freedom of speech

That Craig Kelly does not believe he can speak “frankly” and “fearlessly” on important public policy matters such as the government’s health response to the coronavirus from the government benches should concern everyone who values freedom and democracy.  Rather than defending liberal democratic values such as freedom of speech and open debate, Morrison saw advantage in telling Parliament earlier this month that

The year recently ended revealed that the authoritarian impulse is never very far from the surface. It may lay dormant for a time but it never goes away. Here in Australia, and indeed around the world, their response to COVID-19 revealed politicians and bureaucrats eager to grasp every opportunity to take control of other people’s lives. When presented with a

Joe Biden has decided Kamala Harris is to be his pick as vice president based on the fact she is an African-American woman. Should identity politics have a place in the presidential campaign, or should people of power be chosen rather on merit? (3:27-25:20). Dan Tehan has announced a review into Robert French’s freedom of speech on campus model. Should

The Institute of Public Affairs has welcomed the announcement that Dr Peter Ridd will appeal the judgement in the case of James Cook University (JCU) v Peter Ridd to the High Court of Australia. Dr Ridd is seeking to reverse the 2-1 decision of the Federal Court of Australia, which overturned the earlier decision in the Federal Circuit Court, which

“Free speech crisis? What crisis?” Uttered in freaky unison, this frequen­t denial from university vice-chancellors has allowed them to resume normal programming. That consists of VCs putting their heads in the sand rather than confronting those trying to nobble intellectual diversity on campus. It includes VCs sending long emails about how proud they are of their diversity programs, with no

The government’s proposed religious discrimination bill puts the shoe on the other foot, and now the activists who championed every other discrimination law are bemoaning the “divisiveness” of this one. It is divisive, but so is all discrimination law. The public consultation period for the second draft of the religious discrimination bill, which prohibits discrimination based on someone’s beliefs (or

The revelations about how former prime minister Tony Abbott and other conservative activists were pursued by the federal Attorney-General­’s Department at the behest­ of Labor legal affairs spokesman Mark Dreyfus represents a failure of our democracy and the rule of law. A Freedom of Information request­ lodged by the Institute of Public Affairs uncovered further details about how the organiser

Attorney-General Christian Porter wants social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook to be legally liable for defamatory comments made by their users. Right now, the common law can distinguish between the legal liability of active publishers of information (like newspapers and broadcasters) and the passive platform operators that allow users to publish information themselves. Courts decide where this distinction is

The Institute of Public Affairs has today released a new report, Religious Liberty and Its Challenges In Australia Today: A Report into the Federal Government’s Religious Discrimination Bill 2019, authored by IPA Director of Research Daniel Wild, and Research Fellow Morgan Begg. IPA Executive Director John Roskam said, “The proposed Religious Discrimination Bill 2019 will blur the distinction between church

Bureaucrats are using Australia’s foreign-influence laws to run a covert political operation out of the Attorney-General’s Department to silence Australians becaus­e of their political beliefs, all under the nose of the Coalition government. This is the kind of behaviour one would expect from the Stasi in East Germany in 1961, not in Australia­ today. On Saturday, The Weekend Australian reported that Andrew