Sydney's anti-filter turnout: Photos

The Sydney event was held in Parramatta Park at 1pm on Saturday, 6 March. It began slowly, as the microphones had not yet arrived, nor all the speakers. Attendees mingled near the entrance to the park.

There had been track work on the train line between Granville and Parramatta, which meant that anyone arriving on public transport would likely have been delayed. It also looked like it might rain.

Finally, the microphone and sound system were found, prompting those who had gathered to move into the sun, where the speeches would be held.

Event organiser Emma Anderson had told ZDNet.com.au that she was expecting 200 people, but that anywhere up to 700 could come given the number of people on Facebook who had registered interest. However, the meet didn't seem to reach the lower limit of that number.

Anderson kicked off the speeches just before two o'clock.

She introduced Xenogene Gray, who featured on the reality television show Beauty and the Geek. He talked about how easy it was for the filter to be circumvented through, for example, IP tunnelling or mirroring.

Gray signed a petition in front of the crowd.

Following Gray, Steaphan Markotany from Community Action Against Homophobia spoke about the effects the filter could have on minority groups.

He read a description of what =http: www.scaleplus.law.gov.au="" comlaw="" Legislation="" LegislativeInstrument1.nsf="" framelodgmentattachments="" 6FB63DA7065B4032CA256FD60013130D="" target="_blank">is meant by refused classification.

Publications that:

• describe, depict, express or otherwise deal with matters of sex, drug misuse or addiction, crime, cruelty, violence or revolting or abhorrent phenomena in such a way that they offend against the standards of morality, decency and propriety generally accepted by reasonable adults to the extent that they should not be classified; or
• describe or depict in a way that is likely to cause offence to a reasonable adult, a person who is, or appears to be, a child under 18 (whether the person is engaged in sexual activity or not); or
• promote, incite or instruct in matters of crime or violence.

"We've got words like morality. We've got words like reasonable person, decency. Who's going to be judging this? It won't be reasonable people," he said. "It's a government who's going to be setting this up — it's a government's view on what's reasonable."

Then Greens MP Lee Rhiannon took the stage to deliver a fiery speech against the mandatory filter and to rouse people to be active by signing petitions and ringing their local MPs to raise awareness.

She even took questions on the issue, including one from this man, who asked whether it would be acceptable to have an opt-out filter as Labor Senator Kate Lundy has suggested.

"My gut feeling on this is that we don't want to know about it," Rhiannon said. "The essence of filtering the web is not the way to go."

People seemed to be listening with some interest to the speeches.

Many also recorded it.

Even Gray was absorbed in the rest of the speeches, until he disappeared for interviews.

The result: people rushed the table at the end of the program to sign the petitions.