Free Speech, Victorian Style

From the worst major metropolitan newspaper in Australia:

Justice Geoffrey Nettle said: "Surely that can't justify restraining them from saying something that said by anyone else would be legal? In the case of the newsletter, for example, Pastor Nalliah says many churches have closed down. What's wrong with saying that?"

Ms Mortimer replied: "The tribunal has found there is something wrong with saying it. Truth is not a defence, it's irrelevant to contravention of the act."

If truth is not a defence in a freedom-of-speech case, something is seriously fucked up.

Fortunately, it appears that in this case what is fucked up is the legislation, and that the Court of Appeal has retained at least a modicum of sense. Even if plaintiff's counsel has not.

Justice Ashley said so many of the statements were entirely innocuous and asked how the pastors could legitimately be restrained from making them. Ms Mortimer replied: "Because the tribunal found that when they made them they made them in a way that contravened the act." She said the comments had to be seen in the overall context.

But nothing will save the Solicitor-General:

Solicitor-General Pamela Tate said the case did not come under the implied constitutional right to free speech because that right applied only to political and governmental matters.

In fact, the right to freedom of speech in Australia has its roots in English Common Law going back to Henry II. And Common Law is based on the rejection of Ecclesiastical Law. I think there is a very good argument that blasphemy, and indeed all religious vilification, is a purely Ecclesiastical crime, and that the Victorian legislation is unconstitutional on that basis. Even apart from being totally fucked up* and an unsupportable abridgement of fundamental human freedoms.

* I'm allowed to say this because it is a political and governmental matter, because I don't live in the state of Victoria, and because I don't give a shit anyway.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:36 AM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)