Comrade Conroy, nobly delivering on election commitments, excluding Chairman Rudd, and thinking of the children ... again.

(Above: an exceptionally tedious comrade Conroy doorstopper, but we thought we'd drop it in for the record).

Meanwhile, in a galaxy far away, valiant Luke Skywalker fights valiantly on against Darth Vader, while maintaining exceptional vigilance in his care and concern for the children.

You see, poor old Senator Kate Lundy, one of the Canberra Labor mob, has been humbugging comrade Conroy about the virtues of an opt-in filter, as opposed to the comrade's draconian measures, and you can read about it here in My thoughts on an opt-in filter.

There was some hope going around that a brand new shiny atheist red headed messiah might not fall for the kind of nonsense long peddled by Conroy, but true to form, the comrade came good with a doorstepper insisting it was his way, or yahweh, or no way at all.

“We have got an election commitment to deliver,” Conroy told journalists in a doorstop interview in Sydney this afternoon ... “Just because [Greens Senator] Scott Ludlam says it’s been shelved, doesn’t mean it’s true.”

Which makes you wonder about election commitments, if a PM can be lightly overturned in the quest for votes, as if he was some kind of votive offering, while a policy scribbled by a thumbnail dipped in tar remains firmly nailed to the masthead.

Oh yes the resolute hard man from Victoria, the thinking woman's block of granite - oops, sorry, no disrespect to granite, a noble building material, intended - is on hand to make sure that Australia maintains its drive towards Victorian standards - oops, no disrespect to Victoria, from where the comrade hails, but Victorian England, where the standards of censorship were high, and the number of child prostitutes on the streets of London also high.

How did the comrade dispatch any lickspittle revisionist nonsense to the boundary?

“I’m not into opting in to child porn,” he said.

Thereby confirming that Conroy's more the rough equivalent of a bit of jarrah or perhaps iron bark.

Naturally Conroy's observations didn't go down well with the geeks that care (stories here and here).

It would have been nice to make an emotional vote for Australia's first woman PM, having strayed from the realm under the onerous rule of Chairman Rudd, and while many consider the filter a secondary issue, I'm afraid it's enough to keep my vote on tilt.

I'd rather vote for a herd of camels than vote for a government which keeps Senator Conroy at the helm of communications policy, not least because deep down I do think that the NBN has the potential to turn into a giant monopolistic rort of the kind which saw Telstra aka the PMG keep this country in the dark ages in terms of communications for decades. (Sob, there I said it, I'm at one with the chattering commentariat).

It needn't be that way but with the great big filter and the great big monopoly at his fingertips, who would trust a Conroy or a subsequent politician to do the right thing?

Call me unhappy, call me Ishmael, or call me a former Labor party voter, I don't mind. But the ALP will have to prise my vote from my cold dead hands before Conroy will get a sniff of it ...

And now, since I need cheering up, here's a picture of a sensible politician I like, who in a just world would be the Minister for Communications ...

(Well that's what the geeks are saying, in How Gillard can save the comms ministry, but can Darth Vader be so easily defeated?)

Yes, let's give another woman a go ... one who clearly doesn't want to pander to the Christian fundamentalists ...