Kenny is right. There is no law that gives us the right to free speech. Australia does not have a Bill of Rights where such a right might be provided in law, like in the USA for example. We could have ourselves a Bill of Rights if we wanted to, including the right to free speech, the right to vote, the right to free assembly etc, but its just too scary for most politicians. Canada passed a Bill of Rights a few years ago, and its democracy is thriving as Canadians explore their rights under the law. The A.C.T. also now has a (very mild) Bill of Rights and the sky has not fallen in.

About a decade ago, The High Court found in the Constitution an "implied right of political communication", on the basis that we have a system of representative democracy that could not function properly if such an "implied right" did not exist. However, an "implied right" is a very fragile concept, appears to have a relatively narrow application, and could easily be overturned by a change of political persuasion on the bench.

Australia also has some of the most restrictive defamation laws in the western world, which serve mostly to protect the rich and powerful, including politicians, from criticism. Newspaper reporting on political corruption, for example, is constrained by these laws so that we are not kept properly informed. The USA has much less restrictive defamation laws, and as a consequence americans are able to hear more about what goes on behind closed doors. The documentary "Outfoxed" about Rupert Murdoch's right-wing political activities in the USA, which played last night on the ABC, probably could not have been made in Australia.

The Howard government has done nothing to standardise and relax our defamation laws despite acres of reports and recommendations suggesting they should. This is nothing but perverted self-interest. Remember how Jo Bjelke-Petersen used the defamation laws to smother any criticism of corruption in his government, and made enough money to subsidise his peanut farm, and Abbott and Costello forum shopping into the ACT so they could make an easy couple of hundred thousand dollars through the defamation laws? If you can afford the lawyers, you can make the money, and free speech is a joke. Disgraceful.

If you really believe in free speech, then you should be arguing for a federal Bill of Rights, and for reform of the defamation laws.

The same people who are making breathtaking arguments here that we don't have a right to free speech would almost certainly oppose much state censorship of offensive and obscene cultural material, and oppose it on free speech grounds.

I realise that my own side can look odd, when we argue for freedom of political and religious speech, but also support the sort of censorship I've just mentioned - but I believe that our position is rationally defensible. Freedom of Political and Religious Speech is a longstanding part of the Australian/British cultural heritage, and has clear public interest merits - whereas neither of these things are true of the widespread dissemination (so to speak) of sexually explicit and obscene cultural material.

Ben P, you say: "The same people who are making breathtaking arguments here that we don't have a right to free speech would almost certainly oppose much state censorship of offensive and obscene cultural material, and oppose it on free speech grounds."

It is very presumptuous of you to make such an assertion. How do you know this? In any case, you have managed to confuse the issue. We can all argue in support of free speech, in the absence of any explicit constitutional rights to free speech. We do this every day. But we may also differ on the extent to which censorship should infere with free speech. Some might argue that anything which offends religious sensitivities should be censored. Others might argue that anything that offends cultural sensititivies, whatever that might be, should be censored. And others might argue that censorship should only apply where real damage can be done to the innocent, such as in the case of paedophilia, for example. These are matters that we decide together through our parliaments, and there will always be disagreements about whether we have gone too far, or not far enough.

In the end it makes no difference whether you put it in capitals. "Freedom of Political and Religious Speech" might be a "longstanding part of the Australian/British cultural heritage" and it might have "clear public interest merits" but until it is a constitutional right that we all share, we can have no confidence that tomorrow we might not be able to speak freely at all, even about censorship

Great riposte, Grace - I enjoyed it. I admit presumptuousness. Obviously you do not fall into the group of people I was thinking of. I would say that almost everybody among my non-Christian peers (I'm 31) would be entirely opposed to state censorship on the grounds of obscenity (except in the cases of showing things that are actually against the law) - they have a "free speech" reflex on that issue. Your view is obviously more nuanced.

The very title of the issue under discussion is very annoying..

speaking as an evangelical. The word 'hate' is one that we are constantly seeking to rid ourselves of, personally and corporately.
Its not Christlike. (with the exception of rightous anger at various abuses... leading children astray, making 'money' out of religion)
But the idea of 'hate' speech applied to evangelicals is to misundersand our position. Fred Phelps who just about dances on the grave of the homosexual who was killed after one of his sermons, who went to the funeral at it preached against homosexuals, who set up a memorial on the grave saying "THIS many days since he went to hell" is not exactly what I would describe as an 'evangelical' We call that type 'hyper fundamentalist weirdo'. You can tell the type within the first few utterances they make. One has to have the same balance as Christ had, and showed, to qualify as a balanced Christian. Hate speech is not for us.

COL ROUGE
I totally agree with your post up the top.