Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business and Fair Competition) Share this | Hansard source

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.