Not quite as it seems
El Reg needs an Australia consultant it seems, I'm quite happy to provide this service for a reasonable fee but lets move on.
The previous Government understood the danger of effective filtering and the uselessness of everything else. But they were under a lot of pressure from nutjobs who would like to live in a world where their shrillest demand can govern the lives of the rest of the citizenry.
So the fig leaf program providing filtering programs was created and had to be well budgeted so as to look like a sizable fig leaf.
Did it achieve it's publicly stated objective? No, of course not.
Did it calm down the nutjobs without shutting down the internet in Australia? Yes, it did.
Not courageous politics but as lesser of two evils go it wasn't so bad.
Labor also are being disingenuous in their proposal for the sake of the kids.
Their plan is to create a whitelist of approved websites (referred to as a "clean feed") and then force ISPs to only serve pages from sites on the whitelist UNLESS the customer specifically requests the perverts and terrorists feed, a choice which would no doubt be used against them in all manner of future situations.
It's got much more to do with taming the 'net than protecting children.
But as Pratchett observed "We did it for the children" is prominently carved out on many a cobblestone on the road to hell.