Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to participate in this debate this afternoon as I am always happy to participate in discussions surrounding freedom of speech in Australia. It is a subject that is of singular importance to me, just as I understand it is of singular importance to the two senators who have brought this motion forward this afternoon. I remain, of course, a co-sponsor of the bill that Senator Day and Senator Leyonhjelm still have before the Senate to make changes to the Racial Discrimination Act to remove the words 'offend' and 'insult' from section 18 C. However, at the outset I do have to take issue with the wording of this particular motion, which charges the government with a failure to uphold free speech. I am not sure that charge can be sustained, though I will of course listen to the contributions of others this afternoon. But I would simply point out that the gravest threats to free speech in Australia, certainly in legislative terms over recent years, have tended come from elsewhere in this parliament. The Labor Party, with the notable exception of my WA colleague Senator Bullock, remain implacably opposed to any changes to section 18C. Of course they refuse to debate the subject in any meaningful fashion, preferring instead to send the usual brigade of hysterics into this chamber to screech the term 'racist' at anyone who has the temerity to question whether the present law is operating in a fair and effective manner.

Of course it was not the Minister for Communications in this government who jetted off to New York to boast that he was possessed of unfettered legal power to silence people or indeed to force executives to wear red underpants on their head. That, we recall, was Labor's minister, Senator Conroy—someone who was no friend of freedom of speech in that role. Remember his attempts, which mercifully failed, to in effect censor the internet through the Rudd government's proposal to introduce an internet filter. More disturbingly, recall his attempts as part of the Gillard Labor government to establish the public interest media advocate. This would have involved the regulation of newspapers, effectively meaning the government would determine whether or not the publication of particular material was in the public interest. I recollect that some said the scheme sounded positively Orwellian, and I suppose there are overtures of that in Labor's proposal. At the time it reminded me of a writer, someone with whom the two senators who bring this motion forward today are no doubt very familiar. In The Wealth of Nations Adam Smith writes of an order of men, which it would have been in his day, that works assiduously to beat back threats to established powers. Adam Smith says:

The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never to be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention. It comes from an order of men, whose interest is never exactly the same with that of the public, who have generally an interest to deceive and even oppress the public, and who accordingly have, upon many occasions, both deceived and oppressed it.

Of course of those words do not apply exclusively to Senator Conroy—they are watchwords for all time—but they elegantly summarise exactly what the former Labor government was up to when it made its botched attempt to regulate the content of newspapers in our country. They told us their intentions were good. Labor representatives variously tried to claim they were protecting diversity in the media, protecting privacy or trying to civilise the tone of our public discourse. That latter argument, of course, is one we also heard from Labor to support its continued opposition to reforming section 18C. I recall Senator Cameron's creative argument at one point that the phone hacking scandal in the United Kingdom was evidence of why the proposed public interest media advocate was needed in our country, which was a novel approach given that there was no evidence whatsoever that what had gone on in the United Kingdom was occurring here in our own country. But that is always the problem with the Australian Labor Party. They think intentions matter more than outcomes and that attitudes inform their approach to a whole raft of policy measures. Thankfully that particular measure failed and Senator Conroy moved on.

I will be very frank on the subject of free speech. I am disappointed with the pace of this debate in relation to section 18C. I am sure that does not come as a complete surprise, given my long-stated position on the subject and my co-sponsorship of the bill of Senator Day and Senator Leyonhjelm. But I am not in the least bit discouraged. I think we are heading the right way, even if we are travelling too slowly from my own perspective. I certainly do not accept any assertion that the government has failed to uphold freedom of speech. It was Victor Hugo who wrote that 'an invasion of armies can be resisted; an invasion of ideas cannot be resisted.' More than 160 years ago, after Victor Hugo committed that thought to paper, it should serve as a continuing inspiration for those of us determined to strengthen Australia's protection of its citizens' right to free speech by reforming section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act 1975.

Although it is true the fight has suffered some significant setbacks in the last 12 months, I remain an optimist. At first blush that attitude may seem incongruous with the prevailing political reality, yet my continued positivity is sustained by the knowledge that the supporters of reform have in our possession that most prized of political commodities—the commodity of momentum. If there is an enduring lesson to be gleaned from history, surely it is that a powerful idea can and will triumph over time and triumph over even the loudest of dissenting voices. This has been amply demonstrated by the course of economic policy over recent decades, which despite the occasional delay or regression has moved inexorably in the direction of freer markets. When the likes of Bert Kelly and John Hyde were parliamentarians during the halcyon days of Keynesian economics, their efforts to dismantle Australia's protectionist tariff wall and discourage fiscal profligacy by governments of both political persuasions were not universally applauded or appreciated. Indeed, they were sometimes portrayed as zealots, even by those within their own party. Yet they held fast at considerable political and personal cost because they were convinced that what they proposed was in the best interests of the economy and therefore in the best interests of Australia. Had they not pursued their objective and instead submitted to the prevailing wisdom of the time, how likely is it that the Hawke Labor government, supported by the then opposition, would have pursued pro-market reforms in the 1980s? Would Australia today be assigning free trade agreements with some of the world's largest economies and our most significant trading partners, as this government has done through the excellent work of the former Minister for Trade, Mr Andrew Robb. Would an agreement such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement enjoy such a widespread support?

The widespread acceptance of free trade as an economic virtue might seem inevitable today, but that was not necessarily the case 40 years ago. Likewise, consider the introduction of a broad-based consumption tax—an idea that had been pursued by economists and policy experts for decades but had enjoyed rather less support amongst the bulk of the political class. John Howard as Treasurer was convinced of the merits of such reform, yet found himself stymied by a lack of political support from his then Prime Minister, Malcolm Fraser, who considered it very bad politics.

Howard's successor as Treasurer, Paul Keating, became equally convinced of the merits of a consumption tax and almost succeeded in pushing it through until, of course, the rug was pulled out from him by his Prime Minister, Bob Hawke, who also feared the potential political blowback. The defeat of the then Liberal leader, John Hewson, at the supposedly unlosable 1993 election on the back of an anti-GST campaign by Labor seemingly put paid to any prospect of meaningful tax reform in Australia for a generation.

Yet just five years later, Prime Minister John Howard secured an electoral victory, albeit narrowly, on the explicit undertaking to introduce a goods and services tax. What happened in the course of those five years? It is not as though the idea of the consumption tax suddenly became popular or even that it was necessarily better understood by the electorate. Rather, over the years, even throughout what seemed to be endless delays and defeats, the momentum for reform built. Even if the idea itself was not a popular one, Australians came to accept the need for reform in the interest of their families' and their nation's economic wellbeing.

Although the examples provided above relate to economic policy, I believe the principle is just as applicable to the reform of section 18C and strengthening the protections of freedom of speech in Australia. The evidence is clear. When Senator Day introduced his private senator's bill in 2014, my decision to be a co-sponsor was perceived by some as risky. In fact, there were only two Liberal senators to act as co-sponsors, yet in the little over a year that has elapsed since we have seen more and more Liberal senators come out in support of Senator Day's proposal to remove the words 'offend' and 'insult' from the provisions of section 18C.