TONY JONES: Good evening and welcome to Q&A, as you can hear, coming to you live from Melbourne. Facing your questions tonight, the Minister for Communications, Senator Stephen Conroy; the head of Melbourne University Press, Louise Adler; Monash University academic Susan Carland; controversial newspaper columnist Andrew Bolt; and the Shadow Minister for Climate Change, Environment and Water, Greg Hunt. Please welcome our panel.

Well, for the start of the footy season and the Formula 1 this weekend, it's an enormous week for Melbourne, not least because Q&A is here for the very first time. We've been inundated with questions but we're ready to take more. Q&A is live from 9.30 eastern summer time. You can send your questions on the web at abc.net.au/qanda or by SMS at 197 55 222.

Well, Q&A viewers will know that our guests attract questions on their special areas of influence and expertise: greenhouse questions for the Climate Minister; economic questions for the Treasurer; but we've never seen anything like the avalanche that Stephen Conroy has generated. Let me show you. Stephen Conroy, that is half of them. We couldn't print them up. We used too much paper, with more than 2000 people sending web and video questions about the government's proposals to censor and filter the internet.

Our studio audience is also keen to quiz the Minister on this subject, so let's start with the very first question, and it's from Stephen Davies.

STEPHEN DAVIES: Why is the federal government planning on imposing a compulsory, secret and flawed internet filtering scheme on us, when everyone else agrees it won't actually do what it was supposedly designed to do and block child porn? Is banning a lengthy list of other fringe websites really what it takes to get Steve Fielding on side?

TONY JONES: Now, before we go to the Minister on that question, I want to hear from our other panellists. It is tonight's hottest topic. Let's start with Louise Adler.

LOUISE ADLER: Well, I share this young man's concerns. I'm not sure why we need a mandatory filtering service. I understand that the Howard Government put in place a Net Nanny and, if I understand correctly, only 35,000 families chose to download it so - and I'm wondering where the anxiety, the moral panic around what we see, how we chose what we view and where that comes from - and what you're responding to. I mean, frankly, maybe I'm a, you know, sort of woman of a certain age but, you know, all I get is Svetlana from Florida sort of begging me to look at her photos and I really fail--

STEPHEN CONROY: I thought it was just me.

LOUISE ADLER: No. Or penis extensions. And you know, I - neither are particularly relevant and I sort of think so I'm able to manage my own relationship to the internet pretty successfully. I'm not inundated with this material and I think if we're concerned about paedophilia then we should be looking to the causes of paedophilia and that's what we should be talking about. Instead we seem to me to be exercised - or you seem to be preoccupied by the pipes by which this material is distributed, so that's my problem, I guess, in the first instance.

TONY JONES: Hold on, Stephen Conroy. Andrew Bolt, let's hear from you. Where do you stand on this attempt to censor the internet?

ANDREW BOLT: Well, I think a lot of people are getting very worried about something that hasn't actually been decided or rolled out. I think it's incredible and it's not as if there's only one right at stake, which is the right to masturbate over photos of children being raped. I mean, that's not the only right at stake here. There's another right, and that's the right to protect children, and I think it all comes down to how does it actually work in practice. And if it does, indeed, do what some of these people are getting hyper about, you know, slow internet speeds by 87 per cent or stop people from looking at legitimate political sites, I'm sure I would bet my bottom dollar that Steve won't approve it.

TONY JONES: Susan Carland?

SUSAN CARLAND: Well, it's funny, the only emails I seem to get is from Nigerian princes trying to give me money, so I guess maybe the filter's not going to do me any favours. I'm actually the mother of two small children, one of whom is a five year old daughter who loves to use the internet. But I have concerns about the - what seems to be coming out. However the biggest issue I have is that we don't have a lot of information about it. We're not actually sure what is the criteria that is being used to judge how you will ban websites and who's going to be doing the judging. So from what we understand from the wikileaks and the list that ACMA seem to be providing, there has been instances of seemingly benign websites that have been blocked, like the Queensland dentist, so I guess I'd be reassured if I could hear what the criteria will be used and how that will be judged and who will be implementing that.

TONY JONES: Greg Hunt.

GREG HUNT: Well, I guess I feel a little jealous. I had thought that Svetlana was only dealing with me, so that's a disappointment. But the two serious points I'd make are this: firstly, you have to deal with the pornographers. If you've got people who are engaged in child pornography, that is a deep and serious problem, and my view is that we need to increase the resources for tracking down the people who will spam the pornography, be engaged in the pornography, increase the penalties and the resources for dealing with those who are acting illegally. But as to monitoring at home, that starts with mum and dad. That starts with the families; the father of a young child. You know, you cannot abrogate that responsibility. So my view is tough on those who breach the laws. Make it doubly tough laws but, secondly, I would also put in place the opportunity to help mums and dads with net alerts and other things. Stephen might say not enough took it up, but banning - but having a blanket closure of a very large portion of the internet doesn't appear as if that's going to be effective.

TONY JONES: Stephen Conroy, is that what you're proposing to do and, as the original questioner implied, is the compulsory filter flawed, secretive and doomed to failure?

STEPHEN CONROY: Well, look, there's probably three or four different aspects. If I could separate out the technology argument, firstly, from the issue around what should or shouldn't be blocked. The trial is to establish what is possible. In the past there's been a number of trials into this area and they've found, as has been much publicised, and it was a report done by the previous government, that depending on which type of filter technology you used, a number of years ago, you could slow the internet down by anywhere between three per cent and 87 per cent. So that's where the famous 87 per cent figure comes from. So if you sat down and went, "What way could I set out to completely destroy the net?" you'd pick the 87 per cent. Now, common sense says you won't do that, but a political campaign is a political campaign, so truth is often the first casualty in these sorts of things. Now, the great part about Moore's Law is that the capacity of technology doubles every two years, so technology has improved significantly since the last trial. So we're not afraid to have a trial to find out. A lot of people seem to be afraid to have a trial to see whether or not technology has advance sufficiently. We'll be guided by that trial. We've always said, consistently, we'll be guided by the trial.

On the issue which a lot of people are getting very concerned about, about what we're going to block, I think, and I think Greg would agree with this, that there is a compelling argument to deal with refused classification material. That's material like websites that promote incest; websites that promote rape; websites that promote child pornography or child abuse, and a lot of people have got confused, thinking we've already introduced this. The debate you're seeing over the last few weeks, and in particular the last week or so, is actually about the existing system that's been in place for nine years. The blacklist has existed for nine years and it hasn't destroyed the net, it hasn't caused mass panic. The classification board, which classify books and television programs and other published media, are largely responsible for the list and, at the moment, there's also a process of complaints from individuals. So an individual can make a complaint about the site and then it can be judged by a bureaucrat at ACMA. This is the existing system and nothing has changed since Labor came into power and nothing is planned to be changed in the near future.

And what you're seeing is a process by an ACMA official - that's the Australian Communications Media Authority. Apologies for using the acronyms. But they look at these things and they can also be tested by the classification board - the same people who do the testing on TV, radio and books and magazines now.

TONY JONES: Stephen, let me interrupt you there, because we've actually got a video comment and a question from Jim Stewart of Melbourne that addresses one of the points about this blacklist. Let's hear from him.

JIM STEWART: Senator Conroy, quick question for you. What makes you think your government can possibly censor the internet, when the whole industry has told you it's a bit like trying to use chicken wire for a dam or, to give you a quick example of that, wikileaks - this is a search on Google for the word wikileaks over the last month and just for the Australian pages we find that there are 11,200 pages talking about wikileaks in the last month. Now I've been on the internet for the last 17 years and I'd never even heard about wikileaks, the whistle blower site, until last week, until your government blacklisted it. So, my point is, every time you blacklist one of these sites, you're going to have thousands and thousands and thousands of other sites talking about it and linking to it. The only course of action that a government should be taking here is helping its citizens become good digital citizens.

TONY JONES: Okay. Well, that's clearly the most technically adept question we've ever had come in on a video, but you can see what you're dealing with here. You're dealing with very articulate people who seem to know exactly what they're talking about. How do you answer the points that he's making?

STEPHEN CONROY: The issue of the leaked blacklist. First of all, the first list that got leaked was not the blacklist. It contained a whole range of material that was not on the blacklist and people whipped themselves into a lather. Now, I'd like to talk about the dentist, because that's been a good bit of fun this week. Here's what happened. The Russian mob targeted Queensland small businesses last year and what they did was they identified websites that had blank pages underneath the main page and what they would do is they would put some material that would be refused classification on that site, on that one page within that site. Then they would spam all of the people who would be interested in looking at this material, and we were advised by international agencies that this is what was happening and so it was blocked internationally. It was never blocked in Australia. And then it went away. So the dentist that people say, well, how could you possibly block a dentist: because the Russian mob hacked his site. Well, not his site directly, but they actually entered into using his web address, so I don't actually have a problem with wanting to try and combat the Russian mob putting - I'm not exaggerating - putting material that would be refused classification and then trying to publicise it worldwide. And to give you an example of the sort of success they can have, they targeted, a while ago, the Czech Astronomy Services and within an hour or two of them sending out their spam, 12 million people had accessed vile child porn that was attached to the Czech Astronomy Site. So when people want to laugh about how could a dentist end up or a travel service end up here, there are legitimate reasons why the international authorities who are chasing these organisations, and they move around. So that's the dentist story. It's really as simple as that. Now, the second list which has appeared appears to be closer. I don't actually know what's on the list but I'm told by (indistinct) at ACMA it appears to be closer to the actual, legitimate list. Now we...

TONY JONES: Now, can I just interrupt once again, because there's a story in the Sydney Morning Herald website today saying that a link containing a series of photographs of young boys by Bill Henson is actually on this blacklist. Bill Henson: back in the media for reasons of censorship. Is he on the list?

STEPHEN CONROY: The classification board looked at this website and actually said it's PG and a technical error inside ACMA, I'm advised - literally a technical error - included it, but it was actually cleared by the classification board, so it shouldn't have been on the list. Now, I've asked ACMA in the last few hours to go through their entire list again to see if there's any other examples of this and at this stage - and they're piling their way through it overnight - they found this one site that falls into this category where it's been misclassified, not by the classification board but by the ACMA technology that they've been doing.

LOUISE ADLER: Stephen, can I interrupt you? I feel completely surprised to be sitting here hearing you use the language - a Labor Minister for Communication using such terminology as blacklists, banned material. I thought that we shared a value in Australia around free speech, around our democratic capacity to see this material and to think about it ourselves and that all I'm hearing - the last time I heard about blacklists was Joe McCarthy's senate hearings, and I feel extremely uncomfortable and disturbed that you are actually, and with great ease, talking about blacklists--

ANDREW BOLT: (Indistinct)

LOUISE ADLER: Just let me finish. Just let me finish. Sorry. And that you're really comfortable with secret lists that people can complain, with all of their vested interests and all of their - you know, and lobbying instincts, can come to ACMA, complain and that there's a secret kind of process so we neither know and have an open discussion about these sites, about the problem for example, of paedophilia. We don't have an open debate. We have a secret process and then you're going to say, "I'm going to manage to control the internet. I'm going to manage what comes into your home," and I think your story about the dentist is a paradigmatic story about how you failed to control it. You failed to control the Russian mob, just like I can't control Svetlana.

TONY JONES: Ok, let's hear from Andrew Bolt, because he wanted to get in on that discussion, as well.

ANDREW BOLT: Well, just this absolutist thing of their being absolutely a right of free speech untrammelled by any consideration of what it might do to others. Is that really what you're arguing?

LOUISE ADLER: Absolutely. I want to argue against paedophilia in the public sphere.

ANDREW BOLT: So anyone - anyone...

LOUISE ADLER: I think it's reprehensible and I think we should argue those ideas in a public sphere.

ANDREW BOLT: Look, I didn't - you told me not to interrupt you. Please.

LOUISE ADLER: You're quite right.

ANDREW BOLT: So, I'm just trying to establish...

LOUISE ADLER: Once.

ANDREW BOLT: ...should anyone be able to watch and publish and distribute anything at all they like? Anything at all. Like, I don't know, a father having sex with his children. Fritzl, the guy in Austria, videos of him having sex with his daughter. Anything like that, you think there should be absolutely no barrier. Jihadist material. Anything.

LOUISE ADLER: Will I answer the question?

TONY JONES: I think you better.

LOUISE ADLER: Well, my view, as a publisher, is that we argue those ideas that there are reprehensible ideas. What I find reprehensible, you don't. What you find unpalatable, I don't. I want to fight you in the public sphere. So I want to fight you on...

ANDREW BOLT: So was that a yes?

LOUISE ADLER: That's absolutely.

ANDREW BOLT: Nothing at all should be banned?

LOUISE ADLER: May a thousand ideas bloom and let's contest them, because that's what tells us that our democracy is robust.

TONY JONES: Okay. We've got a couple of people with their hands up in the audience.

ANDREW BOLT: (Indistinct).

TONY JONES: Hang on Andrew. First of all, this gentleman here who's got his hand up.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Andrew you really raise my ire with your comment about jihadists, because that's my worry. When does - we don't see the list. We don't know what's on the list and when do we know what's going to get added to the list? And the next thing is not just kids at Monash getting arrested for reading books, it's somebody who goes to a - the issue of paedophilia, reprehensible, yeah, we're in agreement but you just said jihadist. Now, why can't somebody under the ideas of democracy and freedom of speech visit a jihadist site? If it's racial vilification, if it's an incitement to genocide, there's issues in Australia, but we're still talking about freedom of speech--

STEPHEN CONROY: (Indistinct).

AUDIENCE MEMBER: ...and that's where i worry about the whole issue.

STEPHEN CONROY: Let's be clear...

TONY JONES: Okay. Let's hear from the Minister.

STEPHEN CONROY: ...the Broadcast Services Act, under which the blacklist works, has got nothing to do with political content. You would have to change the Act. Now, even my harshest critics are not suggesting we're trying to change the Act. What they say is, "Ooh, we're worried about what might happen in the future," but there is no suggestion, there has never been a suggestion and there will never be a suggestion, as Louise says, from a Labor government that we're going to look at banning political material. This is the existing standards by which current newspapers, current TV shows, current radio shows, are judged. There is no change to the criteria. Attempts to suggest that what we have been talking about are about political content are simply misleading. Simply misleading. Mischievously - mischievously misleading at times.

TONY JONES: Susan Carland, let's hear from you.

SUSAN CARLAND: Oh, um...

TONY JONES: Well, you had some concerns earlier on.

SUSAN CARLAND: Mm.

TONY JONES: You've heard the Minister. Is he addressing the concerns in what he's saying?

SUSAN CARLAND: Well, to an extent. I'd still like to know exactly - so you said - is ACMA that body that will be deciding what is appropriate and what is not? What is permissible to be seen and what is not?

STEPHEN CONROY: At the moment there's a combined function between the classification board and an ACMA official. Now, given that we might be moving under the policy to a new situation, I've actually been saying in the last few days I think we need to make sure that people have confidence about the process. At the moment there is the classification board and people will sometimes say, "I agree with the decisions they've made," or "I disagree with the decisions they've made." But by and large there's a public confidence that the board makes reasonable decisions. Not always ones that everyone agrees with. So I'm keen to make sure people have confidence that as we move to a new scenario that the classification board continues to have the paramount role, and I'm happy to make sure and discuss ideas about making sure that an ACMA official, who I don't know the name of, just in case anyone's worried I'm phoning them and saying, "Hey, put Andrew Bolt on the blacklist."

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Yeah.

ANDREW BOLT: (Indistinct).

STEPHEN CONROY: I'm sure - so I think it would be a very good idea to encourage that sort of change to ensure that people have the confidence that they currently have in the classification board. I am going to disagree with Louise that everything should be free and I think the Labor government is going to disagree with Louise that it should just be laissez faire.

TONY JONES: Ok.

STEPHEN CONROY: I believe in a civil society and a civil society does not have a wild west laissez faire culture.

TONY JONES: We've got a lot of people with their hands up. First of all, I want to go to Timothy Wilson.

TIMOTHY WILSON: Thank you. Senator, I've actually viewed the blacklist on wikileaks and I've - and you're actually able to click on a lot of the sites on it, and I've noticed that according to that list, you've chosen to use the internet filter to block out adult pornography when, in fact, probably the real risk to children, other than child pornography, is innocuous sites such as Facebook and chat rooms?

STEPHEN CONROY: Look, firstly, as I said, we've actually not added anything to the list at all. This is the existing law that's been in place for nine years and it's a list that they go through every few months and they sweep it to try and take ones that have now become redundant and add new ones on. So this is the existing one. We've added nothing. This is part of the--

TONY JONES: Can I just leap in and say you've got to answer the Facebook question, but let me just jump in, though. What's going to happen to people who are downloading the wikileaks site and looking at what's on it, which is effectively banned material, according to you, on a blacklist. Are you going to try and arrest all those people? Are the Commonwealth Police going to be investigating who's looking at that and looking at their computer and trying to find them?

STEPHEN CONROY: The system doesn't quite work like that. They issue take down notices. If someone tries to publicise it - people can go and look at some material that's on that list and having a look at it is not a crime. It's if you...

TIMOTHY WILSON: So what's the list then? (Indistinct) What is the list? Is this a fabrication of wikileaks or is this something that you wanted to do in the future...

STEPHEN CONROY: No. No. As I said, the first list, which is the one that most people make fun of, is not the list. The list had 1300 things listed on it. This had over 2000. Now, I don't know where they got that from. People have suggested to me that it came from a company that runs a filter and they, themselves, had added material to it themselves as part of their corporate operation but it was not the government list. It included a dentist...

TIMOTHY WILSON: Would you publish the list, Senator, so people can actually...

STEPHEN CONROY: Look...

TIMOTHY WILSON: Would you actually consider publishing the list?

STEPHEN CONROY: Look, the whole purpose of the list is to stop access - from people getting access to sites that include pro-rape sites, pro-incest sites, pro-child pornography sites and pro-incest sites. I mean, seriously, no...

TIMOTHY WILSON: But you could filter that Senator and still publish the list so people can't actually access it, but there's an element of transparency there whereby they can say, well, look, this site has obviously got a bad name to it. It's probably not a good site.

STEPHEN CONROY: Publishing...

TIMOTHY WILSON: But some sites might seem innocuous...

STEPHEN CONROY: Publishing the list would defeat the purpose of having the list. This is a genuine conundrum. This is a genuine conundrum, okay. The list is there...

TONY JONES: It is a genuine conundrum because the list has been published for you...

STEPHEN CONROY: Yes. And the list...

TONY JONES: ...and this is one of the functions of the internet.

STEPHEN CONROY: And the list was published in Denmark...

TIMOTHY WILSON: Isn't that what Joe McCarthy said (indistinct).

STEPHEN CONROY: ...the Danish list was published, and it doesn't mean that you're going to stop the operation. If, as you want to take the Louise position, which there should be no list, okay, there should be no list...

TIMOTHY WILSON: (Indistinct).

STEPHEN CONROY: ...we're not going to agree.

TIMOTHY WILSON: I didn't say that, Senator, I said...

LOUISE ADLER: But you want to protect - let's go back to the central...

TIMOTHY WILSON: ...publish the list.

LOUISE ADLER: I'm sorry.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: How many hard working public servants are going to check this list?

STEPHEN CONROY: Well, the censorship - sorry, the classifications board, actually that's its job. That's what it does and I would agree if people said that they should have the sole responsibility and that's something I'm happy to work through with ACMA because ACMA have admitted now that there's at least one mistake that they've made on the list, at least one out of the 1300 names, and I think that that's just...

LOUISE ADLER: There's a dentist. There's a tour operator. There's...

STEPHEN CONROY: No, let's be clear. Firstly, you're again - you're misquoting.

LOUISE ADLER: There's the dentist, the tour operator, there's the anti-abortion site..

STEPHEN CONROY: You are misquoting...

LOUISE ADLER: Highly political.

STEPHEN CONROY: No, I'm happy to come to the anti-abortion site because people should understand what happened with the anti-abortion site but, again, you're quoting the dentist and I explained very clearly what happened. The Russian mob attached material.

TONY JONES: Okay. All right.

STEPHEN CONROY: No, if I could just finish....

TONY JONES: No, I want to hear from this side of the - I'm sorry. I'm sorry to interrupt you, but I do want to hear from this side of the table. First of all Greg Hunt, who hasn't had a chance to get in on this conversation.

GREG HUNT: All right, that....

TONY JONES: You're listening to what's being said here. I mean, how much of it do you disagree with?

GREG HUNT: Let me deal firstly with something Louise said. I don't think there is an absolute right to publish things which deal with violent crime against vulnerable people. Call me conservative but it's a deeply important point that you have real crimes which are carried out and we don't want to encourage that, to promote it, to glorify it. I'm happy to live by that. So to a certain extent there's an agreement with Stephen. But what you also hear is that you get the feeling it may not be being handled perfectly at the moment. There are too many examples that what's being proposed and what is occurring at the same time...

STEPHEN CONROY: This is your list. This is actually the list you voted for.

GREG HUNT: I've patiently listened to all that you've said.

STEPHEN CONROY: It's your list.

GREG HUNT: The really important point here is that we are now about to move from trying to deal with the worst of the worst to a very significant encroachment beyond that and the method is not just about the blacklist but the use of ISPs. The fact that Australia's three biggest ISPs have said to the Minister, "Sorry. Go away. Not interested"...

STEPHEN CONROY: That's not correct.

GREG HUNT: ...is pretty significant.

STEPHEN CONROY: Optus - Optus...

TONY JONES: Okay. I'm just going to - I'm sorry. I'm going to interrupt both of you there for a moment...

STEPHEN CONROY: Optus said that they would participate.

TONY JONES: Okay. I'm going to interrupt both of you there for a moment because we have another video question. At least one commentator has called this the greatest assault on free speech in an open society in our country's history and predicted it will unite left and right. That would be the libertarian right against the government. So let's take a look now at a video comment that's been submitted by a young high school student with a, I must admit, a flair for theatrics.

JEFFREY WANG: I left my homeland, the People's Republic, to live in this country of freedom and democracy. Why then, Senator Conroy, has this land of liberty become so similar to the People's Republic of China? You and your people are destroying the internet, our freedoms and our rights. We will fight for this. We will fight this. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect Us.

TONY JONES: Okay. By the way, that little emblem he was wearing on his jacket was Guy Fawkes, which he describes as a symbol of freedom, liberation and rightful rebellion. Okay.

STEPHEN CONROY: Blowing up the parliament.

TONY JONES: You can see what's happening here, though, and by the sort of general kind of tenor of what you're hearing in the audience. Are you worried that this is going to lead down the path that you aren't really prepared for, that the Labor government gets accused of basically reigning in basic freedoms.

STEPHEN CONROY: But that is not what is being proposed. I mean we believe that there is a compelling argument to block refused classification. We've not suggested, and I repeat, it would go against the fundamental tenet of the Labor party to suggest you would block political content, which is the China line and the Saudi Arabia line. I couldn't be more clear or simple or straightforward on that. So no one is suggesting - no one - that we would go down that path. We're looking at technology to see if technology can help replicate what happens in the real world. As I said, I believe in a civil society. It is possible to support a blacklist and support free speech, just as it is possible to argue against a black list and not be a child paedophile. So...

LOUISE ADLER: That's a relief.

STEPHEN CONROY: ...we are not, for a moment, suggesting that we are going down the path that people just keep claiming. It's actually not what is being proposed and Greg suggested that, no it - I just need to respond quickly to Greg. Optus, the second largest ISP in the country, has said it will participate. The fourth largest is participating and a number of others will be participating and, again, Greg tried to just slide in, "Oh, look, it's going to be a much broader list." Refused classification. Material that you can't view and distribute today is what I am talking about. And parents be given an option that they can then chose what level of controls they want. To give you an example, there's an ISP called Webshield at the moment that provide parents with a menu of items that they think their children should not see. And I don't think there's anything wrong with giving parents that choice and I don't think there's anything intrinsically anti-free speech in saying refused classification material shouldn't be available.

TONY JONES: Okay. Let's hear from one more person in the audience, then we're going to have to move on to other subjects.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Senator Conroy, don't you realise that 1984 was supposed to be a warning, not an instruction manual?

STEPHEN CONROY: Well, as I said, we are not considering, suggesting or implying or imputing that we will be blocking political speech.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Once the...

STEPHEN CONROY: We are talking about material that is currently blocked. We are talking about material that the classification board currently make judgments on. That is what is the current Act. And you may have only just discovered the blacklist existed in the last few weeks or the last few months. It's been there for nine years.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: I know that.

STEPHEN CONROY: It was introduced by Greg and his party. He actually probably has forgotten but he voted for it.

ANDREW BOLT: (Indistinct).

TONY JONES: Yes, go on.

ANDREW BOLT: Yeah. I'm shocked by the lack of moral seriousness here, even by people that are claiming to speak for the most fundamentals principals of free speech. And the lack of seriousness to me is demonstrated by the fact that three people on this panel have posited this in terms of, well, I wouldn't do this or I wouldn't do this or I wouldn't do that or if it doesn't affect me and most of the people here are talking in the same sort of way it seems, or the people objecting. I think you only need to look at your newspapers almost any week now, whether it's news from Austria or news of cases in Adelaide or one in Sydney I can think of or some of the appalling conditions that we see in some other towns, to know that there are people for whom you have very little in common that do not, as Greg suggested, oh, well, we'll leave it to the parents. You cannot trust these parents. They are in charge of children who are deeply vulnerable and to think that somehow we can all just pretend there's no threat or we can just wave it all away - it's all about free speech. Let them do what they like. There are some horrible things going out there. Horrible things. And if we don't take an action to say, oh, well, look, we shouldn't do this because there are other ways of tackling the problem, so it's just like saying we shouldn't decriminalise guns because people could be stabbed. We've got to try everything and if you don't acknowledge at the very basis that this is not just about one principle, of free speech, it is about at least, as a minimum, two - it's also about protection, otherwise people wouldn't be doing it. You're not being morally serious.

TONY JONES: Okay. Susan Carland wanted to come in and we're going to wrap up this discussion after I hear from you.

SUSAN CARLAND: Believe it or not, and I'm sure we're both shocked actually, I agree with quite a lot of what you said.

ANDREW BOLT: Why should we be shocked?

SUSAN CARLAND: Well...

ANDREW BOLT: Why should we be shocked?

SUSAN CARLAND: Well, you and I...anyway. But what I did...

ANDREW BOLT: I thought you were a moral person. Why should we be shocked?

SUSAN CARLAND: Then that's good. But what I did want to say, though, is, and like anyone I abhor incest, rape, child pornography, all that sort of thing. I guess the only thing I would ask, and I'm sure - I guess what I would ask is would it, in fact, be more productive to preventing child pornography to, in fact, leave the sites there but watch them and use them as a net? This has happened internationally. Internationally prime tasks have worked together. They've watched these sites and haven't released that they're watching them and they've used these to catch the perpetrators and the people that are trying to watch them. The reality is the stuff is out there anyway. Even if we block it, it will exist. It will go underground. It can be shared on, you know, network sharing and those sort of sites. Could it be better in the interests of stopping child porn - could it actually be better to use it to catch them.

TONY JONES: Okay. A quick response to that.

STEPHEN CONROY: This is one of a range of policies. Two days ago the Queensland Police, believe it or not, using technology, cracked peer to peer and they've arrested, in the last few days, a range of people involved in a child paedophile ring. So this is not a police designed to deal with peer to peer. I mean, I've heard a few comments from the crowd. We're not trying to claim it is. We never pretended it is. We accept it can't. But there is other technology available to the law enforcement agencies that is in place today, cracking peer to peer and arresting people in Queensland two days ago who have been involved in child paedophile rings, so this is not, oh, Steve says it's a silver bullet. There's no silver bullet involved in this. You need education of parents. You need more policing. You need new technologies like have just been deployed by the Queensland Police. You need all of those things. This is not a one stop shop, here's our solution. We don't have to worry about it. Move on. There is a whole raft of policies that we're using to try and tackle this problem but we're not trying to pretend that the filtering solutions is it. We accept it is one of a raft of policies to try and combat what is a serious problem.

Okay. We know that passions are there. We know that people still want to ask questions on this but we are going to have to move on. You're watching Q&A and tonight we're broadcasting live from Melbourne. Q&A is a program where you get to ask the questions. So go to our website abc.net.au/qanda. Our next question comes from within the audience and it's from David Cornish.

DAVID CORNISH: Hi guys. I'm contemplating a comparison between Bush's troop surge in 2007 into Iraq and Obama's new proposal to put 17,000 troops into Afghanistan. I'm just wondering why did Bush's proposal receive universal bad press in Australia and elsewhere and Obama's has been met with optimism, and nothing but, from the general public and the media.

TONY JONES: Let's hear from Andrew Bolt first.

ANDREW BOLT: Well, I think that's going to change. I think Afghanistan was always posited by the left as the good war in order to be a contrast to the bad war in Iraq when, in fact, Afghanistan was a war that was begun two years earlier and will last a lot, lot longer. Iraq has got advantages. For example, it's got oil, which enables the country to pay for a standing army that's three or four times bigger than what Afghanistan, at the moment, can stand for. So the public sentiment, now that Iraq is almost off the map, will change and Afghanistan will again divide basically left and conservative again I should imagine, which will be a shame, because it's one of those wars - I've been to Afghanistan a couple of times and, you know, it is a hard war. I don't see an end to it. It's the closest parallel to Vietnam. Iraq wasn't. That was winnable and it's being won, but this is one that's going to require many, many years and, I'm afraid, many more Australian deaths before there's a hope that we can pull out and so I feel really apprehensive about the future for that. The commitment of the west to Afghanistan, what with the financial crisis and what with Europe not pulling its weight, and I fear for Afghanistan.

TONY JONES: Susan Carland?

SUSAN CARLAND: I don't think positive sentiment will last for much longer for Afghanistan; the little positive sentiment that there is. I think we've, you know, troops have been there for seven years. If anything the situation looks like it's getting worse. It's getting worse for the troops that are there, it's getting worse for the Afghan people, especially women. One of the justifications used for going into Afghanistan was that it would improve things for women. Thing really aren't that much better for women at all and, in fact, in some situations they're worse. What is the solution? I don't know. If any of us knew we probably would have come up with it quite a while ago. I guess I wonder - the problem is if we pull out, I think the country could implode upon itself as it did around the Soviet situation. That's when the Taliban came in. But to stay doesn't seem to be doing many favours to the people or the troops either. I don't know what the solution is.

TONY JONES: Let's hear from Greg Hunt quickly.

GREG HUNT: I think the question with all of these debates is about the costs of action versus the cost of inaction. In 1993, I spent time with the United Nations based in Geneva and I was chronicling the abuses that were coming out of Bosnia, and I chronicled stories that I've lived with ever since and the message for me was you always have to weigh up the costs of action, certainly, but I looked then at the costs of inaction and they were intense and human and on the scale of 200,000 lives that were lost. My view is that both of these cases now are about big history and trying to give people a sense of hope and future and it has been successful in Iraq. I know that's not a popular view, but I think when you look at it now, the average Iraqi would prefer to have that which they have now rather than Saddam Hussein's regime and I think Afghanistan is harder. It was always easy to say there's a good war and a bad war, as Andrew says. That was a false dichotomy. They're both about big history. Neither is easy. One has been successful and I think it will be a long haul in Afghanistan but it is the one chance at preventing wholesale bloodshed if we withdraw.

TONY JONES: Stephen Conroy, the government remains committed to the war. Will it remain committed to the war no matter the cost in troops, in material, in lives?

STEPHEN CONROY: Look, any death of an Australian troop while they're on active service to their country is a tragedy and what we're seeing in Afghanistan is now the end game of a very poorly developed and worked strategy. We've been consistently pointing to the failings of the strategy and the policy since we became elected. The Europeans have failed miserably to deliver on their commitments. The US have got themselves distracted in another theatre and their only now turning to this. We believe that if you look at the training camps and the people involved in and around Afghanistan and near the Pakistan border, they are currently training people who are going out there trying to kill Australians on tour in Mumbai, for instance. There were Australians almost killed and injured in Mumbai. So to just give up and say we can't win because of the lack of support, particularly from Europe, will perhaps lead to more Australian citizens ultimately being killed. So this is a really difficult choice, as I think Greg said. We are committed to try and get the strategy changed. We're very pleased that President Obama has actually advocated a change in strategy and we will consider any request on its merits, but it will be treated on its merits. We are already well committed and in Afghanistan and given the other areas that we're involved in, it is always hard for a country of our size to be kicking above our weight as we have been in Afghanistan for a while. It's time a number of other countries lived up to their commitments that they made a number of years ago.

TONY JONES: Okay. I'm just going to take another related question from Andrew Bain.

ANDREW BAIN: I was just curious to know how Susan felt about Sharia law that's being imposed by the Taliban in Afghanistan and areas of Pakistan, and what does she think about this seemingly barbaric and medieval way of life basically?

TONY JONES: It picks up on what you were saying earlier about conditions getting worse for women. Certainly it's happening also now in Pakistan.

SUSAN CARLAND: Yes. I would argue that, you know, obviously I'm one person speaking my opinion. I'm certainly not the Muslim voice for the entire planet, but I would certainly argue that what we are seeing in Afghanistan and in certain parts of Pakistan are not Sharia by any stretch of the imagination. They are a gross, horrendous, misogynistic reinterpretation of the law to suit their own purposes. A lot of the practices existed before the Taliban came in and have simply been continued on. It's so easy, even for a Muslim lay person like myself, to see what's going on, for example in the Swat Valley, with girls not being allowed to go to school. This is clearly against some of the most basic tenets of true Sharia law, so please don't be mistaken and think what you see happening in Afghanistan and now in certain parts of Pakistan are somehow the authentic Sharia law. They're not. They're an abomination to me and the vast majority of Muslims around the world.

TONY JONES: I heard agreement over here from Senator Conroy. Let's hear from you.

STEPHEN CONROY: Absolutely. I have many, many Muslim friends and they would absolutely support that. This is not a true and fair representation of Islam. It does not support - the teachings of the Qur'an do not support the interpretation that is being put in place in some parts of Afghanistan and Pakistan. I can't agree strongly enough with that.

ANDREW BOLT: No, but it's all very well for two caucasians here to agree what it should be - someone who was born Christian and someone who is Christian - to say what the Muslim law should be but, in fact, Sharia law - these people say it is Sharia law and they would look at you and laugh and say "What right do you have or you have to tell us that it's not?" So it's all very well for us to say, and I'm glad - I think we should argue about there being a new interpretation of Islam compatible with this society. That's great. But let's not start pretending that that's not Sharia law. They say it is and that's enough for you to know.

STEPHEN CONROY: There's been many...

TONY JONES: Louise...

STEPHEN CONROY: There's many different - sorry.

TONY JONES: Go.

STEPHEN CONROY: There's been many different interpretations of Christianity, some quite barbarically implemented.

ANDREW BOLT: Sure.

STEPHEN CONROY: So let's not pretend that just because someone stands up and says, "I'm the true Christian," that that was a genuine interpretation supported by the vast majority, and that is, I think, the only point that's being made. The vast majority do not agree with this interpretation. They overwhelmingly do not agree with this interpretation.

ANDREW BOLT: That's true, otherwise Indonesia wouldn't be as it is. But I'm saying in these areas where it applies, I'm not sure what we gain by insisting that they're the heathens, really.

SUSAN CARLAND: No, but what we gain is by not managing to demonise the entire Muslim population, which I think is quite important.

ANDREW BOLT: No. I agree. I agree.

TONY JONES: I'll just interrupt you there, because we actually do have a question from Ray Wang. Where's Ray Wang? Down here.

RAY WANG: My question is actually to Susan. I'm sorry if I'm going to make you uncomfortable. Almost all my friends, or nine out of 10, they don't really have a positive perception of Muslim. It's always linked to hatred or violence in the Middle East or discrimination against women or other religions, and I know that's just not right but - I suppose my question is, because my friends come from all kind of background, race, age or even religions, but for some reason they have very similar perceptions about that. So I suppose my question is: do you think or do you agree this is a common perception in our society?

SUSAN CARLAND: I think it is a common perception and I think there have been studies that suggest that there is a negative perception about Muslims in society, and that's something that we have to work on as a collective. I don't think it's the sole responsibility of Muslims in Australia or non-Muslims. The easiest way for that to change is for your friends to actually get to know some Muslims and speak to them as human people and move away from, you know, McDonalds' journalism and that sort of thing, and taking their reports from certain newspapers and certain shows. And when that happens and they actually speak to their Muslim neighbour over the fence or the Muslim guy that works in the milk bar and realise, actually, you're just normal people like us - we need to keep in mind, Muslims are not the first people to be seen like this. It's actually happened in waves. If we take Australia as the example, for a while it was this cultural community that was, you know, demonised. The Italians, the Greeks, then it was the Vietnamese. Oh, my gosh, they're all drug - they're all in a drug triad and they're all out to kill us and all those sort of things. It's just the Muslims turn now. It's a pity that, as Australians, we haven't learnt that, you know, once we get to know each other it's okay, and then we move on to the next group that we're worried about. I hope that it would finish with Muslims. It's just, I think, if we can have some human interaction, a lot of those fears and misconceptions can change.

ANDREW BOLT: Susan, can I just point out when my father came here from Europe as a migrant and then he started teaching immigrants like the Italians and Greeks, I think you're wrong. The suspicion that you say was - this is just what we're seeing a similar version of what those immigrants faced - I think it's completely wrong. That's ahistorical. It's not my experience of it. I'd also point out there are, in fact, more Buddhists in Australian than there are Muslims and we don't hear anything about that. We don't invite Buddhists onto this panel - or Tony doesn't invite Buddhists onto this panel to...

MALE SPEAKER: Next week.

ANDREW BOLT: He's invited you and your husband and, you know, Miss Australia and people like that, but he doesn't do it with Buddhists. There's specifically something in the community itself, as well, and I think, to be honest, you mentioned this yourself in an interview with the Malaysian Star Newspaper only a couple of years ago, where you said within the community, being a new convert from Christianity, you face the calls, from within the community, you shouldn't do this and you shouldn't do that and you shouldn't make friends with people who weren't Muslim and you should withdraw from society and everything that was haram and you said this was a problem for you and I think that's an acknowledgement there is, in fact, a problem within the Muslim community, a rejectionist strand, which is what makes this different. And I hate to be blunt, I hate to foster - you know, have all these people jeering...

SUSAN CARLAND: No, you don't. No, you don't.

TONY JONES: Okay.

ANDREW BOLT: Yes, I do. I do. I'd rather you agreed with me.

TONY JONES: Quick responses.

SUSAN CARLAND: The quick response would be absolutely there are people, a very small minority of people, within the Muslim community that are reluctant to engage with the wider community, but this is more...

ANDREW BOLT: You put it as a majority in this interview and, excuse me, I just read it again.

SUSAN CARLAND: I said the majority of Muslims reject friendships with...well, I'm afraid that that...

ANDREW BOLT: You did.

SUSAN CARLAND: Well, I'm afraid that's just not correct.

ANDREW BOLT: Well, you said it there and you...

SUSAN CARLAND: Maybe your translation from the Malay is not...

ANDREW BOLT: It was an English language newspaper.

GREG HUNT: Can I put a different perspective on this.

TONY JONES: Yes. Yes.

GREG HUNT: Just very briefly. I think we're kidding ourselves if we think Australia is racked by any of the real strands of discord that you have in other countries. Of all the countries in the world, the Muslim/Christian divide here is nothing and that's the reality. When you travel in other parts of the world, it's nothing. The reason why there is a reflection, I don't think is about much to do with what happens here. Sure you get the odd person who does something silly but you see globally there's this fight from the harvest, from the militant stream, to take out one of the big Islamic societies. There's this fracture within Islam, whether it's Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, Indonesia - they're all the objectives of the harvest. That's why there's a global battle going on to deal with the source of that in Afghanistan and that's why some of that gets played back in Australia but it's a pretty safe society.

TONY JONES: Look, some of our audience has had their hands up for a while. I'll just take this gentleman down the front here.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: Just a comment for Andrew from a non-caucasian. I am a Muslim and I'm trying to practice. I sometimes pray and I sometimes fast and I occasionally drink alcohol. So we are talking about a very wide - we are talking about one billion people. We can't generalise like that. And, again, just a comment that the whole - this gentleman as well. The whole Taliban was created by Americans to oppose Russian. I mean that was the whole start of the story which built up to this issue. Of course, we should take responsibility. I agree with that and we should basically clarify that what is there basically that understanding that (indistinct) from Qur'an but we can't just generalise like that and please don't do that.

ANDREW BOLT: I'm not generalising.

AUDIENCE MEMBER: You have the tool in the newspaper and that's your responsibility...

ANDREW BOLT: I've already said...

AUDIENCE MEMBER: ...so please help.

ANDREW BOLT: I've already said, for example - I've already said that Indonesia, for example, is a standing reproof to the idea that there is a common jihadist element. I mean there are jihadist elements in Indonesia, but it's fundamentally a democracy.

TONY JONES: Andrew, I'm going to have to get you to wrap up, because we need to move on to another subject. Okay. I'll take that mostly as a comment from you. Thank you very much. Now, remember that you can send your questions via email, video or join the studio audience and ask them yourself. So go to our website, the address is on the screen, to find out how. And we have another video question now from Rod Campbell-Ross of Wentworth Falls in New South Wales.

ROD CAMPBELL-ROSS: Striking testimony has emerged from Israeli soldiers involved in the recent Gaza war, in which they describe shooting unarmed civilians, sometimes under orders from their officers. One soldier described how an Israeli sniper shot dead a Palestinian mother and her children, adding that troops believed Palestinian lives were "very, very, less important than the lives of our soldiers." What is the panel's view of these reports?

TONY JONES: Louise Adler?

LOUISE ADLER: Well, I think they are devastating and testimonies and I think it's quite interesting that those testimonies were delivered in the context of returning Gazan - soldiers from Gaza to new recruits in a military college called Oranim in Israel. So it's quite interesting the context in which those testimonies were delivered. They were then published by Ha'Aretz.

TONY JONES: Not publicly originally.

LOUISE ADLER: No, they weren't. They weren't published originally. They weren't disseminated originally but they were then published by Ha'Aretz, a very good Israeli newspaper. I think they're devastating reports and they speak to the dehumanising kind of atmosphere that I think we get from years of occupation. And the dehumanisation is on both sides. It's been a devastating occupation and I think that ordinary Israelis and ordinary Palestinians are feeling the corrosive effects - morally corrosive, socially corrosive effects - of the occupation. So they are symptoms, if you like, of people, 18 year old children, being sent to monitor, man checkpoints, go into Gaza, and those kids are then - how on earth is one to empathise? How on earth is one to feel a sense of humanity in relation to those people that you're meant to protect and control and repress from your society? So I think it's a very tragic situation we have. I think we need a political solution. All we seem to have are military solutions on both sides.

TONY JONES: Stephen Conroy, were you shocked by these accounts? They were actually followed up by a series of reports in the Guardian, which included reports about a tax on hospitals and particularly a tax on ambulance men, where a lot of ambulance men and people carrying stretchers during the conflict appear to have been targeted and killed?

STEPHEN CONROY: No, look, we support there being an investigation of any claims along these lines. It's a very complex situation. We've always supported a two state solution and it's disappointing that that seems to have receded, the chances of that, in the last few years but if there are issues that, as described, are true, then there needs to be a proper and full investigation of them.

TONY JONES: Susan Carland?

SUSAN CARLAND: I agree. I think obviously these images, these words, the t-shirts are horrendous and very distressing but, honestly, they're not surprising. I think we're seeing ugly things like that coming from both sides. It's a really ugly situation and the t-shirts and the comments are simply a manifestation of exactly what's going on over there.

TONY JONES: What t-shirts and comments are you referring to?

SUSAN CARLAND: Sorry, the t-shirts - some t-shirts have come out in the media that a small minority of Israeli soldiers are wearing, for example showing pregnant Palestinian women saying, "One bullet to kill." That sort of thing.

ANDREW BOLT: A pregnant Palestinian woman who's a suicide bomber. I don't apologise for the shirts, I'm just pointing out the full picture is a suicide bomber who's pregnant and that's got that.

LOUISE ADLER: Or a picture of a Palestinian baby with "Better use Durex." Do you think that's the kind of moral...

ANDREW BOLT: I don't. No. No.

LOUISE ADLER: We talk about a civil society, a moral society...

ANDREW BOLT: I think.

LOUISE ADLER: ...do we think the effects of this occupation have been...

ANDREW BOLT: Louise...

LOUISE ADLER: ...good for either society?

ANDREW BOLT: No, I don't. And I think in a confrontation like this, bad things are done by individuals on both sides and the test of a civil society is how they respond to them. Now, two years ago, for the first time, more Palestinians were murdered by Hamas and Fatah security forces than by Israelis and the thing is, Israel is having an inquiry into this. There's no inquiry onto the other side. None. They shoot innocents as a matter of course. Now, you mention this mother with two children who was shot dead. I'm appalled, right. And that should be investigated. But in all things we need to look at all sides of the argument. The case isn't that, as suggested, that a soldier just went bang, bang. "Good. That's a woman and two children dead." It was a house being kept secure in a conflict environment. An officer told the mother and the two children, "Go to the right," and she went to the left.

LOUISE ADLER: And she went by mistake to the right.

ANDREW BOLT: She went to the left.

LOUISE ADLER: Or to the left.

ANDREW BOLT: And the sniper hadn't been told and he shot them. That is terrible, but this...

TONY JONES: Unfortunately, can I just interrupt this, because the further reporting of that indicated that the same soldiers were subsequently told to treat all Palestinians as terrorists.

ANDREW BOLT: Well, let's see what the - look, there are so many allegations made that we need to first see what the facts are, then let's condemn. For example, on the (indistinct) front...

TONY JONES: I'm simply - I'm just following up...

ANDREW BOLT: Sure. But see...

TONY JONES: You mentioned part of that story. I've just filling the rest of it.

ANDREW BOLT: I know. Yeah, look, Tony, as you know there are so many allegations made against Israel and then treated as fact, like the Jenin Massacre. You remember that. You know the bombed ambulance. You remember that. And again and again - the bombed school in the last offensive.

LOUISE ADLER: But Andrew. Andrew...

ANDREW BOLT: You remember that. And then we later find out the facts are slightly different. Let's wait for the facts.

LOUISE ADLER: But Andrew when there are testimonies from soldiers coming back, young soldiers who themselves feel deeply disturbed by what went on, we all have to attend to that. If we're talking about...

ANDREW BOLT: Of course.

LOUISE ADLER: ...moral seriousness as you wanted to before, we need to attend to that.

ANDREW BOLT: Of course.

SUSAN CARLAND: And I agree that we shouldn't condemn before we investigate but I also think, again from both sides, we should not try to defend the indefensible.

ANDREW BOLT: No, I don't defend the indefensible things. Why would I?

TONY JONES: Greg Hunt.

GREG HUNT: The rule of law has to apply universally. No excuses. We can't hid behind either an ideology or a country so Israeli, Palestinian, Hamas, Fatah, IDF, all of them should be subject to the rule of law and that means if there are cases to answer, answer them. Having said that, on the other side there is one very important thing to understand and that is there is no doubt that human shields have been used intentionally to draw fire so no excuse and there should be full investigation if there are acts which are simply unacceptable but, similarly, we must hold those people to account who would use human shields in order to make their own point.

TONY JONES: Yes. Human shields, you were saying, used by the Israelis?

LOUISE ADLER: He's talking about Hamas.

GREG HUNT: No, I was thinking in that, Hamas.

TONY JONES: Because the allegation of the Guardian was precisely the opposite. Human shields used by Israeli soldiers. (Indistinct)

GREG HUNT: The action by either is equally culpable.

TONY JONES: Okay. Well, look, I'm sorry that that is all we have time for tonight. Please thank our panellists, Stephen Conroy, Louise Adler, Susan Carland, Andrew Bolt and Greg Hunt. And please thank and congratulate yourselves, our wonderful audience from Melbourne. Join us next week - okay. All right. That's enough. Join us next week when our panel will be the Housing Minister Tanya Plibersek, the Shadow Attorney-General George Brandis, academic Dennis Altman, economist Satyajit Das and young Liberal Rachel Fry. Go to our website at abc.net.au/qanda. Send us your web and video questions and don't forget we're still looking for mash-ups. That is short, satirical videos to show on the program, like this country and western mash for Pauline Hanson by Gerard Hosier of Killara in Sydney. Good night.