Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'm pleased to follow the member for Fisher, and I acknowledge that his contribution was thoughtful and considered and, in many parts, set out very clearly why freedom of speech and freedom of thought are very important. There is a 'but', however—

Mr Wallace interjecting—

I agree with the member for Fisher: I was doing so well. My only 'however' to that speech is that it has to cut both ways. If we are to genuinely support freedom of speech in the way that the member for Fisher and the member for Goldstein put forward in their speeches, then everyone has to accept that people's views that are ideologically or politically different to theirs have the right to be put and to be debated, and accept the hypocrisy of advocating for freedom of speech for those you agree with but not for those you don't. The member for Goldstein talked about what he saw as the hypocrisy of the progressive Left. There is no doubt that there are some people, who may or may not fit the descriptor 'progressive Left', who go a very long way in their desire to stop speech that they see as hurtful or harmful to people in their world and who ask for words and phrases not to be used, in situations where others believe they have a right to use them. But to suggest that it's only people within the progressive Left who would like some limits on freedom of speech is in and of itself a hypocritical argument.

Freedom of speech does have limits, and I think everyone agrees with that. We teach children that from the day they're born. You might have the right to say things, but you shouldn't be using your freedom of speech in a way that is deliberately harmful, hurtful or offensive. There are limits. Even if you don't mean harm or offence or hurt, if what you are doing with your speech is causing those things then there are appropriate limits. I would say to those on the other side who rail against what they call 'cancel culture' and 'the progressive left' that I think what people are actually trying to say is: 'Can you listen to the way in which speech, even traditional forms of speaking, is actually hurting people? Can you put it into the current culture and lives of people and accept that your right to speak that way or use those words causes us hurt and harm, and can you perhaps not do it?' That was just a little tangent I thought I might go on after listening to the member for Fisher's speech.

What I want to do is agree, as everyone on my side and the other side of the chamber has, that it is uncontroversial that freedom of speech and intellectual experimentation and searching are absolutely fundamental to universities and to education. There is no doubt about that. But one of the issues we have in this country, which I think is quite well demonstrated by the different approaches to this legislation and the different speeches that people have given, is that we don't have an overarching human rights framework within which to debate and consider the rights and responsibilities of citizens and their relationship with their government. Since Federation, we have had a piecemeal and ad hoc legislative approach to rights and freedoms. Freedoms have had to be taken as implied in our Constitution, because they're not written there. That means that when the parliament comes to debate legislation such as this we don't have a framework, whether it's a charter or a bill of rights, within which to place this legislation. As a country and as a legislature, we've seen those problems in recent times. Marriage equality, the ongoing discussion of religious freedoms, and press and journalistic freedoms—the lack of which was highlighted last year when journalists Dan Oakes and Annika Smethurst were subject to AFP raids and very long investigations, with the threat of prosecution, for doing their job—are all dealt with as if they don't have any connection, as if rights and freedoms don't interact.

It's complicated—human rights law and the approach to rights and freedoms—and we are doing ourselves and the Australian public a disservice by continuing, as a parliament, to try to deal with these issues one by one. In 2001, in Papers on parliament No. 36, Professor George Williams wrote:

A gulf lies between Australians and their government. This stems in part from the longstanding failure to set out the rights and responsibilities of Australians within the political process. The lack of an Australian statement of rights undermines any claim Australia might have to a 'magnificent' human rights record. In any event, the record of human rights abuses, ranging from the Stolen Generation to Albert Langer to our treatment of refugees, shows clearly otherwise.

Professor Williams went on to write:

There is an obvious need for reform. Changes such as improved civics education are important, but we also need to reinvigorate our public life by beginning a process that will involve Australians more directly in the political system. We should draft an Australian statement of rights and freedoms. This should be in the form of a Bill of Rights enacted by parliament that would offer a coherent domestic means of addressing our many contemporary debates on individual liberty. This could start a long overdue dialogue between parliament, the courts and the people. We need to legislate for a Bill of Rights now.

Twenty years later, Professor Williams' words continue to ring true and to resonate.

We are one of the few jurisdictions in the Western world who haven't adopted a general bill of rights. For some time bills of rights were perhaps considered a European legislative initiative; however, we now look at Canada, New Zealand, the United States—they've had a bill of rights for a long time—and, domestically, Victoria, Queensland and the ACT. They have all developed bills of rights. Now, there are a lot of debates about what the exact form of a bill of rights might look like, what is effective and what is not, but we're not even having that debate in Australia's federal parliament or politics at the moment, and we should be.

The Australian Human Rights Commission said recently—2021—in Australia's third UPR that Australia does not have a federal human rights act, meaning that 'many fundamental human rights protections are not fully protected in Australia'. It said:

There are also minimal protections in place to ensure that the government considers our human rights as part of everyday law and policy making, and takes steps to prevent breaches before they occur. There are limited avenues to seek review of government decisions or actions that violate a person's human rights.

In the same paper, the Human Rights Commission also says: 'Australia's discrimination laws provide the main vehicle for implementing the human rights obligations. These laws are complex, do not provide comprehensive protection and are largely reactive, placing significant emphasis on individual complaints. There are limited regulatory mechanisms to ensure compliance and promote equality. The commission considers an effective anti-discrimination network should have more emphasis on prevention measures that will assist duty holders to comply with the law, and more effective enforcement mechanisms when they don't.' Governments in Australia have been reactive to issues of rights and freedom for too long, partly because we don't have that national framework of a bill or a charter of human rights.

Before I conclude, I want to return to where I started, which is: in order to stand up and talk about the importance of academic freedom of speech and be taken seriously, it's important that parliamentarians and governments practice what they preach. As some of my colleagues have already said in this debate, when Senator Birmingham was minister for education he vetoed about $4 million of Australian Research Council grants because he didn't like what they were doing. Universities called that 'reprehensible' and said that it undermined the impartiality of the entire grant process. And, listening to the speech that the previous speaker, the member for Fisher, gave, I can't imagine that he would approve of that either, given his commitment to freedom of inquiry at universities.

Former Chief Justice French said in the report:

From the available evidence however, claims of a freedom of speech crisis on Australian campuses are not substantiated.

But we know that this government has been doing deals with Pauline Hanson and One Nation in relation to higher education. However, I do accept that there are members on that side who have a deep interest in freedom of speech and in governments not dictating to civil society what they can and can't say. Nonetheless, this Liberal government has passed legislation which makes it an offence for a Eureka flag to be flown on a building site or for construction workers, plumbers and electricians to wear their union insignia on building sites—freedom of speech, freedom of association.

We regularly hear outcries about research that the government doesn't believe in. We all know, because we all have NGOs and charities in our electorates who are either explicitly or implicitly constrained in the advocacy they are able to undertake, because of the funding agreements and the grants from government—from environmental defenders' offices to health providers. These are the sorts of actions from government that don't support the basic rights and freedoms that most people in this chamber have said that they support. If we're going to talk about freedoms in institutions, we need to be consistent about it.

There is a growing tendency in our political world to label others who say things that one doesn't agree with as 'un-Australian'. One might not agree with changing the date of Australia Day, but surely those who believe in freedom of speech believe in the right of people to stand up and say that they do and why they do. One might not agree with views that people have expressed on Twitter and in other place, but the freedom-of-speech principle that's espoused by those people on the other side, who talk about the core values of libertarianism, surely says that those people have a right—as long as they're not advocating violence, the downthrow of government or criminal offences—to express views that they don't agree with and not be hounded out of the country, be called un-Australian or spark calls for the defunding of broadcasters.

So let's have this debate, but let's be honest about the positions that people are taking, and let's try to be consistent when we say that we believe in principles. One way that, as a parliament, we can bring the Australian people with us and bring about some of that consistency is to genuinely start the process of developing and implementing an Australian bill of rights.

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