Free Speech

Simon Katich doesn’t deserve a reprimand. He deserves an award for restraint.

After falling foul of the thought police at Cricket Australia he was called up before that stuffy little outfit’s resident kangaroo court to explain his so-called “spray” against Michael Clarke. “Spray”, as it was dubbed in headlines, is a ludicrously overstated term for what Katich had said. All he said was that he doubted he would ever get a spot in the Test team under captain and selector Michael Clarke.

Katich, you will recall, grabbed Clarke by the neck in a dressing room dust-up in 2009, risking serious damage to Clarke’s latest haircut. His assessment of his chances of reclaiming a baggy green under Clarke was both accurate and unremarkable.

Continue reading "Simon Katich and the year of living silently" »

There are varying viewpoints on Sergio Redegalli’s “Say no to burqas” mural, but only one way to look at his facial hair.

It’s unAustralian. There should be a law against this. Could the council make him get rid of it?

This mural has appeared in the trendy Sydney suburb of Newtown.

It was painted by the owner of the property, shop owner Sergio Redegalli who also, apparently, has a ban-the-burqa bumper sticker.

Locals have complained and council officials have visited the owner to talk to him about removing but have said in a statement that legally their hands are tied. There’s a pretty simple freedom of speech issue at play here: should it be painted over?

Continue reading "The burqa mural: should it be painted over?" »

The headline is not a mistake. Escape goats exist - at least, they do in the comment threads of websites everywhere, including The Punch.*

The beauty of this term is that while being appallingly bad English usage in a narrow sense, it is a spectacular conceptual improvement on the very word it butchers. Who needs a scapegoat when you could have an escape goat?

I want an escape goat. Rather than resorting to blame any time there’s any sort of problem, just hop on this conveniently-positioned imaginary beast and ride off, leaving behind only the comical clatter of little hooves, and maybe a faint bleating sound. Baa.

Continue reading "Anonymous comments: why we all need an escape goat" »

When pastor Terry Jones called off his epically dumb plan to mark the anniversary of the September 11 attacks by burning a bunch of Korans, for a brief period it looked like western civilisation valued people with something between their ears. But then along comes Alex Stewart – an Australian, no less – to confirm democracies provide shelter for the hopelessly stupid.

It was on behalf of people with a brain everywhere that the US President went on television to plead against the pastor’s plan to burn holy books. He succeeded in stopping the Jones protest but then along comes Stewart on YouTube, ripping out pages from the Bible and the Koran and smoking them in a festival of smugness cloaked in a mantle of enlightenment.

Score one for the Taliban and the view that the West is intellectually bankrupt.

Continue reading "Life, liberty, and the pursuit of total stupidity" »

The aims of any public rally or protest generally are to: draw attention to the cause, build public support, and secure a favourable response by authorities.

Australian protesters regularly score well on the first because protesters have an excellent sense of when cameras are likely to be in the vicinity, and that slogans and large, TV friendly signs and props will be useful to those editing the evening news bulletins.

But on the other two aims Australian protests are in something of a rut. Increasingly the numbers of people at public rallies are grimly thin and feature people and slogans that are more likely to inspire puzzlement than passion. This was brilliantly evidenced by two protests in Sydney this week - one which involved a mock kangaroo funeral and another calling for the Reserve Bank to drop rates - both of which were attended by only a handful of protesters. They were extreme examples but underscored the malaise affecting the wider culture of public protest in modern Australia.

Continue reading "Time to take to the streets over falling protest standards" »

UPDATE 11.55pm: SA Attorney General Mick Atkinson has backed down and will repeal the ban on anonymous internet comments.

It is self-evident that websites can be used by imposters and small-time fraudsters to create a false reflection of public opinion on political issues. But there’s no excuse for the South Australian government’s breathtaking censorship tactics ahead of the state election.

Sure, anonymous comments are a problem. There’s a guy posting on the Punch lately who has assumed 21 different identities in four days. He first came on the radar at the weekend after he left a tell-tail trail by posting two similar comments in quick succession. He could have been immediately banned but was given rope.

On a single thread he posted under the names Ronnel, James, Wendy, Rachel, Brad, Jan, Bill, Roger, Janette, Francis, Annie, Randall, Brendon, Judith and Connie. Though I’ve never met him I have an unusually clear picture of what he looks like, which is as follows.

Continue reading "Rann’s sledgehammer too big for online nuts" »

The Sydney broadcaster, Alan Jones, interviewed me recently on his morning radio program. During a conversation about my contention that we should have a national discussion about our future population, Jones asked me about Muslim immigration to Australia. Let me quote from the transcript:

Jones: ….you’re saying that any migration program should be in the national interest. You further say that, basically, in all of these issues we should be taking the public with us. Right, should we therefore be worried about the growth of the Muslim population just as people are concerned in Europe, you’re not allowed to talk about this?

Andrews: Well firstly I think you should be able to talk about it Alan. It is ridiculous if you can’t talk about any subject and in fact what happens when a subject becomes politically incorrect to talk about, then it ends up with a backlash. I think part of the Hanson movement, back in the early 1990s, was because some subjects were simply said to be off the table, they couldn’t be discussed and a lot of Australians wanted to discuss them.

Continue reading "This isn’t racism, it’s called democracy" »