Author Archive | James Paterson

Today the IPA’s Simon Breheny testifies before the NSW parliament into racial vilification law. The parliament is considering whether their laws should be widened to capture more people.

Here’s Simon’s opening statement:

This inquiry into racial vilification law in New South Wales risks opening the door to changes that could have very serious consequences for freedom of speech.

The current criminal law in this area is based on physical harm. The concept is a simple one: threats of physical violence are unacceptable and should be outlawed.

The law as it stands is appropriate. However, it must not be expanded to catch any form of conduct less than specific threats of physical violence. To do so risks undermining one of our most important liberal democratic rights – freedom of speech.

Other submissions to this inquiry have recommended such regressive changes, which could make it possible for a person to be fined or imprisoned merely for expressing a certain opinion.

Lowering the bar to include, for instance, conduct that offends, insults or humiliates, would be a dangerous step in the wrong direction. Such restrictions on free speech are completely unacceptable.

This inquiry appears to be based on the idea that a criminal law that has not resulted in any convictions is not good law. In fact, the opposite is closer to the truth. The law is a success because it is being obeyed – no one is threatening physical harm towards others on the basis of their race. Surely we would prefer a legal system where no convictions are ever recorded. In this case, the provision should be seen as a successful law, not one that requires amendment.

If any change is to be recommended by this committee it should involve the repeal of s 20D of the Anti-Discrimination Act 1977 and a reversion to common law actions based on intimidation rather than race.

At the national level, the Gillard government has recently been forced to back down over two proposed pieces of legislation that would have restricted free speech – namely, the dangerous overhaul of anti-discrimination law and the introduction of a misconceived regulatory regime to oversee Australia’s news media. It is disappointing that a Coalition government in New South Wales is opening the door to further incursions on our human right to freedom of speech.

The Gillard government’s anti-discrimination laws weren’t defeated by accident:

Full credit to the federal president of Young Labor who had this important article ($) in The Australian today on why the ALP should defend free speech, not attack it:

In his crusade to ensure government regulation and oversight of media content, Communications Minister Stephen Conroy is pursuing a regulatory act that would breach fundamentally the liberal ideal of a free press.

…

Conroy has put freedom of speech and the independence of the press as an election issue, which the Coalition can seek to capitalise on in September if the ALP does not reverse its position on this more draconian element of the reform package. For the many members of the Labor Party at a youth level who are strong advocates of civil liberties, the abridgment of these freedoms should never be an election issue but protected by Labor governments.

A fantastic column in The Australian today from Janet Albrechtsen on the left’s hostility to free speech:

INADVERTENTLY, Stephen Conroy has done us a favour. His arrogant attempt to regulate the content of newspapers reminds us that free speech and a free press can never be taken for granted. He has also reminded us how the Left will use nice-sounding language to hide a radical agenda.

His Public Interest Media Advocate is code for a government-appointed bureaucrat empowered to impose a political interest test when regulating the content of newspapers.

The Minister for Communications has also usefully debunked the claim that there is no longer a Left and Right in this country. Remember the mantra of many on the Left not so long ago that such distinctions were meaningless. While correct on some fronts, it’s wrong on the freedom front. While not every member of the Left supports Conroy’s attempt to muzzle the media, the silence of so many within Labor is telling. This dark episode is a stellar lesson of the Left’s illiberal DNA.

Thanks are also due to Nicola Roxon as she takes her leave from the federal parliament.

Her equally misguided attempt to set boundaries around speech pursuant to her Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill is another example of what many members of the Left will do if given the chance.

The article is sadly behind The Australian‘s paywall here – and shows exactly why you should subscribe!

Today the IPA’s Chris Berg and Simon Breheny appeared before a Senate Inquiry into Stephen Conroy’s proposed regulations on the media.

This was their opening statement:

The News Media Reform Package 2013 is nothing less than an attack on freedom of speech and freedom of the press in Australia.

It is absurd to claim that the government could institute a regulator to regulate media self-regulators like the Australian Press Council and pretend that doing so would not constitute substantial new government oversight of the free press.

This is a fundamental conceptual error with very disturbing consequences.

And in our view, government oversight of the press is unacceptable in a liberal democracy. The government has no business deciding what constitutes fairness or balance in a media whose job is to hold them to account. That ought to be a bedrock principle accepted by all sides of political debate.

We have a number of specific points we would like to raise about the proposed Public Interest Media Advocate.

The government-appointed PIMA would be responsible for deciding which news media self-regulation bodies’ members would receive an exemption from the Privacy Act and which would not.

This regime means that news outlets will never be able to write about things that are claimed to be personal or sensitive. The news-gathering functions of a news media organisation would be shackled for fear of breaching the Privacy Act.

To us the coupling of privacy act exemptions with regulated membership clearly makes this a de facto licensing system, further emphasising the significance of the attack on free expression the proposal represents.

The minister can directly and unilaterally appoint any person to the Public Interest Media Advocate.

Government members of this committee might reflect about who a future government could appoint, and whether instilling such significant powers over the press on a political appointee is democratically desirable.

This is doubly so because of the entirely undefined concept of “public interest” that this entire project seems to be founded on. I’m sure our idea of what is in the public interest is different to some members of the committee.

The proposed regime also undermines fundamental legal rights. The bills provide no avenue for appeal of a decision of the PIMA, they reverse the burden of proof in cases of proposed media mergers and they use ambiguous terms that give the PIMA enormous discretionary power.

The most disappointing part of this process is how the government has completely shirked the necessary reform to regulatory frameworks governing media and communications. There is almost nothing in these bills that deals with the serious and important problems in media regulation brought about by technological convergence.

Instead, the process seems to have been entirely diverted by a partisan battle between one side of politics and one media company.

We have one final, broader concern.

Chris Berg and I appeared before another Senate inquiry into another bill less than two months ago – on 23 January 2013 – to defend freedom of speech against another threat posed by legislation this government proposed. That bill was the draft Human Rights and Anti-Discrimination Bill 2012.

Both pieces of legislation seek to shrink civil society by restricting free speech: one under the guise of human rights, the other under the guise of fairness and accuracy in the media.

For these reasons it is our view that the bills be rejected.