Communications Minister Stephen Conroy late last week announced the Government would hold off on its filter proposal until a year-long review of refused classification rules had been completed.

Internode’s announcement is a blow to hopes that the filter will become industry standard though Telstra, Optus and Primus, which between them represent about 70 per cent of Australian internet connections have announced they will voluntarily block child abuse content.

Internode’s regulatory and corporate affairs manager, John Lindsay told Indaily the black list had been “thoroughly discredited”.

''It covers a tiny proportion of the content that would need to be blocked for it to be effective and has already been shown to contain URLs of legal content that Australians would expect to access,'' Mr Lindsay said