My mother sent me a chain email today just in case I missed it. She's a social worker, so the bolded bit is pertinant.
"Senator Conroy has made this announcement in the face of overwhelming public opposition, expert industry advice, and
even calls from child protection groups to drop this scheme. It will hand over control of what we can see online to an unaccountable government body - with no way to tell what they're blocking."
http://www.getup.org.au/campaign/GreatFirewallOfAustralia
Seen some blog entries already commenting on how a huge volume of child abuse calls get made to DoCS and a really tiny number get investigated. So if people are that concerned about the welfare of a child that they call in in the first place, and DoCS doesn't check, that's a lot of abused children being missed. But of course, throwing millions at a bypassable filter is better than throwing millions at investigating actual, substantiable abuse. The vast, vast majority of sexual abuse comes from close family members, not from websites.