A public airing of the free speech issue

In this ABC interview, Senator George Brandis expresses his satisfaction with the defeat of various Government efforts to curtail freedom of speech and of the press in Australia. Those are the efforts I've mentioned in earlier posts.

It's interesting to watch political figures be interviewed on Australian telly. The interviewers are much more aggressive than we see in the US. You'll definitely see that in this one.

Senator Brandis' final point was a challenge to the media itself. The interviewer said to him, "Don't you think that all of us in the media are defenders of free speech?" He said, "I wish you were. I wish there had been more outrage when these measures were proposed." Why wasn't there? ABC, of course, is a publicly funded entity, so probably feels some reticence to criticize the Government. But you do have to wonder what people really care about. Someone said to me, "The US is about freedom and Australia is about fairness." How can people forget that the latter will disappear without the former?

I'm currently reading a wonderful novel from 1975, Poor Fellow My Country by Xavier Herbert.  It is a sweeping, involved panorama of Australia in the first half of the 20th century, through the first half of World War II.

The novel is so incredible that it will be the subject of a post dedicated to it. But check this out: the hero has been incarcerated, wrongly, on suspicion of seditious activity (he's one of those guys who speaks bluntly and doesn't curry favor with anyone.) His lawyer says to him (a close paraphrase), "Don't look for protection of your right of free speech in Commonwealth Law. There is no Bill of Rights such as found in the United Kingdom or the U.S.A. Free speech can be denied at the whim of any Chief Justice. And of course, His Honour's wig is the property of the Attorney-General's department."

Still true 70 years after the fictitious incident, and 40 years after the novel was written.