Keywords: Freedom Of Speech
There are more than 200 results, only the first 200 are displayed here.
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MEDIA
- Justin Glyn
- 08 October 2012
23 Comments
Free speech is fundamental to democracy because it protects public discourse and freedom of religion. But while the right to free speech must to be respected even if it causes offence, we need to question what purpose is served by Alan Jones' attack on Julia Gillard, and the French cartoons.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 24 September 2012
10 Comments
'Looking to the future, I want to focus on the role of the laity in the growing absence of priests. And I want to insist on the need for due process, transparency and respectful dealing within the Church.' Full text of Fr Frank Brennan SJ's presentation 'Looking Back and Looking Forward Over Church and Life on the 50th Anniversary of Vatican II' at the Spirituality in the Pub Goulburn Valley Annual Dinner, 21 September 2012.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 18 September 2012
'The common law leaves a gap between the mandates of the law and the conduct that we choose to engage in according to our individual moral standards. We call that gap 'freedom'. The challenge is determining the width of that gap for groups bound by religious faith which differs from the Australian majority.' Frank Brennan launches Carolyn Evans' Legal Protection of Religious Freedom in Australia. Full text
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AUSTRALIA
- Jim McDermott
- 10 September 2012
3 Comments
The US finished Act One of its quadrennial orgiastic political kabuki last week with the Republican and Democratic National Conventions. Originally conventions were intended to choose candidates, but today they’re more about motivating the parties’ bases, but really just a total schmozzle.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 07 September 2012
18 Comments
Church groups in Australia have vigorously campaigned to protect themselves from particular equal opportunity laws. While there is agreement about a faith community's right to employ practising believers, there is plenty of room for disagreement as to how most prudently and charitably to exercise that right.
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AUSTRALIA
- Andrew Hamilton
- 13 August 2012
10 Comments
The Prime Minister has demanded states regulate the price of electricity. News Ltd continues its campaign against further regulation of newspapers. Regulation brings into play two values that stand in tension: individual freedom and solidarity. The trick is to regulate so that personal freedom is enhanced in a way that serves the good of all.
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EDUCATION
- John Warhurst
- 09 July 2012
10 Comments
Labor speechwriter Graham Freudenberg observed that ‘the oldest, deepest, most poisonous debate in Australia has been about government aid to church schools’. The most dramatic episode in the history of church state relations in Australia was the Goulburn schools strike, which took place 50 years ago this month.
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RELIGION
- Frank Brennan
- 26 June 2012
18 Comments
Last week’s tragedy of another mass loss of life at sea between Indonesia and Christmas Island focuses our minds yet again on an intractable public policy problem for Australia – our search for a coherent, workable and moral asylum policy.
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MEDIA
'I still believe in global warming. Do you?' These words graced a Chicaco billboard above an image of 'Unabomber' Ted Kaczynski. It was removed, not because it broke any law, but because it was deemed to have 'gone too far'. In a society that supports free speech, who decides how far is too far?'
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ARTS AND CULTURE
- Andrew Hamilton
- 21 March 2012
11 Comments
He was a notorious transgressor on the football field, and the last years of his life were a sustained transgression. Terminal sickness has its own code. It is normally handled and propitiated by silence. Jim Stynes seemed to do it a different way.
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MEDIA
- Geoff Davies
- 07 February 2012
39 Comments
The misreporting of the Australia Day 'riot' is but one example of a growing nexus of hysteria, racism and ignorance in Australian media. It is time to rein in the increasing distortion of our social and political conversations, and require responsibility as well as freedom of speech.
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MEDIA
- Binoy Kampmark
- 13 January 2012
6 Comments
The Federal Court found that fair-skinned Aboriginal people were likely to have been 'offended, insulted, humiliated or intimidated' by Bolt's articles. Bolt lamented the passing of free speech in Australia. But free speech cuts both ways, and no freedom is absolute. Published 29 September 2011
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