The Internet Chronicle‘s new Australian reporter, Anime El Khalifi, speaks exclusively with the graphic designer who produced the government-in-waiting’s new Online Child Safety policy document… twice.

AUSTRALIA – The graphic designer who produced both versions of the Coalition’s new Online Child Safety policy document says the Shadow Minister for Communications is “full of shit, mate”.



The original policy document released yesterday, just two days out from the Federal election, promised a UK-style “opt out” internet filter. The policy was immediately met with howls of derision on social media. Then, despite efforts by the policy’s architect to sell the proposal as “very much about protecting children”, Shadow Minister for Communications Malcolm Turnbull took to Twitter to cast the announcement as an “error”.

The original policy document, “Coalition 2013 Election Policy – Enhance Online Safety – final.pdf”, remained online until late last night, when it was replaced by the updated version, “Coalition 2013 Election Policy – Enhance Online Safety for Children.pdf”.

The Internet Chronicle spoke exclusively with the graphic designer whose job it was to produce both policy documents. The designer would speak only on condition of anonymity.

Walk us through the process of producing a policy document like this.

There’s not much of a process. I get a Word document emailed to me and get told to make it look good. Make it look like a policy document, y’know? There’s a pretty standard design language for this shit. But I have to do everything in Word.



I was meant to meet my boyfriend for dinner at 7. I had to apologise like crazy. I promised to make up for it.

I know, right? It has to be in Word so they can change stuff easily. Right up to the last minute. I don’t have time to fix it up in InDesign. The PDF is generated directly from Word. Look at the metadata.

We did look at the metadata. The new PDF didn’t get generated until 9pm last night.

Yeah, but did you look at the metadata for the first one? 8pm. I only got that one finished at 8pm, fucking Wednesday night.

I was meant to meet my boyfriend for dinner at 7. I had to apologise like crazy. I promised to make up for it. I was all, “hey, it’s done now, I’m really sorry, I promise I’ll make it up to you tomorrow.”

Tomorrow, as in, last night?

Yeah. Fuck.

What do you think of Turnbull’s statements on Twitter last night? He said the bit about the internet filter was just a mistake, it was badly worded, an opt-out filter was never the policy.

He’s full of shit, mate. Tell it to my boyfriend.