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Freedom of speech

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Antisemitism and Islamophobia are nothing new in this country. But community and political leaders can help keep them in check by toning down their own rhetoric.

Major party impasse threatens to unravel proposed hate speech laws

Islamic Council of Victoria spokesman Adel Salman said the political defence should never have been dropped from the government’s anti-vilification legislation.

  • Chip Le Grand

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How art was ransacked by ineptitude, political pandering and confected outrage

In dumping a fine artist such as Khaled Sabsabi from the Venice Biennale, Creative Australia has undermined the public’s faith in the capacity of art to open minds.

  • Liz Ann Macgregor
President Donald Trump.

Trump bans major US news agency for refusing to rename Gulf of Mexico

The US president has been accused of violating the First Amendment after indefinitely barring The Associated Press from the Oval Office and Air Force One.

  • Michael Koziol

If ‘hate speech’ laws go too far, we will lose essential freedoms

In the name of a good cause, what may be said is policed by ever-more intrusive political censorship. That is how free societies lose their freedoms.

  • George Brandis
Pro-Palestine protesters hold a placard of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, at a rally in Melbourne’s CBD in October 2024.

Pro-Palestine protests are intimidating Jews. Moving them doesn’t harm anyone

If there were any doubts about the nature of the menace confronting Australian Jews, it has been made alarmingly clear by the antisemitic attacks in Melbourne and Sydney

  • Chip Le Grand
Mark Zuckerberg announced his decision this week to get rid of Meta’s professional fact-checkers,

Don’t blame Zuckerberg: The truth about humans is we can’t handle the truth

The Meta boss tied his axing of fact-checkers to the “cultural tipping point” of Trump winning back the presidency. Let’s hope he doesn’t tip the digital age into a dark age.

  • Alexandra Senter
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Pianist Jayson Gillham was criticised over comments at a Melbourne Symphony Orchestra concert.

I’m the pianist the MSO tried to silence. Now it wants to silence all artists

According to the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, I am not an employee or a contractor. Yet it maintains it can dictate what I can and cannot say.

  • Jayson Gillham
The pro-Palestine encampment at the University of Sydney.

Sydney Uni’s ‘enforced civility’ is an assault on free speech – and likely unlawful

It could become one of the most restrictive campuses in the country for peaceful protest, intellectual freedom and critical debate.

  • Sarah Schwartz

Shouty protesters, Elon Musk and our dumb attempts at democracy

I was in the audience when Radiohead’s Thom Yorke called a heckler a coward. This episode got me thinking about freedom and protest – and how not to go about it.

  • Malcolm Knox
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Democracy is very fragile, don’t break it

Readers discuss democracy and what threatens it.

Original URL: https://www.theage.com.au/topic/freedom-of-speech-1mmi