Ralph Babet (Victoria, United Australia Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I will introduce the Constitution Alteration (Right to Free Speech) Bill 2025. The purpose of my bill is to enshrine freedom of speech in the Australian Constitution. This bill is urgently needed and will provide protection of a right that many Australians assume they already have. This assumption, though, is increasingly dangerous. While freedom of speech in this country is generally assumed, it is not guaranteed. Indeed, it is always under threat.

Over the past decade, the right of Australians to say what they think has been increasingly infringed upon, and, while Australian parliaments have made no efforts at all to protect speech, they have, however, passed laws at state and federal level to restrict freedom of speech. We are now at a point where it is dangerous to openly say things that most people privately believe. It's a brave person, for example, who opines that men cannot become women. Is that really the kind of country that we want to live in—a country in which stating a simple truth puts a person in danger of being dragged before a tribunal to be interrogated for their words?

It is time to provide a constitutional right for all Australians to say what they truly think. The Western world became prosperous by allowing, rather than censoring, debate. Free speech is not a thing to be feared. It is a thing which should be embraced. Free speech is something that protects people. It's something that needs to be encouraged. The Enlightenment was built on the ability of people to say what they honestly thought even if it went against established norms. Indeed, it was the ability to challenge norms that made progress possible in the first place. But now we risk going backwards into a new dark age of restricted speech where certain ideas, held sacrosanct by those in power, are beyond challenging. This bodes well for nobody.

Without speech, there is no expression of thought. It is not exaggeration to say that, if people are not able to speak freely, then they are not able to think clearly. That is the key issue here. Freedom of thought supposes freedom of speech; the two are linked. What good are all the other freedoms if people are not free to think independently of the state and to express those thoughts? Australia, at a national level, lacks entrenched protections for freedom of speech. Our role as elected members should be to provide and sustain that right.

This bill will give the Australian people the power to vote in a referendum and determine just how important freedom of speech is to them. I believe that people, if given the chance, will vote overwhelmingly in favour of free speech, because Australians, while we may disagree on many issues, believe in a fair go. We believe in the right of everyone to voice their opinion without fear or favour. My proposed alteration to the Constitution will protect freedom of expression, along similar lines to the first amendment in the United States constitution, which provides that congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.

My bill will put the brakes on efforts to suppress speech, which is shockingly becoming more and more common all around the Western world, especially here in Australia. There shouldn't be a single senator in this chamber who would say that they are against freedom of speech. There shouldn't be a single senator in this chamber who would say to their constituents, 'I want to make it more difficult for you and your family to express your opinions.' It's crazy. We came to Canberra not to oppress our constituents but to defend and to ensure their freedoms forever. This bill does just that. It is long overdue.