Conroy a Community Visionary?

I had quite a chuckle reading the information screen in the lifts in my work building this morning, hearing that Stephen Conroy has been named a “community visionary” by a New York-based think tank, the Intelligent Community Forum (ICF), for his “critical role in transforming Australia’s digital future, under the NBN”.

While I’m – (as regular readers of this site would know) – a great supporter of the NBN project, I’m a little puzzled. Conroy is undoubtedly the political champion of the project, but let us not forget that he is also the political champion of another project.

The mandatory internet filter.

The mandatory internet filter that sees Australia on the “countries under surveillance” list, with respect to the “enemies of the internet” list, for holding the filtering plan as official policy.

The mandatory internet filter that would set up a government-controlled censorship mechanism, using a secret list of URLs, based on a badly broken Australian classification system.

I wonder what the New York-based think tank would “think” of that, in respect to “transforming Australia’s digital future”.

I don’t think they would be too enamoured with it.

Think about that.