Didn't the US government already try to do this, like 2 decades or so ago?
Yep. The International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) control the export and import of defense-related articles and services on the United States Munitions List. Until approx 1997, ITAR classified strong cryptography as arms and prohibited their export from the U.S. So welcome back to pre-97 Australia...
They will encrypt their thesis with it. If ever decrypted, their doctorates will be revoked!
There is another possible slant to this announcement - perhaps Conroy is intentionally trying to sink the scheme by showing how hard the control of P2P traffic will be. The media coverage and public feedback is impossible for him to ignore - indeed we know he's not ignoring it due to the blog set up, etc, and Conroy is very selective in when he chooses to answer questions regarding this.
The government now knows how unpopular this idea is, but still has top "play the game" of placating the supporters of the scheme. By extending the live trial to cover P2P traffic as well, they can get even more damning results of how ineffectual and obrtusive the filtering will be, and so will be able to throw the scheme out with a "well, we tried..."
Yes, I know I'm probably completely delusional...
I have never heard of a plan that does not count both uploads and downloads. Is there a specific example of a plan that excludes uploads?
Most (all?) of Internode's plans are a good example - http://bc.whirlpool.net.au/bc/isp-9-1/internode-home-adsl.htm - there may be some caveats to that, but for the most part I understand there is no limit, which is great for the P2P fans - no need to worry about being shaped due to uploading too much.
Always try to do things in chronological order; it's less confusing that way.