Quote Originally Posted by DELTAprime View Post
The Pirate Bay and other torrent sites are illegal, under international treaties as well as Australian copyright law they are well within their right to block copyright infringement
Actually that is incorrect, torrent sites themselves are not illegal, it's the content some users choose to upload and share that is. The only thing that the torrent sites do that could be called illegal is not removing content if they get a cease and desist notice.
But on the flip side plenty of torrent sites including TPB also have torrents of content that is free to use and distribute in any means people see fit, for example linux distributions are also hosted on those sites and those are not only freely distributed but encouraged to be distributed in such manners.
So in essence the government blocking any torrent site rather then just blocking the "illegal" pages/users could be said to be the same as blocking the phone network because a criminal used it to commit a crime as they are punishing even those that use torrent sites for legal content for the actions of those that use them for illegal content.
So if it came down to it I can very well see the government blocking the use of VPNs for all but those on business plans with an ISP and claiming "if you are on a residential plan you have no need to use a VPN for anything".

On the tax matter we can only wait and see, the government could very well choose to enforce taxes on the Australian branches of companies like eBay and Amazon for overseas purchases made using their platform which is why they want to geoblock, to stop Aussie users buying from overseas so that the government cant chase the AU branches for money.
It will obviously have less of an affect on companies that dont have an AU branch as no, the government cant collect taxes from companies that dont trade in Australia or have an ABN.
It's all a matter of wait and see though, but I for one don't welcome this scam