Matthew Canavan (Queensland, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Some people may have seen the news recently that once again British jails are overcrowding. We know they've been here before of course, but this time their solution is not new convict settlements; it's to release criminals early. Around 1,700 criminals have already been released, and there are plans to release thousands more. The British government is saying that it's not releasing criminals that commit violent crimes or sexual offenders, but the union representing parole officers disputes that. One former convict was arrested for sexual assault on the day of his release.

These releases have made room for many of the Brits that in recent years have been locked up for simply posting their opinions online. These people include a former police constable who was sentenced to 20 weeks jail for sending to friends some memes associated with George Floyd's death. Another man was locked up for eight weeks for posting pictures of Asian men with a caption of 'coming to a town near you'. The examples are not all of people that would be commonly described as on the right or the far right, either. One man was jailed for posting that he was running for his life from an alleged riot of young locals, when in fact there was no disorder in the area. All of these views appear a little distasteful and inappropriate, but they hardly seem to deserve jail time.

The British did perfect the establishment of penal colonies many years ago, but now they seem bent on creating a police state in their own homeland. The UK government's X account recently menacingly told people, 'Think before you post,' and the UK's metropolitan police commissioner, Mark Rowley, said:

We will throw the full force of the law at people. And whether you're in this country committing crimes on the streets or committing crimes from further afield online, we will come after you

Apparently some British officials seem to think they still have a say about what happens in this country.

The commentator Konstantin Kisin has reported that over 3,000 people were arrested in the UK in 2022 for things that they posted online. It's hard not to conclude that almost all of these people have been locked up for nothing but the crime of political communication. They are political prisoners. Australia helped out the UK the last time their prisons were overflowing, and it worked out pretty well for us. Despite the constant jibes that we're a land of convicts, I think this country has developed pretty well. We're a harmonious, prosperous and great place for people around the world to come and live.

Our start as a penal colony has not held us back, and, with the prisons overflowing again in Britain, it's got me thinking that maybe we can help them out again; maybe we could take some of these political prisoners. I'm not proposing we take the hardened criminals that are being released—they should be locked up—but the bloke who's just shared a few spicy memes with his mates is probably not a great risk to our social harmony. We did okay when we made ourselves home for Irish men and women whose greatest crime was to steal a loaf of bread to feed their family, and we can probably survive a guy who likes to tell a few risque jokes. Once again we'd been doing a great favour for the mother country by helping them out with their perennial problem of not having enough space to lock up their people, and, by providing political asylum to people locked up for speech crimes, we could establish our own country as a bastion for free speech around the world.

That reputation has been tarnished in recent years through COVID and the weaponisation of various antidiscrimination laws in this country, but we have a proud heritage of thumbing our nose at authority and being able to take the mickey out of each other without wanting to arrest people for offending each other's feelings. Sometimes laughter, not the law, is the best way to reduce social tensions and build harmony among people. I hope my humble suggestion is taken with that principle in mind.