Internet censorship in Australia is enforced by both the country's criminal law as well as voluntarily enacted by internet service providers. The Australian Communications and Media Authority (ACMA) has the power to enforce content restrictions on Internet content hosted within Australia, and maintain a blocklist of overseas websites which is then provided for use in filtering software. The restrictions focus primarily on child pornography, sexual violence, and other illegal activities, compiled as a result of a consumer complaints process.
In October 2008, a policy extending Internet censorship to a system of mandatory filtering of overseas websites which are, or potentially would be, "refused classification" (RC) in Australia was proposed. Australia is classified as "under surveillance" (a type of "Internet enemy") by Reporters Without Borders due to the proposed legislation.Internet Enemies , Reporters Without Borders (Paris), 12 March 2012 If enacted, the legislation would have required Internet service providers to censor access to such content for all users. However, the policy was rejected by the Coalition and was later withdrawn by the Labor party., APP, Computerworld, 9 November 2012 The same day the withdrawal was announced, the then Communications Minister stated that as a result of notices to Australian ISPs, over 90% of Australians using Internet Services were going to have a web filter. Australian Federal Police would then pursue smaller ISPs and work with them to meet their "obligation under Australian law"."Child abuse material blocked online, removing need for legislation", Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, 9 November 2012 (archived on Pandora) iiNet and Internode quietly confirmed that the request to censor content from Australian Federal Police went from voluntary to mandatory under s313 in an existing law. iiNet had sought legal advice and accepted the s313 mandatory notice but would not reveal the legal advice publicly."iiNet, Internode implement Conroy's new filter", Renai LeMay, Delimiter 14 November 2012
In June 2015, the country passed an amendment which will allow the court-ordered censorship of websites deemed to primarily facilitate copyright infringement. In December 2016, the Federal Court of Australia ordered more than fifty ISPs to censor 5 sites that infringe on the Copyright Act after rights holders, Roadshow Films, Foxtel, Disney, Paramount, Columbia and the 20th Century Fox companies filed a lawsuit. The sites barred include The Pirate Bay, Torrentz, TorrentHound, IsoHunt and SolarMovie.
In April 2019, the Senate passed a bill in response to the Christchurch mosque shooting which required websites that provide a hosting service to "ensure the expeditious removal" of audio or visual material documenting "abhorrent violent conduct" (including terrorist acts, murder, attempted murder, torture, rape or kidnapping), produced by a perpetrator or accomplice, within a reasonable time frame. Hosts must also report such content to authorities. Those who do not remove the materials may face fines and jail time. Several ISPs had already voluntarily blocked websites related to footage of the Christchurch shooting before the bill had passed.
Current status
A collection of both federal and state laws apply to Internet content in Australia.
Federal law While the Australian constitution does not explicitly provide for freedom of speech or press, the High Court has held that a right to freedom of expression is implied in the constitution, and the government generally respects these rights in practice. An independent press, an effective judiciary, and a functioning democratic political system combine to ensure freedom of speech and press. There were no government restrictions on access to the Internet or credible reports that the government routinely monitored e-mail or Internet chat rooms. Individuals and groups can and do engage in the expression of views via the Internet, including by e-mail."Freedom of Speech and Press" in Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2011: Australia, Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor, U.S. Department of State, 25 May 2012
Broadcasting Services Act 1992 Provisions of Schedule 5 and Schedule 7 of the Broadcasting Services Act 1992 inserted in 1999 and 2007 allow the Australian Communications and Media Authority to effectively ban some content from being hosted within Australia. Under this regime, if a complaint is issued about material "broadcast" on the Internet the ACMA is allowed to examine the material under the guidelines for film and video.
The content is deemed to be "prohibited" where it is (or in ACMA's judgement likely would be): Refused classification, or classified X18+ Classified R18+, and not protected by an adult verification system Classified MA15+ and not protected by an adult verification system, where the user has paid to access the content. Cyberbullying
Where content is deemed to be prohibited, the ACMA is empowered to issue local sites with a takedown notice under which the content must be removed; failure to do so can result in fines of up to $11,000 per day.Banned hyperlinks could cost you $11,000 a day (SMH) If the site is hosted outside Australia, the content in question is added to a blocklist of banned URLs. This list of banned Web pages is then added to filtering software (encrypted), which must be offered to all consumers by their Internet service providers. In March 2009, this blocklist was leaked online.Leaked Australian blacklist reveals banned sites
A number of take down notices have been issued to some Australian-hosted websites. According to Electronic Frontiers Australia in at least one documented case, the hosting was merely shifted to a server in the United States, and the DNS records updated so that consumers may never have noticed the change.
Suicide Related Materials Offences Act 2006 In 2006, the Federal Parliament passed the Suicide Related Materials Offences Act, which makes it illegal to use communications media such as the Internet to discuss the practical aspects of suicide.
Copyright Amendment (Online Infringement) Bill 2015 In June 2015, an amendment was passed to copyright law of Australia, which allows for the court-ordered censorship of non-domestic websites whose primary purpose is to facilitate copyright infringement.
Criminal Code Amendment (Sharing of Abhorrent Violent Material) Bill 2019 In April 2019, the Senate passed this bill in response to the Christchurch mosque shooting, which was live-streamed and circulated online. It requires websites that provide a hosting service to "ensure the expeditious removal" of audio or visual material documenting "abhorrent violent conduct" (including terrorist acts, murder, attempted murder, torture, rape or kidnapping), produced by a perpetrator or accomplice, within a reasonable time-frame. Hosts must also identify and report such content to authorities. Those who do not remove the materials may face fines (including up to $10.5 million or 10% of annual revenue for corporations) and jail time. This law applies regardless of whether or not the content is hosted on servers in Australia. The bill has faced criticism for being imprecise, with no formal definition of how quickly sites must remove the abhorrent content, and being wider-reaching than needed (it applies to any service that hosts content, while the intent of the bill implied a goal to impose it on social networking services).
State and territory laws Some state governments have laws that ban the transmission of material unsuitable for minors.
In New South Wales, Internet censorship legislation was introduced in 2001 which criminalises online material which is unsuitable for minors. In 2002, the New South Wales Standing Committee on Social Issues issued a report recommending that the legislation be repealed, and in response the New South Wales government stated that the legislation "will be neither commenced nor repealed" until after the review of the Commonwealth Internet censorship legislation had been completed.New South Wales Internet Censorship Bill 2001
Notable examples
In October 2000, Electronic Frontiers Australia (EFA) attempted under the Freedom of Information Act (FOI) to obtain documents relating to the implementation of the web filter. While a few were released, many were not, and in 2003 new legislation, "Communications Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2002", was passed by the Liberal government and four independents, and opposed by The Greens and the Australian Labor Party. While the stated reason for the bill was to prevent people accessing child pornography by examining the censored sites, this bill exempted whole documents from FOI, many of which did not reference prohibited content at all. EFA state that the bill was designed to prevent further public scrutiny of web filtering proposals.EFA: FOI Request on ABAEFA: Amendments to FOI Act: Communications Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 1) 2002
In 2002, New South Wales Police Force Minister Michael Costa attempted, without success, to shut down three protest websites by appealing to the then-communications minister Richard Alston.NSW seeks to shut down protest sites The Green Left Weekly stated these were Melbourne Indymedia and S11 websites, and that the Australian Broadcasting Authority (the predecessor to ACMA) cleared them of breaching government regulations on 30 October 2002.WTO hides from protesters
Also in 2002, and under the terms of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975, the Federal Court ordered Fredrick Töben to remove material from his Australian website which denied aspects of the Holocaust and vilified Jews.Jones v Toben (Federal Court)Racial Vilification in Australia (HREOC)
In 2006, Richard Neville published a "spoof" website that had a fictional transcript of John Howard apologising to Australians for the Iraq War. The website was forcibly taken offline by the government with no recourse.
After the devastating bushfires in February 2009, details about an alleged arsonist were posted online by bloggers. Victoria Police deputy commissioner Kieran Walshe had asked the state Director of Public Prosecutions to examine the possibility of removing these blogs from the web, as they might jeopardise any court case.Police move to ban blogs on alleged arsonist (SMH)
In March 2009, after a user posted a link to a site on ACMA's blocklist on the Whirlpool forum, Whirlpool's service provider, Bulletproof Networks, was threatened with fines of $11,000 per day if the offending link was not removed. The same link in an article on EFA's website was removed in May 2009 after ACMA issued a "link-deletion notice", and the EFA took the precautionary step of also removing indirect links to the material in question.Aussie censors implement six degrees of separation policy (The Register)
The 2009 winner of the George Polk award for videography shows footage of 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan being shot and dying during Iran protests. This footage has also been declared "prohibited content" by ACMA, attracting fines of $11,000 per day for any Australian website which posts a link to the video.
On 15 December 2009, the Labor government announced plans to mandate censorship of refused classification material in Australia. The then Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy, Senator Stephen Conroy, released a statement titled Measures to improve safety of the internet for families, which briefly outlined the proposed purpose and methods of filtering. The scheme aimed to develop "a package that balances safety for families and the benefits of the digital revolution", and was intended to complement the work of the ACMA by blocking content hosted overseas which is out of the control of Australian authorities.