Australia's communications minister Malcolm Turnbull was found, in November, to be Australia's preferred Prime Minister in a Fairfax/IPSOS poll.

The erudite and intelligent Turnbull polls well because appeals to moderate voters in his own Liberal Party and the opposition Labour Party.

Turnbull's now again demonstrated his talent for uniting left-and-right-wing voters by pissing off both groups with the new policy to block suspected piracy web sites.

On the right, libertarian think tank The Institute of Public Affairs has declared the policy represents “... an internet filter and a threat to free speech”. Chris Berg, a senior fellow at the institute, writes “There is no reason to believe that this will reduce copyright infringement in any material way” because virtual private networks (VPNs) would make it easy to circumvent any blocks. Berg adds that Turnbull's party has, in the past, promised not to do this sort of thing.

On the left, the Australian Greens senator Scott Ludlum, has the same arguments, writing that the site-blocking regime “would be a defacto Internet filter and would allow rights holders to unilaterally require websites to be blocked.”

Ludlum also says “This kind of Internet filter would not be effective at all, due to the widespread availability of basic VPN software to evade it.”

Turnbull's strenuously denied the piracy-busting plan is a filter, and has chastised other media outlets for suggesting it is one and criticising them for chasing cheap clicks.

A plan to shoot one messenger – pirate sites - has led to Turnbull shooting another - the media. ®