Right on, JBSH, that's Don's point - but I hope that you weren't suggesting, from that clip, that people with different views should shut up or face being harassed and bullied until they acquiesce ?

After all, threatening someone with violence, even tacitly, would be a breach of that person's freedom of expression, wouldn't it ? Where do you draw the boundary between the two ? Where would, say, Abbott punching the wall next to someone's head come on that divide ? Or even just leaning against the wall very close to someone's head ? Or someone going off like a pork chop and yelling directly and persistently in someone's face ?

Would it be different if they were a climate change sceptic ? Am I still allowed to use that word ?

Joe

This man saw it all coming and here is his speech to a graduating class of lawyers at Harvard,

http://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/charltonhestonculturalwar.htm

" while the other is about climate change and the feeling by some that others should not voice their own opinions about it, let alone call for real and public debate."

Wait, what ? That makes no sense, the Science community is 97% on side with anthropogenic climate change, what's to debate ? Outside of being a scientist with the prerequisite skills, how in hell can you debate it. Do Mr Brandis etal have the required knowledge in the required scientific disciplines to engage in a debate ? He can't, it's like asking him to "debate" quantum physics, would you listen to him on that ?

or do you mean uninformed opinion is now debate ?

This sound suspiciously like a fake false balance argument, there are no two sides, much like there are no two sides of evolution, you totally misunderstand the entire scientific process if you think this is how scientific "debate" occurs. Sure the theory to explain the observations may be wrong, they recognise that and even assign it a percentage, 5% and as time goes on they're more sure, not less.

If you ever find a velociraptor with a rabbit in it's mouth it would turn evolution upside down and a different explanation for global warming may be out there (95% sure it isn't) but an explanation for it sure is hell is not coming from the likes of Brandis.

Can others have an opinion, for sure but lets not confuse that with a debate on the Science of ACC. Brandis is either a muppet or a lawyer, both of about equal use.

The debate is about whether we should bother to mitigate.

Don Aitkin’s views on the AGW campaign are not directed against science but more against a political cult most of whose adherents, I would suggest, have no idea of the underlying science and would be incapable of debating it in scientific terms which distinguish between on the one hand closely argued examination of truth and on the other hand competitive bellowing. Professor Aitkin does, to my own satisfaction as a scientifically literate reader, debate the issues in terms that generally do not violate the norms of scientific debate. In this essay he does at one point, I believe, push the envelope somewhat. This is in the paragraph “Sixty years on [...]]and so on” in which he caricatures an opposing position, thus facilitating the appearance of refutation.

However, to contribute further to the culture of freedom of speech, Professor Aitkin might place in his blog a facility (as in OLO) for readers to comment on aspects and pursue issues of disagreement. Not bellowing of course, such uninformative labelling of people as “denialists” or Abbotesque dismissal of statements based (even if questionably) on science as “crap”.

My thanks to the several commenters so far.

Bren: my reference to universities was a form of irony...

Jeremy: I'm not sure what you are getting at. If you think I've been inaccurate you might indicate where.

Agronomist: You make an excellent point, and indeed I think that force of my essay was about the failure to engage properly in debate, and the use of putdowns in shutting people up, or trying to shut them up, rather than in free speech exactly. But for someone to tell me that I m a denier, or that I don't understand climate science, and in neither case without showing me my error, looks like a form of shutting up. If you think I don't understand climate science you might indicate where or in what respect, since I think I have a fair knowledge of the basics.

Valley Guy: Asserting stuff that is easily shown to be wrong (like the remark about 97 per cent of climate scientists are onside...) is not engaging. It's a form of rejection by assertion, and looks like a form of shutting up. I've deal with the 97 % statistic in other posts. You can find them by searching on my website — just Google '97%'.

Emperor Julian: I'll think about your suggestion. If you have a post you would like me to run, let me see it and I'll tell you if I am prepared to run it.

The reason why "there is little support for freedom of speech" in this country is because we have had it for so long that it has been taken for granted by the majority of the electorate. Most people have never even heard of the Andrew Bolt case, because most people are not concerned with political or social issues until it affects them directly.

Even those who do take an interest in social issues did not see the ramifications of the Bolt case coming. The principle of freedom of speech is so ingrained in western thinking, that when the first legislation was enacted to shut people up, most people thought that it was only to be used against holocaust deniers and other nutters.

But when the Reactionaries realised that they had actually gotten away with it, the fun began. They enthusiastically began to extend their new power to shut up all the critics of their state supported socialist ideology. You can't criticise, or even have comediennes make fun of, the self evident failures of Multiculturalism, without "offending, insulting, humiliating, or intimidating" somebody.

The Bolt case was really significant. Here was a mainstream journalist who wrote an article about what he perceived to be the rorting of government funds set up to aid aborigines, by people that most of the public would not even consider to be aborigines. That this legislation can be used by people who wish to continue their privileged positions, which most people would say they are not entitled to, by shutting up the journalists who's job it is to inform the public, is not acceptable in a free society.

That the "free" press must now not offend certain ethnicities about any issue by telling the truth, is the real issue. It must never be illegal in a free society for anyone, especially the free press, to tell the truth, or to comment upon the social issues which affect us all socially and financially. Unless we win this fight, we will have taken our very first big step backwards towards totalitarianism.