As Mike has agreed to adopt a professional manner when engaging in future debate, I would ask that those wishing to post comments here do likewise - I will not approve excessively vitriolic comments by any party. If you think other forms of response are required, you are entitled to publish these in forums of your own choosing, but I reserve the right not to publish them here.

I retract any statements that reference a person’s capabilities and apologise for these. That was not correct of me.

Any statements from my side were based on discussions and industry knowledge over a longer period. No deals that I have any knowledge of, in the manner suggested in some recent blogs, have been done between ACMA and any commercial entity that I either know of or have worked with in any capacity.

I am not an “insider” with more access to relevant people that anybody else has had, should they have been involved in this process and the security industry for as long as I have. Where I have apparently implied otherwise, then this was badly chosen expression on my behalf. Again I apologise for this.

I admit that I have been caught up in the rising rhetoric and have clearly been over the top with mine. That will cease.

I have now clearly seen that using inflammatory language does not help this discussion at all, and regret any offence that any of you have perceived.

As far as I can see from the EOI docs and any discussions I have ever had, these upcoming tests are ISP owned and driven, and no direct arrangements of any kind have been made by ACMA with any vendor. The ISP decides solely which technologies they will use.

On affiliations: I have been interacting with several players involved in this whole process for over a year, on an ad-hoc and unpaid basis (advisory on technologies and market developments), however I recently agreed to be contracted with a vendor of ISP-filtering solutions. Views and opinions expressed have thus been exclusively my personal entries, and involved no participation of any third party. And again, where I have given the impression that I was a conduit for a vendor’s or any third parties inputs, then this again was my error or mis-interpreted.

Bottom line: I appreciate the various blogs being available as forums for discussion, and will seek to engage with you all in a more professional manner in the future. The strong reactions I have seen have prompted me to revisit the issues at hand and have a good think about what would be an optimal outcome of this whole initiative.

Mike of Melb

In appreciation of his rethink, I have decided to hide the reposts of his posts and the subsequent critical commentary.

A full statement from Mike will be shortly forthcoming. In the interim, the concluding paragraph of the draft statement is reproduced below.

“I appreciate the various blogs being available as forums for discussion, and will seek to engage with you all in a more professional manner in the future. The strong reactions I have seen have prompted me to revisit the issues at hand and have a good think about what would be an optimal outcome of this whole initiative.”.

See also comments on “Somebody Think Of The Children” and “Broadbanned Revolution”

I would like to encourage everyone who encounters Mike in other fora in future to put this little episode aside and adjust the tone of the debate to the tone that Mike himself has agreed to adopt in future.