# Australian Free Speech Issues **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 17, 2010, 7:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australian-free-speech-issues/525298 "2010-01-17T07:24:35Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 2
**Author:** ![not\_alice](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/not_alice/32/7283_2.png) [@not\_alice](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/not_alice)\ **Post date:** [January 18, 2010, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australian-free-speech-issues/525298/2 "2010-01-18T01:01:51Z")
> [@](#): > > Right now I’m struggling to think of anything that I can’t say in Australia that I could say in the US because of your Freedom Of Speech enshrinement, and the best I can come up with is things that might be qualified as Hate Speech and therefore restricted in parts of the US as well. What sort of things do you think you can say in the US that we can’t say here? I dunno, there is not really anything we can’t say here. “Hate Speech” is not verboten. I don’t know if you do, but if you follow same sex marriage debate here, you would see plenty of hate speech. No one is suggesting it should not be allowed, only that people ought know better, and ought not be allowed to enshrine the hate itself into law. My own vision, as I said above, is that Australian rules of law are a cousin of ours. And so I (and by proxy Americans to the extent they think about it at all) expect that your freedom of speech is in fact, as you allude to, pretty similar to ours in practice. Which is precisely why the current (an you say repeated) proposal comes as such a shock. Cousins grow up independent of each other of course, but one doesn’t like to see a cousin go against the most precious principles in this way, or even flirt with doing so. So it is not that there are particular restrictions I am aware of .. (time out, I just did 2 minutes searching, I take that back) Wikipedia seems to indicate there ARE restrictions you have that are odd by US standards. See [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_speech_by_country#Australia) and [here](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_in_Australia) (I am sure the reverse is true too, but that wasn’t the question). > [@](#): > > Albert Langer was imprisoned for advocating that voters fill out their ballot papers in a way that was invalid.[4] Amnesty International declared Langer to be a prisoner of conscience.[5] The section which outlawed Langer from encouraging people to vote this way has since been repealed and the law now says only that it is an offence to print or publish material which may deceive or mislead a voter. At present, therefore, Langer’s actions would not seem to be considered illegal. > [@](#): > > As of 2005[update], censorship regime is largely the purview of the OFLC, a statutory body which operates independently of the Federal Government. > > Failure to obtain classification is an implicit ban and the OFLC occasionally refuse to give classification. All feature films, videos, computer games, and magazines that contain sexual content for commercial release are required to be submitted to this body, made up of “community representatives” appointed by the government for two-year terms. > [@](#): > > There are numerous subtle restrictions on advertising in Australia. For example, lawyers in most Australian states are restricted in advertising concerning personal injury compensation law. In New South Wales all advertising concerning personal injury compensation is prohibited. In Queensland print and web site advertising is permitted to a limited extent but television and radio advertising is strictly banned (see below: Censorship of Personal Injury Compensation). In Victoria it is illegal to advertise any aspect of a brothel business. > [@](#): > > Usually only certain types of prohibited pornography, serious encouragement of crime, instructions on suicide and seditious literature are banned from publications in Australia as recent history has shown.[4] > > Although the Office of Film and Literature Classification Guidelines state that “adults should be able to read, hear and see what they want”, many books are apparently banned simply because they may offend certain segments of the population. Under particularly frequent attacks are books containing erotica, and those concerning illegal drugs. > [@](#): > > Many recent contemporary teen novels have been banned due to depictions of teens meeting strangers in chat rooms and then planning to meet them in real life. And much much more, that is only a sample of what I found. The only remotely similar thing I am aware here are bans on hard alcohol and tobacco advertising on TV since the early 70s, and that is presented as a public health issue. Advertising is permitted (and common!) elsewhere. The rest of that is what gives me reason to doubt your claim that Australians will somehow never end up with a firewall in place, as it appears it could be pitched as an extension of restrictions on speech you (as a country) have already accepted. Perhaps it is not something new, only an extension of a fight against something the public already values, but whose shape has shifted in the internet era? That is a slippery slope you are not only on, but sliding down in an accelerating fashion IMHO. > [@Your papers please- DUI checkpoints now general purpose dragnets.](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/your-papers-please-dui-checkpoints-now-general-purpose-dragnets/524494/242): > > Remember, Political & Economic matters are two things that we _do_ have freedom of speech about. So Government attempts to censor the internet can’t be for political consolidation because people have a legal right to criticise the Government and to discuss politics and economics. No, sorry maybe I was misunderstood, I didn’t mean it was, as presented, a method to squelch dissent. Control comes in more subtle forms, by framing expectations, by setting boundaries that frame future discussion. This can happen in any number of ways - it is Economical because it involves overt and covert decisions on how to allocate limited resources, both tangible and non-tangible. And it is Political because [politics is inseparable from economics](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_economy#Current_approaches) and vice versa. That is pretty abstract. Less abstractly, your government is proposing to limit your speech, and hence your thought, even more than it currently does. Americans would argue that this is political at the core, because government has no right to define how we can think. This is at the core of our feelings about government and politics. It concerns us when any country suggests it can control and hence define what the citizens can think about, no matter the topic. We just don’t expect to see it from our close cousins while we combat it in places like China. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/australian-free-speech-issues/525298)._