Senator RYAN (Victoria) (15:21): I note that the previous speaker, Senator Marshall, said he was in favour of freedom of speech, freedom of the press, but
Senator Marshall: I am—
Senator RYAN: In this area it is always the ‘but’ that gets you. Every tyrant or every person who has tried to suppress what people may say, print or broadcast has always claimed to be in favour of freedom of speech. When they were censoring student newspapers at universities they said it was about freedom of speech but only for certain groups on campus. What we have here in Australia today is freedom of speech, not just of the press but freedom of speech and expression more generally, which is under more serious threat than at any time since Labor was last in office and they tried to ban political advertising. But the High Court drew a line under that and said: ‘No. This parliament does not have the power to ban political advertising because that counts as expression and that is an implied right of freedom in our Constitution.’ It is a ruling that I strongly support, because the greatest threat to freedom of speech has always been government.
The greatest threat to freedom of speech and freedom of expression has always been the power of the state. Just last year we had a columnist in Australia dragged through the courts for expressing an opinion. They were not found to have defamed someone, they were not found to have libelled someone but they were dragged through the courts for expressing an opinion that some people found offensive. I am quite proudly in the American school of free speech. The courts should take a minimalist view of every single law restricting speech. There is no country on earth, no country in the history of humanity, where freedom of speech and expression has been as strongly guaranteed as in the United States.
Always the threat to freedom of expression comes from people in places like this. It comes from experts and people who think they have some right to determine what is the correct opinion and who are the correct people to express it. That the government on the other side here would tolerate the idea of the licensing of journalists, that it would not unilaterally, automatically and immediately dismiss that whole idea, is offensive to the democratic history of this country. It is absolutely offensive. This is the idea that you would need a ticket from a body appointed by government, no matter at what arm’s length, before you could write in a newspaper. Let us just put that into historical context: countries in the world that no longer exist had rules like that.
Where is the problem that freedom of expression has got to us in this country? In fact, I put it to you and to the people, Mr Deputy President, that the problem in this country has been a lack of freedom of expression. Our laws on defamation have protected people who could be exposed. Our laws on sedition have occasionally in the past, with things like D-notices, been too strict when we compare them to what has happened in the United States. Always we should be aiming to err on the side of freedom of expression, but that is not the approach of this government and their Greens allies. The approach of this government and their Greens allies is that there is a correct opinion to express and there is a correct form or way to express it. What we have seen is a proposal to regulate blog sites.
Senator WONG: All the people who believe climate change is real are not allowed to speak out.
Senator RYAN: What was that, Senator Wong? I do not know how this relates to climate change.
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Ignore the interjection, Senator Ryan. You have the call.
Senator RYAN: Senator Wong, maybe you are afraid of the fact that your religious crusade has been exposed by this very freedom of expression.
Senator Wong interjecting—
The DEPUTY PRESIDENT: Senator Wong, that is not a assisting the chamber. Senator Ryan, direct your remarks to the chair and not across the chamber. Ignore the interjections. You have the call.
Senator RYAN: I point out, Mr Deputy President, that it is on this side of the chamber that people are free to express their opinions and to vote as their consciences see fit. It is on that side of the chamber, in the Labor Party, that expressing an individual opinion outside the caucus has since the day they were formed been forbidden. That binding caucus rule means that, no matter what opinions are expressed inside a now leaking Labor Party caucus, the people of Australia will never hear them in an official sense.
The internet is the equivalent of the modern day Gutenberg press. It has made the ability to write—to become an author, a publisher, a journalist or whatever you might want to describe yourself as—cheaper and more available than at any time in human history. Yet, from the Labor Party, from the government, we see proposals which, again, have not been immediately dismissed to somehow start regulating blog sites. How are we going to do this? Rather than have the contest of freedom of speech being out there in the public domain, we want to try to regulate what people do. It is not just legal action that suppresses freedom of speech; it is the threat of legal action. It is the threat of people being dragged through the courts. It is the threat of bloggers having regulators come down upon them. Freedom of speech is under more threat than it has been in this country for many years because of those opposite.
Question agreed to.