On his department's ill-fated blog late last year, our Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy expressed his wish that the Australian Government should promote "a civil and confident society online."

The Minister, Senator Stephen Conroy, suggested that Australians require "inspiration" to find the online confidence necessary to maximise our participation in the digital economy, and claimed that the ALP's "Cyber Safety Plan," with its controversial Internet censorship regime, was a necessary part of that inspiration.

The Minister might be surprised to discover that a great many of his loudest critics support his desire for Australians to be "civil and confident" online. He might be even more surprised to know that civil confidence requires the abandonment of his censorship proposals, because censorship of the kind he is advocating actively erodes confidence and civility.

David Marr recently observed that while Australians claim to enjoy a free and relatively open society, we also harbour a corrosive insecurity about issues, concepts and ideas that we disagree with. When we are confronted with controversy, the immediate response of a vocal minority is to go running to the Government to ask them to resolve our disquiet by banning something.

We pride ourselves on our idealistic observation of religious freedom; yet woe betide anyone who chooses to exercise that freedom by building a school in Camden. We fund and enjoy the liberal arts; yet our Prime Minister described Bill Henson's G and PG rated artwork as "absolutely revolting" while special interest groups lobbied to have Henson charged with manufacturing child pornography. We claim to welcome robust political debate, allowing anti-abortion protesters to carry placards through the streets; yet Senator Conroy's ACMA censors the same images on websites, then serves takedown notices on online discussions of the censorship.

On SBS' Insight program, the Minister invested significant effort into attempting to clarify that he only wants to ban "almost exclusively Refused Classification" material from the Internet.

Almost exclusively.

So has the Classification Board provided us with guidance about whether banning content promotes the maintenance of a civil and confident society?

Consider the voluntary euthanasia debate that has been raging in Australia for many years: opinions are clearly divided, with each side offering impassioned arguments based on strong principles and personal morality. Supporters of civil and confident societies would agree that it would be untoward for a Government to intervene in a political controversy of this kind to tilt it one way of the other. Better to let the voters decide for themselves.

And yet that is not what happens in practice. In 2007 the Classification Board Refused Classification for "The Peaceful Pill Handbook" by Philip Nitschke and Fiona Stewart. The book describes practical options for the terminally ill, including travel to countries where voluntary euthanasia is legal and jurisdictions where useful drugs can be legally obtained. The Classification Board determined that the book "incites, instructs or promotes" a criminal act, namely assisting with suicide, and banned it for sale or distribution in Australia.

Place yourself in the position of a politically active participant in the voluntary euthanasia debate.

If you support legal assisted suicide, you will know that there is a limit to how far you can take your participation in the debate before you are charged with the criminal act of distributing a Refused Classification (RC) publication. And you'll always know that even if you don't distribute The Peaceful Pill, your political opponents will be agitating to retrospectively ban more of your literature.

So you will chill your political expression, ensuring that you stay well away from anything that could conceivably fall victim to the Classification Board. Meanwhile, your political opponents will know that they can say anything they wish and distribute any promotional material they choose. The vocal minority has always known that censorship quells robust dissenting speech by projecting doubt and fear of prosecution onto the fringes of legality. Our classification system is so broad that it cannot help but hoover-up political expression on the margins, and it inevitably influences and shapes political debate in this country.

Addressing censorship, Senator Conroy says, "the Government does not view this debate as an argument about freedom of speech," seemingly believing that the statement will become true if he repeats it often enough. If banning RC material leads to such antisocial free speech outcomes, where will banning "almost exclusively" RC lead?

I support a civil and confident society. I want to live in a country where we are all confident enough to speak freely and civil enough to let others say things we disagree with without demanding that the Government shut them up. If the Government is serious about combating online child abuse then let them police existing criminal law to clean it up. Censorship is neither sensible, workable or desirable for supporting civil confidence.