Privately, the ISP industry, communications experts and several politicians believe that Senator Conroy might use the results of the trial as an excuse to quietly axe the plan, which was an election promise that has become deeply unpopular. "It is looking increasingly like the minister knows his mandatory internet censorship plan is simply unworkable, but is too embarrassed to admit it," Senator Minchin said. But even if the results are released, telecommunications experts, including University of Sydney associate professor Bjorn Landfeldt, hold reservations about how useful they will be. Only eight small ISPs and Optus, on a limited basis, signed up to participate in the trials and questions are being raised as to whether this will accurately reflect the real-world conditions if filtering is implemented on a mandatory basis. Furthermore, the Government has said that it has no criteria to determine whether the trials of the scheme are a success. It has also refused to release specific details of how the trials are being set up and conducted.

"Getting the results out would be really good for the public debate ... finally, maybe, the [Department of Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy] and Senator Conroy will start to then pick up the questions from various parts of society and actually start the debate properly," Landfeldt said. "The big issue with the blacklist is the way the blacklist is going to be managed really, and the transparency of the process. Right now there is no transparency." In December last year, this website revealed that the Government was trying to bury a high-level report, co-authored by Landfeldt last February, which concluded that the Government's filtering policy was fundamentally flawed. The Government released the report the day its existence was made public but decided to press on with the live trials anyway. "It's definitely not going to be workable to get a very significant reduction in access to [the unwanted] content that is available out there. It's fundamentally just not viable," Landfeldt said at the time.

Soon after, a secret blacklist held by the communications regulator, the Australian Communications and Media Authority, was leaked on to the internet, revealing some of the content that may be blocked for all Australians under Senator Conroy's scheme. It included sexual abuse imagery and child pornography websites but also sites that are perfectly legal to view in Australia, such as anti-abortion sites, fetish sites and sites containing pro-euthanasia material such as The Peaceful Pill Handbook by Dr Philip Nitschke. Sites added to the blacklist in error were also classified prohibited, such as one containing PG-rated photographs by Bill Henson. Yet Senator Conroy has so far refused to enter the debate about the freedom of speech issues associated with his internet censorship plan. Today, he continued to paint people who oppose his policy as child abuse supporters. "Nick Minchin and the Liberal Party should explain why they don't support using the latest technology to restrict access to child abuse content and other Refused Classification material," Senator Conroy said this morning.

Although Telstra did not agree to be part of the Government's internet filtering trial on live customers, a spokesman for Senator Conroy said Telstra had offered results of "an internal ISP filtering trial" for consideration. The online activist group GetUp has been running a grassroots campaign against the filtering policy and so far has raised $96,000 from members to run advertisements online and on TV. Loading "It's in small dollar donations that average less than $38, which I think shows just how many Australians care about this issue," said GetUp chief executive Simon Sheikh. Sheikh said 5000 of his members had faxed a letter speaking out against the policy to their local Labor MPs or senators, while 357 members had so far requested a meeting with their local MPs to talk about the issue.