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

The previous speaker in this debate betrayed the government's agenda. The first half of the speech was a litany of complaints about the way the government had been treated. It was a litany of complaints about how News Limited newspapers in particular had criticised and dared not show deference to the wisdom of this government, this Prime Minister and this Minister for Broadband, Communications and the Digital Economy. That is at the core of what this is about. If the Labor Party wish to go around the community and accuse us of rabidly defending free speech, of raising the stakes in this debate, then it is an accusation that I will agree with, because this is a critical issue.

We are seeing proposed by this government a philosophy that has changed within the Labor Party. Years ago there were some on the left who opposed censorship along with Liberals, and we saw changes to our news reporting, we saw changes to the culture of journalism and we saw changes to the way things were published in Australia. Since that moment—since the development of the new left in Australia—we have seen a profound change. First it was the disease that infected the Greens; but, as we know, that has embedded itself in the soul of the Labor Party. It was so amusingly consecrated by the signing ceremony between the current Prime Minister and the former Leader of the Australian Greens. Now the Labor Party has this view that there is appropriate and inappropriate speech.

If the previous speaker wants to talk about appeasing media moguls and the public interest, let's go back to what formed Australia's largest news organisation, News Limited. It was the takeover of the Herald and Weekly Times signed off by Paul Keating and Bob Hawke. Paul Keating created the legislation that led to the so-called 'princes of print' and 'queens of the screen', and why did he do that? Labor people have written about this, so it is no secret. They did that because the Herald and Weekly Times, in particular the Melbourne Herald, ran a campaign against Labor's broken promise on the pension assets and means test in 1984.

The Labor Party is never scared of bragging about its power nor about the threats it wants to carry out on those who disagree. We will give them credit for that. In the mid-1980s we saw the formation of News Limited and we saw that not because the Labor Party thought it was going to improve Australia's media environment but out of a sheer vindictiveness, a vindictiveness towards one newspaper, the Melbourne Herald. A great newspaper it was too. So the Labor Party has form, and if the only thing they can do is criticise the previous government for relaxing cross-ownership laws that reflected a changing media environment and changing technology that the vindictive laws passed by Hawke and Keating were no longer suitable for, that is an accusation that I am happy to have levied.

What we have heard from the previous speaker and from every Labor Party member that talks about this is a litany of complaints about News Limited or about how somehow we cannot trust journalists to write the truth. At the heart of this is the claim of bias, the hate media, the idea that the Australian newspaper or another newspaper dares criticise the incompetence, the malfeasance or the sheer untruthfulness of this government. All I will say to that is that it has been a joke around Melbourne since the days of Bolte that Liberals have had to cope with the Age being potentially, from the perspective of some, slightly left of centre. But if you are a politician you thrive on criticism because it gives you a chance to put your case, it gives you a chance to make your argument. Not all of it is welcome; I doubt there is anyone in here who has been happy with everything that has been written or said about them on blogs, websites, newspapers, radio or TV. But what is the alternative? The alternative is a bureaucrat appointed by a politician effectively determining the sort of speech we are going to have in this country, the things that journalists can write, the things that can be printed in our newspapers. That represents a dramatic departure from the history of a liberal democracy and one as old as Australia and one that has a relatively fine tradition of protecting freedom of speech.

At the heart of this by the Labor Party is a conceit—Hayek called it the fatal conceit—that they can decide or a bureaucrat they appoint can somehow improve the work of thousands of journalists, writers and bloggers all around the country; that there is an appropriate form of speech and an appropriate dispute resolution mechanism and that is the one that shall be enforced upon all. They talk about an independent monitor but it is still an agent of government, it is still an agent of the state, it is still appointed by a politician, it still operates under rules set by politicians. I am humble enough to say I should not be setting those rules and neither should anyone in this place. It shows the conceit of the Labor Party that they think they have a role to do so.

The previous speaker talked about other countries. When it comes to freedoms, Australia was the second country in the world to grant women the ballot and one of the first countries in the world to grant universal franchise to men. We have never compared ourselves to other countries that were decades behind us in some of those developments. At the turn of the 20th century, as well as having the highest standard of living in the world, this country was a social laboratory and it was a laboratory of public policy. Yet now the best that can be done by those opposite is to throw a few failed European economies at us and justify this as the basis for a new series of regulations upon the media.

We hear the bleating about the gag rules, and it shows a real lack of understanding. You are not proposing just regulating those who operate with public funds; you are saying to someone who owns a newspaper that is not dependent upon spectrum, which is a public asset, that has no public interest involved whatsoever other than someone owning a printing press, employing journalists and being willing to put their name as the publisher behind a publication. You are saying that you have a right to regulate that. There has historically been a legal and moral right to regulate radio and television because public spectrum is limited. We have long applied codes to that, whether it be about adults only viewing times or burdens like local content requirements, because spectrum is a limited commodity. It is a public good in that sense. But there is no similarity between that and a newspaper, a newspaper that is produced, funded and sold privately without any involvement from the government: until today, where they have to sign up to a series of regulations or the government will put the gun to their head with all the power of the state and the force of law. There is that great Labor tradition of handing out money. They talk about gag rules; what about your history of putting people on the drip, putting people on the government funded drip as they go out there and say what you want, which always proposes more regulation and less freedom, and always proposes greater government involvement in the economy. Just by coincidence, the very people you seek to defend happen often to have previously worked for a union or they are always asking of government more, because there is a natural inclination of a lot in that sector to seek greater and greater roles for themselves at the expense of the public leading their own lives.

These attacks on freedom of speech are unprecedented, an effective licensing of the media. They do not have the guts to actually say they going to license media because the High Court would probably say they could not following the television advertising case just over two decades ago. The High Court would probably have something to say about that. What they will do is create an undue burden on those who do not sign up to the government scheme approved by the bureaucrat that the politicians appoint. I do not care if you consult with the opposition—no opposition or government should have a role in this. I do not want one. It is not for us to decide. Yet when a newspaper says, 'That is not for us,' you are going to apply the full force of law, threaten them with all your plaintiff lawyer mates, allow people to tackle them in ways that they cannot tackle another newspaper purely because one newspaper signs up to the government's preferred scheme. You may not call it licensing but it is effective licensing. It is the modern day Stamp Act, where you have to get a stamp of approval from the government to actually publish something or there will be a different burden placed upon you. The government obfuscates with claims about diversity but every action it undertakes is about suppressing it, every action it undertakes is about approving certain forms of media. The language in this debate today is all about appropriate reporting by journalists, as if it is up to them to decide.

They have constantly attacked one particular media segment or one particular media organisation. But I remember the bleating, Senator Kim Carr, from your Victorian colleagues when Jeff Kennett dared to criticise the Age. He only criticised them; he did not propose to license them or subject them to state privacy laws. He did nothing of the sort. One day he threatened to pull some government ads from them, and I think he unsubscribed from the newspaper, and the Labor Party were out there screaming about attacks on freedom of speech. Yet the modern day Labor Party have come here and proposed that some journalists will be licensed and some will not. Some will have to think, 'Does this law apply to me in a different way than it does to my colleague?'

If anyone here does not think that that is going to have a chilling effect, just think of a press conference with, for example, Senator Conroy being quizzed about the latest government blowout, disaster, scandal or whatever it may be. One journalist from the approved media feels they can ask a certain question but another journalist whose newspaper's boss has not signed up to the state sanctioned dispute resolution mechanism—the bureaucrat appointed by politicians to decide whether complaints are appropriate or inappropriate—does not have that protection. They can have all their notes seen and have the full force of the Privacy Act applied to them. Do you think it is going to lead to any difference in questioning? I am sure it wouldn't. Even though I disagree with a lot of journalists a lot of the time, journalists have shown a willingness to defend their position and their role in our society.

This approach reflects the creep of restrictions on speech that the new left have driven over the last few decades—that whole idea that there is appropriate or inappropriate speech. This debate is wider than just about the media reforms—and I do want to note the contribution in great detail by Senator Birmingham, who spoke before me for the coalition. Let's go back and look at the antecedents of this view that there is appropriate and inappropriate speech. A couple of decades ago universities started developing speech codes and certain forms of debate could be had and some could not. We had people, usually from the left and now in the Greens or members of the Labor Party left, Senator Kim Carr, who would have protests on campus because they did not think that a certain person was appropriate to come and speak. I saw Gareth Evans a victim of that and I saw Jeff Kennett a victim of that—'Those people should not be allowed to speak, because we find their view offensive.' That was the culture of our universities in the 1980s and 1990s.

That started to be reflected even in university policies, where there was appropriate and inappropriate speech. There was a famous style guide at Melbourne University. They had a whole section on how to correctly refer to Indigenous Australians. You could lose marks for, despite all best endeavours and intentions, inadvertently offending someone, because it was not about whether it was offensive or not; it was a subjective assessment of whether the deemed victim group felt offended.

We have seen that result in the Racial Discrimination Act—the infamous section 18C, put in place in the dying days of the last Labor government, that saw an Australian journalist hauled before a court for an opinion. I really hope that in the future that is not reflected upon as a turning point in this country—that we look back at the Bolt case and think that that was the time that we started down the European path, that that was the time that we started to restrict speech because we in this place were not humble enough to accept that it is not up to us to determine what is appropriate and inappropriate.

Professor Don Aitkin was hauled through legal processes for inadvertently offending someone that he did not even seek to offend. He was not even trying to make a particular point. Last year I made a speech regarding this issue. What we have to understand is the chilling effect of codes on speech and restrictions on it. If I said something that Don Aitkin said and that gentlemen, Mr Mortimer, was out there and he decided to go get a friendly plaintiff lawyer—from a Labor aligned firm, I am certain—to come and launch an action against me, I would have no means of defending myself. Most Australians do not have the means of defending themselves against a legal action—probably using public funds indirectly to do it. What is the capacity of someone who writes a blog to defend themselves against an action that might be completely superfluous? It might be without foundation but you still have to hire lawyers—which could easily cost you more than $10,000. That is the chilling effect that that law has. This law proposed by Senator Conroy will have the same effect—and I dare say that is its intention.

It is sad that today a case for free speech needs to be made. Why is free speech so important? It is important not only because it is the basis of a free society; there is actually no more critical right in our society. It is reflected in the famous words of the US First Amendment: 'Congress shall make no law abridging freedom of speech, or of the press.' I will come back to that in a minute. Speech is the expression of our thought, our identity, our ideas and our dignity as individuals. There is no point having freedom of conscience if you cannot express it. The words on the Thomas Jefferson memorial in Washington encapsulate this. Thomas Jefferson had a very extreme view on freedom of speech—one that I am personally quite comfortable with. He said:

... I have sworn upon the altar of god eternal hostility against every form of tyranny over the mind of man.

We have to accept that the US, more than any other country on earth, actually has a record on freedom of speech that is unparalleled.

So why is it so important? Freedom of speech was not the first right we were granted; that was actually property. It came along at about the same time, or sometime after, freedom of religious conscience was granted. What we would often regard as the most important right we have as citizens, the right to vote, actually came along after we were given the right to demand it. The right to vote did not happen without people in the UK—before the great reform acts—and people in Australia, after the Eureka Stockade, demanding it. Women were given the right to vote because the right to demand it was there. We reversed the ban that we put on Indigenous voting in 1902 in 1961 or 1963 because we had the right to demand it. In the US during the civil rights crisis, it was the First Amendment that kept the campaign alive, even when the arms of the state—the police, dogs and bullets—were hailing down upon the civil rights protestors.

I do not mean to be melodramatic, but this is why speech is important. The most important aspect of it is that it challenges prevailing wisdom. An example is Alan Missen, a former member of this place, decades before he came here campaigning as an official of the Liberal Party in Victoria against Robert Menzies' referendum to ban the Communist Party—which was on the front page of the Argus and the Melbourne Herald. Challenging prevailing wisdom is what speech is about. I dare say that, as Liberals, we are more used to it, as survey after survey tends to show that journalists are probably closer to the left than the right of politics. I do not say it necessarily infects their writing, but Liberals are used to criticism, whether it be at universities, in workplaces or in politics generally. The voice of people and the freedom to say unpopular things, the freedom to say things politicians do not like and the freedom to say things lawyers and judges do not like is what drives social change. That is what this government is uncomfortable with: things it does not like being said. We have to go back to these core principles.

What we saw with the Andrew Bolt case was someone dragged before the court for an opinion. In the judgement of the case, some interesting words were used. I quote Justice Bromberg:

At the core of multiculturalism is the idea that people may identify with and express their racial or ethnic heritage free from pressure not to do so. People should be free to fully identify with their race without fear of public disdain or loss of esteem for so identifying.

That is not an appropriate definition for limits on speech for our society. No-one is free from disdain, and if we are going to have a personalised judgement on what is offensive, with that being the basis of law, then we are undermining the very concept of the rule of law. That is where our society is going.

In my last minute I turn to why the media is so important. The media is the institutional expression of freedom of speech. It has always had a special role. The US's first amendment recognises that role by specifically including freedom of the press. Whether in civil rights, the Pentagon papers, Watergate or the Vietnam War, all those protections were critical to delivering a different outcome than there would have been if journalists were not free to write. I do not necessarily agree with all the outcomes, but society is better for me not having that choice and for no-one in this place having a choice.

It was many years ago that the self-declared experts in the Labor Party started to determine what is and what is not appropriate in speech. Every Australian is going to realise that this government's intention is to determine what is appropriate and inappropriate in their lives, in their thoughts and in their words. It is a threat to our liberal democracy. It will be opposed with every breath in the bodies of the people on this side of the chamber, and I urge the government to reconsider and crossbenchers to oppose it.