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The words she used should have been a warning. A Tell. That she’d picked up on the slander that was then being directed at Elon Musk, for his purchase of Twitter. Which of course was freaking out the Left, who feared the opening of the platform to views from all sides. Not just the Left. And they’d picked on this term, now refashioned as a term of abuse. “Free speech absolutist!” Oh, you bigot, you!
How I should have answered is: “I believe in the same free speech principle that the Left believed in until five minutes ago. That is, that old line from Voltaire: ‘I may not agree with you, but I’ll protect to the death your right to say it’. That’s what we we all believed, including you, until that “free speech absolutism” became a victim of the need to suppress anything other than the approved narrative”.
But I didn’t say that. I just answered “Yes”. Yes, I am a free speech absolutist. Thereby no doubt cementing in her mind that I must be one of those new Musk-type far-right bigots. That’s The Guardian-approved opinion to have. (I mention The Guardian because this friend told me, without blushing, that she only read The Guardian, Australian version, and not only that: she only read the headlines!
The trend to censorship has got out of hand. It’s becoming bad in Australia.
Example: the RMIT is an authorised Facebook “fact checker”. It has decreed that it is “misinformation” to say that the Uluru Statement from the Heart (to be implemented via a referendum on The Voice) is more than one page. Even though the authors of the Statement have said, in public on TV and in prestigious orations (the Lowitja O’Donoghue Oration and the Parkes Oration) that the Statement is many pages long. And they both said that all these pages needed to be read in order fully to understand the Statement. I saw Pat Anderson and Megan Davis say exactly this, with mine own eyes, these two principal drafters of the Statement. So, are they giving out misinformation now?
CONTEXT: the Uluru Statement from the Heart in its one page summary is fine-sounding words, acceptable to all. The fuller document has much more: Reparations, Makkarata Treaty (which some say means “revenge”), "Truth-telling", Sovereignty over all of Australia (!)... in short a lot to digest and be concerned about. Which is why the PM, Anthony Alabanese insists the Statement is just One Page, and not any more. And why the No campaigners continue to say -- correctly in my view, given the evidence -- that the Statement is much more than one page.
ADDED: a new book, released on 30 August 2023, “Our Voices from the Heart”, by Pat Anderson and Megan Davis -- the two lead authors of the Uluru Statement from the Heart -- repeats their previous statements, that the Uluru Statement is more than one page long. The fact-checkers and Albanese are out well over their skis on this one.
This is all very horrid. And likely to get more so with the passing of a “hate speech law”. Which I wrote about a while ago, and submitted my comments to the consultation.
