The truth is that almost all countries have unnecessary restrictions on freedom of speech.
The one general exception to this proposition is the US, where a combination of the Constitutional First Amendment and a long history of robust public debate has resulted in the practice of free speech not just its theory.
The answer in Australia is not a bill of rights, because any right to freedom of speech in such legislation would be contradicted by rights not to be vilified on various grounds.
The real answer is to accept that opinions, no matter how offensive to some or all members of the community, should be immune from all civil or criminal proceedings.
Sexton is to be congratulated for his forthright defence of free speech. Free speech is already being kicked to death in this country, and the dogs of censorship are howling for more blood. It is bad enough that such restrictions exist, but it is entirely obscene that many of them are enforced by tribunals where normal legal rules do not apply. In these kangaroo courts the process itself is the penalty.
Sexton quotes Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr as follows:
I think that we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death, unless they so imminently threaten immediate interference with the lawful and pressing purposes of the law that an immediate check is required to save the country..
This is line of thinking appears to have lost favour in the corridors of power where the right to not be offended seems to trump the right of free speech, especially within designated victim classes.
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