CHRIS UHLMANN, PRESENTER: Calls for a new watchdog to regulate the Australian media prompted by the News of the World scandal in Britain have sparked furious debate over the balance between media freedom and censorship. The regulator would police internet news sites that get more than 15,000 hits a year, but the idea has opened an online Pandora's box. Offensive and hateful material abounds on a vast array of internet sites, including the official site of the Liberal Party of Australia where 7.30 has discovered a slew of abusive comments that illustrate the dilemma of cyber regulation. Tracy Bowden reports.

TRACY BOWDEN, REPORTER: This is the website of the Liberal Party of Australia. Click through to a discussion on immigration and border security and here are just some of the comments you'll find.

CONTRIBUTOR TO LIBERAL PARTY WEBSITE (male voiceover): "I want black refugees executed after 10 years of rejection of repatriation."

CONTRIBUTOR TO LIBERAL PARTY WEBSITE II (male voiceover): "All nations predominantly black are brutish, starved, backwards and unjust ...".

CONTRIBUTOR TO LIBERAL PARTY WEBSITE III (male voiceover): "We need direct democracy ... to bring about protection of good and the genocidal extinction of the evil dark races ...".

TRACY BOWDEN: Some of these posts have been on the website for up to a year.

TOM TUDEHOPE, SOCIAL MEDIA CONSULTANT: You need to have a degree of control. You know, the - this is a Liberal Party website so they have ultimate responsibility for the content that goes up there.

HELEN SZOKE, RACIAL DISCRIMINATION COMMISSIONER: The responsibility should be with the organisation that hosts the blog to make sure that - two things: that the blog doesn't depart, if you like, from what their particular values or their mission is, and secondly that they don't move to a position where they're actually found to be in breach of the law.

TRACY BOWDEN: The comments remained on the Liberal Party's website despite the fact that Opposition Leader Tony Abbott has been visiting schools to promote the Coalition's review of online safety.

TONY ABBOTT, OPPOSITION LEADER (February): The last thing we want to see is online censorship, but we do have to have online protections, the best possible online protections and that's what my working group is all about.

TOM TUDEHOPE: It would appear in this circumstance they're overwhelmed or they probably need some further monitoring in place.

TRACY BOWDEN: Tom Tudehope knows the power and the perils of social media. He resigned as then Opposition Leader Malcolm Turnbull's media advisor after being linked to a YouTube spoof portraying a Liberal backbencher as Adolf Hitler. He's now a social media consultant.

TOM TUDEHOPE: It can be very subjective, what is offensive. But someone has to draw the line somewhere. Now if the party perceives it be to offensive, they shoulda moved the comments immediately or as soon as possible. Now, that might be hard if you're getting hundreds of comments per day on one article and you're looking after Twitter, Facebook, websites - there's plenty of posts.

TRACY BOWDEN: Liberal Party federal director Brian Loughnane declined 7.30's request for an interview, but provided this comment: "The Liberal Party removes comments from its social media channels that it finds to be racist, sexist, homophobic, bigoted or graphic. We find such comments deeply offensive and unacceptable."

Soon after we drew the party's attention to the comments, the worst of them had been removed from the site, but the fact remains they had been there for months.

DAVID PENBERTHY, EDITOR, THE PUNCH: I think that all websites should be careful and I think that all website should pre-moderate. It think it's a cop out not to pre-moderate.

TRACY BOWDEN: It's a problem faced by all groups which have websites encouraging comment and discussion. Editor of the opinion and news website The Punch, David Penberthy, says while it's a labour-intensive exercise, a staff member looks at every comment before it's posted.

DAVID PENBERTHY: There are some websites that have a flagging system where the onus is left to the public to identify comments which are offensive or profane or defamatory. We think it's safest and possibly in terms of the taste argument, you create a better environment on the website if you pre-moderate.

TOM TUDEHOPE: This is a developing space. There is no real best practice out there about what is the best way to approach these things and it's definitely a case-by-case basis.

CONTRIBUTOR TO LIBERAL PARTY WEBSITE IV (male voiceover): "Liberal Coalition party must stop the silent invasion of these evil followers of the Islam ...".

CONTRIBUTOR TO LIBERAL PARTY WEBSITE V (male voiceover): "He who is against the White Australia policy is against the Australian Nation ...".

TRACY BOWDEN: After seeing the posts on the Liberal Party's website, 7.30 look at the online presence of all the major Australian political parties. The websites of the ALP and the Greens appear to have no blatantly racist or offensive comments. Also, the Liberal Party is less stringent in trying to verify the identity of bloggers.

HELEN SZOKE: There is no doubt that people are finding it as an anonymous means of communication and with that comes a lack of perhaps responsibility in terms of the type of comments that are being posted.

TRACY BOWDEN: In the last two years, complaints to the Human Rights Commission on cyber-racism have more than doubled. Race discrimination commissioner Helen Szoke says that while legislation is important, the best results are when an organisation takes responsibility for its own online content.

HELEN SZOKE: It is possible to get conciliated outcomes that remove racially vilifying material off websites. At the end of the day though, like any other form of discrimination, the best change occurs when the organisational culture actually understands the benefits in not having material that's racially discriminatory perpetuated through their communications avenues.

CHRIS UHLMANN: Tracy Bowden there.

The Liberal party could edit their own web site and remove offensive material.....However I think they encourage this behaviour rather than delete it.....The Liberal party are what they are but will never accept they are racist and intolerant despite the evidence to the contrary!!!

Gee the left have been busy on the liberal site with their poison.

... wrote on Mar 15^th, 2012 at 10:47am:


So you give a bugger enough to want to let people know that you don't give a bugger.