It’s been an interesting week for people demanding their “right” to “freedom of speech” and Bushwhacked reckons it’s time a few people put down their megaphones and paid attention.
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First, here’s a shock.
There is no law guaranteeing “freedom of speech” in Australia.
Not one.
You do NOT have the right to demand that the world listens to your rants and raves, your personal hates or to push any view you like wherever you like, whenever you like.
This is not the United States.
We do not have a First Amendment to the Constitution stopping governments from passing laws which limit the freedom of expression or the freedom of the press.
What we do have in Australia is a High Court ruling saying there in an implied understanding in the Australian Constitution (it’s not even really an Australian document, but an Act of the British Parliament) that because we are a democracy, it’s expected you can have your say.
But, only on politics.
And even then, only up to a point.
In fact, Australia has a wide range of laws specifically prohibiting people from saying any nonsense they come up with.
These include laws on (get ready) libel, slander, obscenity, pornography, sedition, incitement, classified information, copyright violation, trade secrets, non-disclosure agreements, right to privacy, right to be forgotten, public security, public order, public nuisance, campaign finance reform, oppression, threatening behaviour, racial vilification and commercial confidences. There are probably others.
I started thinking about this this week while delving into the wild-west environment of Facebook and I noted that the bloke who runs one FB page I like had kicked off a woman who became all screechified and abusive and when he asked her to be calm she started on with the usual “ I have the right to say what I want.”
Only all in CAPITAL LETTERS, the online equivalent of turning the megaphone to 10.
The same happened here in stuff spewed into the digital environment about the mosque and Islam in general.
Hardly a day went by without someone resorting to imagined “rights”.
Funny how they never mention their responsibilities.
Hardly a day goes by without a onliner raging about councils and councillors being corrupt.
They’re not.
They are governed by one of tightest and most transparent monitoring systems in existence.
But that’s not what the megaphone mob want to hear or believe, so they shout louder.
Online may well be the Wild Wild West of communications, but even in the West, there was a sheriff who used to shut down ne’er-do-wells, often with extreme prejudice.
Law and sanity tended to win in the end.
So, while Australia has no legal framework to protect what’s been called The Decibel Democracy, what it does have is something better: an expectation that you’ll be able to have your say, up to a point, but you will be expected to express it fairly and respectfully, and you will ultimately accept that others might not agree and your view might be neither right nor prevail.
It’s not even all about numbers.
The majority can sometimes be wrong.
Happily, Australia has a presumption of … fairness.
As Alexander says in Compare-the-Meerkat: Shimplesh.