Dear LEGO,

Again well said.

While most of us do get it many so called libertarians seem to be unable to distinguish between a person expressing their opinion and a company producing ultra-offensive sloganeering for profit.

If an individual under stress crying out against what he or she deems a gross injustice is offensive I think most people are prepared to cut them some slack believing they have a right to be heard.

For the company in question there are none of these factors.

It seems we are becoming infected by the notion that companies have rights of individual citizens, a right they are free to abuse for profit. They might have decided just that in the Citizens United case in the US but as yet we don't have to put up with it here. I fully support the Queensland laws and would like to see them extended to the rest of the country.

Or perhaps we could restrict these vans to only adult viewing hours.

"Or perhaps we could restrict these vans to only adult viewing hours"

But you'd still object. And extend your offence and bans to all manner of other things.

Freedom of speech is precious. Political correctness is dismissive of it and aims to curtail it, for obvious reasons.

To Leoj

I am as passionate a defender of freedom of speech as any true progressive person on this site. But that does not mean that you, Leoj, have a right to shout "fire!" in a crowded theatre. I define freedom of speech as the right to comment upon any political, social, or scientific issue. And that is a freedom that Australians are losing at this point in time through multiculturalism and 18C. The media has the power to alter the values, attitudes and behaviours of entire populations, a fact that governments, both democratic and totalitarian, are fully aware of. It can sell products, set fashions, advance ideas, create heroes, endorse opinions, champion causes, incite rebellions, cause controversies, and arouse emotions.

The idea that advertising media or entertainment media has no effect on human behaviour is one which the advertising industry knows is false, and which the entertainment media knows is false. There was a time when liberal people like yourself could be relied upon to go into bat for the people against greedy corporations who sell products which they know affects children, and which does incalculable harm to your own society. But perhaps you are part of the industry which puts it's own self interest above that of the society it inhabits? Or is it just your idea that "progressive" people always defend the media's right to do anything?

Never before in history has a society been affected by this cultural greed. One third of families are now single parent, usually with a heroic mother trying to balance a job with raising kids and imparting pro social values to them. Then along comes "Wicked Campers" promoting a derogatory image of women on a public road. If you came home at night and found a person from 'Wicked Campers" telling your kids that girls are just sluts and that your daughters should suck their boyfriends dicks, you would grab the bastard by the collar and throw him right out off the house.

But if "Wicked Campers" do the same thing to other people's kids in public you defend them.

LEGO, "shout 'fire!' in a crowded theatre"

That is a false comparison.

I agree with you that some of the messages on Wicked vans are vulgar and distasteful. However I also believe that young people can easily discriminate between cartoons and real life.

These are ordinary youthful travellers hiring the campers. I have met many on the road and usually asking about free camp sites -not my aim but I do like wild places, few of which remain.

While there is always a problem that some might be encouraged towards foolish risk-taking behaviour by the countercultural message, they already have access to similar and probably worse influences elsewhere in the public domain. For example, from the tattoo and body modification industry and on The Box.

The messages on the campers need to be assessed on a case by case basis. There is already an advertising council to do that. Grandstanding by politicians is not required.

The kids are only trying to be wicked, just shrug your shoulders and let them go. Most young people have a need to impress.

There is the odd sign that might go too far and that can be sorted as mentioned earlier.

You mentioned s18C - now there is an obscenity.

To Leoj.

Children can not differentiate between media messages and real life. Children believe in the tooth fairy, Santa Claus, Gods, ghosts, and flying dragons, because adults tell them that these things exist, and they have no way of knowing any different.

People are not born with moral values. The values that you and everybody in Australia has internalised as correct behaviour, was inculcated into you over time by your parents, teachers, religious leaders, role model heroes, and the collective culture of your people. Children's guardians strive to instil in children social responsibility, respect for others, moral boundaries, and self control. Then along comes the entertainment and advertising industries who tell young people that vulgarity is cool, taking illegal drugs is OK, violent gangs of loutish thugs are glamourous people, girls are just sluts, it's manly to bash your "skanky ho", real men are violent men, spraying graffiti everywhere is cool, and acting like a complete idiot is fun.

The messages that Wicked Campers chose to present on a public street where children can see it are not the values which your parents wanted you to internalise when you were just a kid. Adults can look at vulgarity on TV screens, movies and nightclubs and regard it as a parody or an exaggeration of real life, and we can regard it as humorous. But we shield children from such media messages because what we see as adult humour children can see as a script on how they should behave.

That even small children are now being exposed to sexually explicit, vulgar and violent media is illustrated by a recent stories in my local newspaper. Child care workers in kindergartens are reporting that little girls are now being regularly sexually assaulted by little boys. And you want Wicked Campers to keep telling little boys that girls are just sluts who really want it?

Imagine yourself driving a car full of little girls and coming up behind a wicked camper van. The message would cause you both you and the little girls acute embarrassment.

leoj

‘It is as though the Sixties protests against censorship and demand for free speech never happened.’

We are no longer living in a moral climate that bans innocuous books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover or demands that married couples in films must sleep in twin beds.

The 1960s sexual revolution created a much more relaxed and liberal moral climate. The trouble is … those who profit from gratuitously ‘pushing boundaries’ (as they often like to call it) didn’t know how to stop and now the pendulum has swung too far in the opposite direction.

Tell me … what about this Wicked Campers slogan: ‘Fat chicks are harder to kidnap.’

Would the families of Anita Cobby, Janine Balding, Ebony Simpson, Elizabeth Morse, the Truro victims, the Belangelo victims, Keyra Steinhardt … and many others appreciate this as a harmless expression of free speech?

Public domain jokes for profit about kidnapping women? Some things you just don’t joke about.

Freedom of speech is a right, but it’s also a responsibility. As with all rights, if it’s repeatedly abused, eventually it gets taken away.