In Australia, freedom of speech and of the press are not rights guaranteed by law. In the US, of course, those rights are protected by what commentator George Will calls "the five sweetest words ever written," which are, "Congress shall make no law." But not in Oz.
In this vacuum, the Australian Labor Party saw an opportunity: use an ongoing series of media gaffes as an excuse to impose controls on the media. This has been a slow-burning debate, and not having read any proposed legislation, I'm not really sure how severe the restrictions might be. I can only say that, in America, if anyone proposed a "public interest test" for media ownership, there would be a general reaction of "What the hell is going on here?"
Possibly related, we see this week the entry of the Pirate Party into Australian politics . If you're an American and have never heard of the Pirate Party, you can be excused--the issues leading to its creation are largely absent in the US. But it's kind of a big deal in Europe. There are two Pirate Party senators in the European Parliament.
The founder of the Pirate Party, Rick Falkvinge, is an eloquent spokesman for the party's ideals, which mainly have to do with freedom--of information, but also of individuals. It will be fun to watch as this innovative, protest-centric group steps into the class-conscious, mud-slinging, maelstrom of mediocrity that is Aussie politics.
Anti-discrimination laws not only threaten free speech; they evidently threaten the operation of Australian state governments.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/states-fear-discrimination-law-mess/story-e6freuy9-1226562151374
But there is some sanity. From the Daily Telegraph today:
ReplyDelete"A much broader concern is that the definition of discrimination has been widened to include 'conduct that offends and insults', in a change widely criticised as a threat to free speech.
"ABC chairman and former NSW Supreme Court chief justice James Spigelman declared in his Human Rights Day oration last month that 'the freedom to offend is an integral component of freedom of speech. There is no right not to be offended'.
"Even the president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, has called on the government to change the wording."