Wednesday, 31 August 2022

Freedom of speech

Mr LIMBRICK (South Eastern Metropolitan) (10:00): Early last year Human Rights Watch published an article noting that 83 countries around the world had used the pandemic as an excuse to suppress free speech. They also noted that authorities in at least 18 countries went as far as assaulting journalists, bloggers and protesters. I do not know if they counted Australia in that list, but I certainly would have. Thankfully some kind of sense prevailed yesterday, with the charges against Zoe Buhler for trying to organise a small protest finally dropped.

Free expression has long been considered a pillar of free and open democracies—an essential element for allowing our societies to tolerate diversity and criticise the powerful and corrupt. A cultural and legal shift in perspective to considering words as violence in many Western nations has led to the absurdity of comedians being charged with crimes and people in the UK being visited by police for wrongthink. In 1989 Salman Rushdie set off what might be the longest debate on free speech in modern history when he published The Satanic Verses. This led to Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran issuing a fatwa—essentially an international murder decree. Just a couple of weeks ago we saw that the effect of this has persisted, as a man stabbed Mr Rushdie multiple times as he was about to give a speech. Many authors and public commentators suddenly remembered that free speech is important and wrote columns and tweets expressing their support. I hope that they stay true to this value when governments attempt to bring in laws restricting free speech. I wish Salman Rushdie a full and speedy recovery so that he may continue to be a fierce defender of free speech.