Brandis watch ... Uncomfortable straddle on free speech ... Where was Soapy when the "F*** Tony Abbott" T-shirts were being marched off campus ... The attorney general's forgotten "back door" scheme to injunct the media
Brandis: freedom of speech not really important
SADLY, aspects of Soapy (Bookcase) Brandis rallying cry for freer speech are sounding hypocritically hollow.
To explain we'll have to go back to May this year and Brandis' Freedom Wars oration to Gerard Henderson's "think tank".
It was the speech in which he unveiled to the wizened attendees three frightful examples where speech had been throttled or insufficiently protected, principally by leftist forces.
Here are the examples he cited:
1. There was insufficient criticism from journalists of Senator Conroy's plans for media "regulation". The Press Freedom dinner hosted by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, was a disappointment to Soapy because he didn't feel as though he was among a "nest of freedom fighters".
2. The Human Right Commission has been assaulting freedom of speech. It did not sufficiently defend press freedom against Finkelstein, Conroy and those fair skinned Aborigines mauling poor Mr Bolt.
3. Academics at the University of Melbourne failed to support the student Liberal Club after security staff ordered its Orientation Week booth off the campus. The Young Libs had displayed a banner, which quoted a slice of the great helmsman's brilliant oratory:
"We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come."
Apparently some people found it offensive and complained.
So there you are. What can you expect from journalists, bureaucrats and academics? - all letting us down in the struggle to throw off the chains that inhibit thoughts that are busting to be expressed.
As Soapy put it:
"Who defends freedom of speech in Australia today? Is it really to be left to a few conservative commentators like Andrew Bolt and Janet Albrechtsen; a couple of think tanks like the Sydney Institute and the IPA and the Liberal Party?"
Rising to a crescendo, flecks of foam gathering atthe corners of his mouth, Brandis declared:
"At least the debates about freedom of speech and freedom of the press, which we have seen in the past couple of years, have been a sharp reminder to the Liberal Party of his historic mission.
For the freedom wars, there has been one party which has stood steadfastly on the side of freedom."
Polite applause as the ancient audience rushed to escape.
But hold, fresh evidence is to hand to be met with an eerie silence from Soapy.
Free speech at workRecently members of the Socialist Alternative and others were escorted off the Macquarie University campus for wearing and selling T-shirts with the succinct slogan "Fuck Tony Abbott".
Young Liberals, who control the Student Advisory Board, were appalled and complained to security.
As the Socialist Alternative and their T-shirts were booted out, they must have had ringing in their ears the inspirational words of Brandis:
"The mentality of the left in the practice of freedom of speech, equating to 'I don't want to see it therefore it can't be displayed', is arrogant and abusive.
We might also call it absurd, if not for the chilling glimpse of the totalitarian mindset determined to crimp and control all conversation and thought on campus."
* * *
Brandis' embrace of free speech seems to date from the Justice Bromberg's 2011 decision in Eatock v Bolt & Herald and Weekly Times.
In fact, 20 years earlier, when Brandis was a part-time lecturer in law at the University of Queensland, his views were decidedly anti-free-speech.
In a famous seminar he attacked the old common law rule in Bonnard v Perryman.
That's the rule that says in the interests of free speech, generally speaking, injunctions should not be available in defamation cases, where damages are the proper remedy.
In his view the rule should be scrapped by either "frontal" or "back door" attacks, so that allegedly defamatory material can be subject to the refreshing breeze of injunctive relief.
He seemed particularly fond of the "back door", such as actions in injurious falsehood to which injunctions can be attached.
"Freedom of speech, then, is neither a principle of general application to the grant of interlocutory injunctive relief, nor is the only interest to be considered. Why should it not merely be part of the equation according to which the court assesses the balance of convenience? ...
It seems almost absurd that not only should an interlocutory injunction not be granted, but that the justification for its refusal should lie in the noble rhetoric of liberal democratic values."
So, which is the real Soapy Brandis - the hero of Rupert's oppressed scribblers or the back door man armed with a quiver of injunctions?
You can read the full seminar presentation here (warning: free speech buffs may never recover).