not process postcards featuring lifelike female genital images to promote artist Greg Taylor’s exhibition Cunts and other Conversations – part of the Adelaide Fringe Festival.

Cover your eyes

Police, Adelaide City Council and festival organisers later received complaints about Taylor’s promotional material which found itself plastered around town. Gabrielle Walsh from the Australian Family Association said Taylor ‘shouldn’t be allowed to force these images and words upon us in public for all to view, including children‘ and police investigated. Whether it was the images or the use of the word ‘cunt’ that got them so fired up is anyone’s guess.

18. Brisbane billboard brings in more than just business.

The owner of Brisbane gentleman’s club BConfidential received a death threat and furious complaints after a billboard was erected advertising the club. The sign read: ‘Tell your wife you’ll be late’.

Now on one of Brisbane's busiest roads.

According to the news reports one woman phoned in and said the owner should be put in a house with no doors and no windows and burnt to death, while a mother emailed the club’s manager stating “That I will not rest until this hideous message to decent society is removed by the powers that be. Hopefully your business and the sleazebag that created this campaign will not ever be able to publicly advertise your services again“.

The Advertising Standard Bureau dismissed all complaints (less than 20) and as a result the owners of BConfidential erected the same billboard on one of Brisbane’s busiest roads.

17. Nando’s ad too spicy

The Advertising Standards Bureau upheld community complaints against a tame Nando’s TV ad which featured a woman who can’t find her chips because her breasts are blocking her view. Watch it here.

16. ‘They Shake Me’ baby t-shirts rock the cradle

Child abuse or crude?

The Cotton On Kids clothing line was hammered for selling baby clothes with slogans such as ‘They Shake Me’.

Australian blogger Mia Freedman (Mamamia) was fuming:

IS THAT FUNNY, COTTON ON? IS IT? IS IT FUNNY TO JOKE ABOUT BABIES BEING ABUSED????

[...]

Internet, I am outraged, disgusted and distressed. I am a customer of Cotton On Kids. A long-time, loyal customer who buys a STACK of clothes there for my kids and who willingly endorses their products FOR FREE whenever I am interviewed by the media and asked where I buy my kids clothes.

Cotton On apologised and stopped selling the line of clothing.

15. No Red Bull thanks, we’re from New South Wales.

In response to reports about five year 7 students who suffered side effects including dizziness and nausea after consuming high energy drinks on their way to school, NSW Primary Industries Minister took it upon himself to find a way for the government to take energy drinks with high levels of caffeine off the shelves. (Update 04/01/10: As of October 2009 NSW removed five high caffeine drinks from sale)

14. Queensland Government bans skateboarding at night.

Anna Bligh is no stranger to this blog and her team made an appearance or two again this year (possibly for the most absurd reason yet). The QLD Government banned skateboarding, scooter riding and rollerblading at night to protect… well no one is sure who, it just had to be done. Transport Minister Rachel Nolan said she wasn’t anti-fun and ‘this is just as much about common courtesy as it is about common sense.’ She was unable to provide evidence it was needed and offenders are now slapped with a $40 fine.

13. Liberal MP wants ancient drinking board game banned.

Pass Out the board game

Liberal MP Steve Irons demanded a board game that he said encouraged alcohol abuse be banned from sale in Australia. The game in question, Pass-out, has players travel around the game board taking drinks and reciting tongue twisters and has been around in board game form since at least 1962. According to Refused-Classification.com, the game was called in by the Director of the Classification Board and was rated Category 1 on April 15th 2009.

12. Greater Union stops screening Aussie gang film in NSW.

Greater Union stopped showing The Combination (MA15+) in their NSW cinemas after ‘violence flared’ among patrons in one screening at Parramatta. Whether the violence was related to the film wasn’t confirmed.

11. North Korean artists refused Australian Visa.

The Australian Government refused to make a visa exemption for six artists from North Korea to visit Brisbane and speak about their art at the Queensland Art Gallery. The Department of Foreign Affairs released a statement saying the studio where the artists work ‘reportedly produces almost all of the official artworks in North Korea, including works that clearly constitute propaganda.’ The art was still shown and the artists were allowed to speak in other countries where their work was exhibited.

10. NSW Police go after Aussie Graffiti mags.

After Wentworthville Police submitted two graffiti magazines to the Australia Classification Board, one is refused classification and another rated M. Update: The ACB’s classification database originally stated the magazine Death From Above #1 had been refused classification. We have now been informed this magazine was not classified RC and the ACB’s website has since been corrected.

9. More and more adult DVD bans.

Girls Who Like Girls, Girls in Need and a bonus DVD attached to a Hustler magazine were just a small portion of the adult films banned in 2009. An adult film can be banned in Australia if it contains fetishes, even one as common as spanking.

8. Books with incest pulled from Queensland libraries, banned.

Author Charles Kevin’s self-published books Sibling Love and Bet and Zak which feature ‘graphic’ descriptions of sexual relationships between mother and son and brother and sister were pulled from South East Queensland Library shelves after complaints.

Jan Richards from the Australian Library and Information Association said libraries believed that people should be able to read what they want to read with a degree of privacy.

‘However the issue of children accessing inappropriate material is a very real one and we all have systems in place whereby we would stop a child from taking something that was inappropriate, but at the same time we think that there is a very important role for parents to play’ she said.

Richards said it was unlikely that all of the libraries holding Mr Kevin’s novels will pull them from the shelves, but both books were later banned by the Classification Board following an application from the Department of Justice and the Attorney General.

Books with graphic descriptions of murder remain on library shelves.

7. Freeview TV ad parody disappears from YouTube.

A parody of the Freeview TV commercial was yanked from YouTube but why? Freeview Marketing Manager Liz Howarth denied they had made a complaint but Google soon revealed they had received a DMCA takedown notice from lawyers acting on behalf of Freeview Australia Limited. Watch it here.

6. Kevin Rudd’s war on The Chaser.

ABC’s The Chaser War On Everything offended Kevin Rudd and half of Australia for airing a skit about terminally ill children. Mr Rudd said The Chaser team should hang their heads in shame and that it had gone too far. The show was suspended, but calls for it to be axed were ignored and it soon returned.

5. Kyle and Jackie O.

Kyle Sandilands

The Kylie and Jackie O Show was suspended after airing a segment in which a 14-year-old girl was strapped to a lie detector and questioned by her mother, Sandilands and Jackie O about her past experiences with sex and drugs — A recipe for disaster with the child admitting she was raped at the age of 12. There was a national outcry and legitimate concerns about the treatment (or exploitation) of children for entertainment were raised. However, many of the attacks focused more on silencing Sandilands and campaigning to remove him from the airwaves.

4. Abby Winters raided, cleared, charged.

The popular Australian-operated adult website Abby Winters was raided by police in June 2009 after The Herald Sun provided police with ‘a dossier of information’ about the allegedly illegal porn the site had ‘churned out in Melbourne since about 2000′.

The site’s CEO Garion Hall issued Somebody Think Of The Children with a statement confirming no charges were laid.

Confiscated DVD titles were submitted to the classification board by Victoria Police for review and all were classified X18+. None were Refused Classification.

However, in December 2009 Hall was charged with 54 counts of making objectionable films (see What is an objectionable film in Victoria) for gain and possessing a commercial quantity of objectionable films. The Herald Sun also reports he has been charged with child pornography offences after police ’seized footage of allegedly illegal sex acts’.

Hall commented on the Abby Winters forum that as the matter is before the courts he is unable to comment other than it’s business as usual.

3. Censors Vs MUFF.

The Australia Classification Board refused to give the Melbourne Underground Film Festival an exemption to screen Jennifer Bell’s short film Matinee. MUFF organisers were outraged that Australia’s censors had sought fit to ban ‘Matinée’ for the sole reason that it depicts actual sex despite being ’set within a relationship based on love and mutual desire’.

The film’s director also wrote a letter to the ACB, stating:

‘The sexual relationship portrayed by the characters Mariah and Daniel in Matinée is not only a consensual, emotional and nuanced relationship, but their sex plays an important role in the story of the film’.

The censors didn’t care.

2. The year of banned games.

A screen capture from Left 4 Dead 2

All of the following video games were refused classification, with Aliens vs. Predator lucky enough to be reclassified MA15+ after review.

• Aliens vs. Predator
• Crimecraft
• Left 4 Dead 2
• Necrovision
• Risen
• Sexy Poker

South Australian Attorney-General Michael Atkinston also called for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 to be refused classification, but was unsuccessful.

1. Chris Illingworth charged for uploading video which is later rated just MA15+.

After a lengthy campaign throughout 2008 and 2009 by Queensland Police to prosecute 61 year-old Sunshine Coast resident Chris Illingworth with child abuse offences for uploading a video to a website of man swinging a baby, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions dropped all charges in September.

The saga began in 2008 when Illingworth’s home was raided by police after he uploaded a video of what is believed to be a training film for a Russian circus family. He was charged with accessing and uploading child-abuse material and faced a maximum of 20 years jail. The Australian Classification Board later classified the video as MA15+ (suitable for those over the age of fifteen and the same rating as the Jim Carrey comedy Me, Myself and Irene) and the charges were dropped shortly after. The decision highlighted that the Queensland Police’s relentless pursuit of Illingworth was completely unwarranted.

When you are a Government of a Western nation about to introduce a mandatory censorship regime unlike anything in the else in the Western world it is a good idea to try to play up comparisons with social democracies like Denmark, Norway, Sweden and Finland and our Commonwealth cousins the UK and Canada. It is also good to downplay comparisons with authoritarian regimes like Iran, Saudi Arabia or China.

So, naturally enough the Government’s FAQ about their current filtering policy attempts to do this by asking the rhetorical question: “How does Australia’s approach compare with other western democracies?”

It’s a good question, but sadly for the Government the answer only serves to emphasise what is so wrong about the Government’s proposal. In all the countries listed, not one has a mandatory filtering scheme. In all the countries listed, not one attempts to filter anything other than strictly illegal child abuse material.

Just as revealing is the list they did not enumerate – the list of 30 or so Western democracies which, like Australia, do not presently have any filtering regime.

And, of course, it is no surprise to learn that the Government does not list the countries that do have mandatory filtering regimes like Iran, Saudi Arabia and China.

Comparing Australia’s proposed policy with other Western democracies actually highlights how draconian this policy is. Why is it that Australia is the only Western demoncracy to propose a mandatory filter? Why is it that the scope of Australia’s filter is so uniquely broad that it will include material that is actually legal to own and view?

Part of the problem is that Australia is trying to do with ‘taste’ police, what other countries do with real police. Other countries treat child abuse as what it is: a horrific crime against children. Australia is trying to deal with the problem of child abuse by dealing with it as a content classification problem. The Government would have us believe that it can do something meaningful about the problem of child abuse by devoting more effort to content classification and then ensuring that content classification decisions are riguourously enforced at our digital borders (e.g. on the other side of the pipes into your living room).

Or, at least, it used to believe this. It is clear that the Government now understands that a mandatory filter can’t contribute to fighting child abuse because it now states that the purpose of the mandatory ISP-level filter is merely to “reduce the risk of inadvertent exposure” to Refused Classification material. It readily admits that a technically competent user with the motivation to do so can circumvent a mandatory filter.

However, even this more modest aim is still far more draconian than those of other Western democracies that have some kind of filtering policy. These countries seek only to minimize inadvertent exposure to illegal child sexual abuse material which is a far more restricted category of material than that which is rated Refused Classification by the Australian National Classification Code.

Consider this: in 2003 Margaret Pomeranz, the ABC’s film reviewer, attempted to give the Refused Classification film “Ken Park” a screening before a crowd in Balmain, Sydney. Police physically intervened to prevent her breaking the law. Yet it is exactly material of this kind that will be subject to Conroy’s censorwall. Is Stephen Conroy prepared to call Margaret Pomeranz, a purveyor of “the worst of the worst” kind of internet filth? Or is she instead a decent person who strongly believes the National Classification Board made an error when it gave “Ken Park” an RC rating?

The ALP’s policy on ISP-level filtering has changed on numerous occasions since it was first drafted in 2006. At that time the policy was about mandating that ISPs offer a cleanfeed to families that wanted it. In December 2007, it was about mandating that ISP’s impose a cleanfeed that people could opt out of. In 2008, the policy changed again and opt-out ceased to be an option.

All along we were told that a mandatory filter was necessary to prevent Australians who seek child pornopgraphy from viewing it.

The Government has since learnt that a filter will be utterly ineffective for that task, primarily because most child pornography is traded on networks that are invisible to an HTTP-based filter. It now, at least, readily admits that the filter can be technically circumvented with ease. So, in recognition of these cold hard facts, the Government now insists that the mandatory filter is no longer about preventing criminal access to illegal material. It is now merely about preventing inadvertent exposure of ordinary citizens to Refused Classification material.

Think about that.

The Government insists that it must filter your Internet connection to prevent you being inadvertently exposed to material, such as the movie “Ken Park”, that the National Classification Board has deemed unsuitable for any other classification.

How paternalistic. How patronising.

There would be less (but not much less) disquiet about the mandatory filter if the Australian government chose to target, like the European governments it wants to compare itself to, only strictly illegal material. Yet the Government, despite the wriggle room afforded by changing its position once more, has explicitly decided not to go down this path. It has deliberately chosen to continue down the path of ensuring that the National Classification Code is uniformly and universally applied to citizens as if each and every one of them were themselves film and literature distributors.

People who are “inadvertently exposed” to films such as “Ken Park” are at little risk of abusing children because of that exposure. People who deliberately access child sexual abuse material are. Making it more difficult for Margaret Pomeranz to download “Ken Park” from the web does precisely nothing about the problem of child sexual abuse, irrespective of Minister Conroy’s persistent angry insistence otherwise.

Republished with permission. Visit Broadbanned Revolution for more of Jon’s writing.

A Facebook page for the event has been set up, with over 1700 people already confirmed as attending. Specific protest locations are still to be announced, but one is planned for each capital city. I’ll update this page when I find out more.

Also happening around the country:

Sydney: A public meeting discussing what the Government has planned will be held from 6:00pm – 10:00pm Sunday evening at the Lansdowne Hotel. Full details here.

Brisbane: Meeting Monday 21st December at 7:30pm to discuss what can be done to stop the filter. QUT Gardens Point campus, Room Z-205. I’ll be at this one. Full details here.

Sky is also running a poll to find out whether you support the Government’s policy of ISP level Internet filtering.

Jim Wallace

Managing Director of the Australian Christian Lobby, Jim Wallace, has urged his members to write to Senator Conroy and thank him for ‘protecting kids’ with the Government’s Internet filtering plan.

Wallace says members of the sex trade and civil libertarians are violently opposed to the plan and it’s important Senator Conroy hears from them. Of course it is. It’s also important he hears from YOU (as should your local MP).

In a press release yesterday Wallace also said the report proved the technological principle of filtering can be extended to ‘other harmful X and R rated material on the Internet’. He said such content filtering should be reviewed and practiced in three years.

Here is Jim’s letter in full (first published on Whirlpool).

In Brief:

* Government moves to filter porn from internet.
* Sex trade and civil libertarians violently oppose this.
* Please write to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy to thank him for protecting kids.

Dear ACL Supporter

It is important Governments don’t just hear from us when we want something. It is vital we thank them when they announce good policy.

Yesterday the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy announced that the Rudd Government will make it compulsory for Internet Service Providers to filter the worst of the worst pornography and violence from the internet.

This means that child porn, rape porn, bestiality and anything else judged as Refused Classification (RC) under Australia’s classification laws, such as instruction in crime and drug use, will be blocked.

This is a great first step in protecting children from the harms of pornography online.

Legislation is to be introduced next year giving effect to this policy. In addition, ISPs will be encouraged, and given incentives, to offer optional filtering of X and R rated pornography on a voluntary basis.

No one argues that books, films and magazines should not be subject to this form of appropriate censorship. Now this is beginning to be extended to the internet, where of course children are particularly susceptible to being exposed to harmful content.

Trials have shown RC content from overseas websites can be effectively blocked with negligible impact on internet speed.

Sadly, the sex trade, and some internet civil libertarians who believe there should be no control over the internet, are violently opposed and are putting out much misinformation in the media.

It is important that the Communications Minister Stephen Conroy hears from us – real people with real concerns for the safety of kids online. Please take a moment to write to Senator Conroy and thank him. A personal letter would be most effective, but we also understand this is a busy time of year and an email may be more convenient. His contact details are:

Senator Stephen Conroy
Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy
Level 4, 4 Treasury Place
Melbourne Vic 3002

His e-mail address is senator.conroy@aph.gov.au.

Thanks in anticipation of your response. May I take this opportunity to wish you and your family a blessed Christmas.

God bless

Jim Wallace AM
Managing Director

See Bernard Keane’s guide to writing to Ministers and get cracking.

For the latest media coverage (and there’s lots of it), click here.