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You're casting a very wide net there. > Australians by and large don't want American style, unfettered free speech I'd argue that Australians, by and large, d

You're casting a very wide net there. > Australians by and large don't want American style, unfettered free speech I'd argue that Australians, by and large, don't know that they don't have a legislated right to free speech similar to what they have in the US. This is evident by the shock surprise and outrage from Australians every time there is an action that stifles free speech. > And are quite happy with "say whatever you want so long as you don't libel or slander someone or some group of people" approach Neither libel nor slander is protected under the American first amendment. > It's what keeps our very multicultural society together. Australia has a very mono-cultural society. The "multi-cultural society" meme attempts to liken having a kebab shop on the corner to having conflicting cultures in the same area, which to me (as a non-Anglo Australian) doesn't make sense. Australian values and culture is quite evidently very specific (freedom of religion, freedom of dress, freedom of expression, etc) and we - both legally and as a society - reject any culture that conflict with this. Perhaps the only other culture that is allowed in Australia is traditional Aboriginal culture, where we quite literally have a second set of laws to accommodate it. That said, freedom of speech doesn't have any impact on this at all. I'm not sure where the link you're supposing comes from. --- In general, what happened[0] was intentionally misreported by the ABC. 1. The AFP obtained a search warrant for the ABC offices. 2. The AFP notified the ABC that they were coming to investigate in advance, however the ABC reported it to be a "raid." 3. The ABC dedicated a five camera film crew to follow the AFP around throughout the process. 4. The AFP had the explicit goal of finding out who the source was for revealing classified security information. That's it. It wasn't a free speech issue -- and it wasn't a journalistic rights issue. [0] https://www.afp.gov.au/news-media/media-releases/afp-statement-activity-canberra-and-sydney https://www.afp.gov.au/news-media/media-releases/afp-stateme...

roenxi 7y ago
I'd just like to put it out there that I very much agree with everything you said, and would have tried to write a similar post had you not already said everything better than I would have. Particularly the idea that Australia has a very multicultural society; we don't. We have lots of immigrants, but very limited cultural clashing such as is seen in, eg, the US where they actually have to manage all the different cultures they keep incubated. Ironically the fact nearly everyone is first- or second - generation immigrant promotes somewhat homogeneous culture although that is a gross generalisation as all generalisations are. That said, there is one other point that deserves to be kept in focus - why exactly does the Australian government need to classify the fact that they are killing unarmed men and children. That shouldn't be classified information; if someone is killing unarmed children on my behalf I'd like to know about it tyvm.
- jddj 7y ago
  I'm curious about the monoculture point. I reflexively disagreed with your parent post when they said it but now that someone else has agreed I'm second guessing. Where is your line for where a culture starts and stops? Do we really need to be managing some kind of clash/conflict between the Greek suburbs or communities of Melbourne and the Lebanese, Hispanic or Italian ones for their cultures to be considered different? Because they drive on the left and follow Australian laws have the Chinese population in Sunnybank abandoned their culture because they aren't clashing with the Anglo-australian population? These communities are speaking their own languages, importing/selling their own ingredients and products, cooking their own foods, watching their own style of entertainment, practicing their own religions, socialising at unique times and locations, listening to their own music and raising their children in a style informed by their community's historical norms. If you (and GP) formed your opinions outside of the major eastern cities, or haven't really ventured into the outer suburbs I could see how you could arrive at monoculture, but otherwise I think by requiring a "clash" you may be setting too high a bar for your definition of culture. If you visit Oakleigh (I think Melbourne is still the city with the highest concentration of Greek people outside of Greece) and see the same culture that you see in the Northern Beaches of Sydney, which has the same culture that you see in Mareeba I'd be very interested in hearing more.
  - smallnamespace 7y ago
    > practicing their own religions The freedom of religion is explicitly within a Western cultural and political framework. For example, there is a long history of Islamic jurisprudence that also allows for freedom of religion - as long as Islam remains the 'established' religion, and other religions remain on a lesser footing. This is not obviously compatible with the level of separation of church and state in the West - but Muslim immigrants who might prefer a more theocratic system are obviously in the minority. > have the Chinese population in Sunnybank abandoned their culture because they aren't clashing with the Anglo-australian population Chinese civilization has had a markedly non-democratic political tradition for a couple thousand years, and many mainland immigrants lack a strong preference for democratic society. Similarly, Thailand has strong lese-majeste laws to protect the dignity of the king and royal family. These political traditions are pretty alien to the modern West, even though Westerners three hundred years ago would have found them utterly normal. Culture is not just what you eat or where you worship, but encompass habits like 'How do we treat other groups?', 'How should we be ruled?', or even 'Is it morally acceptable to break laws (like evading taxes)?' Immigrants are only allowed to act out certain cultural beliefs—the ones that don't threaten or conflict with the dominant culture.
yxhuvud 7y ago
Right to unconditional source confidentiality is very much a journalistic rights issue.
- stevenjohns 7y ago
  I'd like to preface this by saying that I don't consider threats to national security to be something that is a journalistic rights issue. That said, in this case we haven't had a magistrate order a journalist to reveal who their source was, so journalistic source confidentiality hasn't been breached. Instead we saw a portion of a slow, deliberate and year-long investigation by the federal police with no pressure placed on the journalists themselves - either in the form of arrests or coercion to reveal secrets. So this still wouldn't be a journalistic rights issue.
  - sjy 7y ago
    I think most journalists would argue that they should have the right not to have their email searched by police to discover a source's identity, even if, as a matter of law, they don't.
avinium 7y ago
I don't follow - why do you think this is not a journalistic rights issue?
sjy 7y ago
Why do you say that the ABC intentionally misreported the situation? An ABC journalist live-tweeted the execution of the search warrant and claimed that he was the first to live-tweet an AFP 'raid' [1], which I think is valuable public interest journalism. I thought the reporting was accurate, although the journalist's commentary does presume that the media deserves special treatment, because of its role in our democracy and the potential chilling effect of the law as written on whistleblowers. This is a fair assumption and it's obviously popular with journalists, but I think the ABC would publish a contrary view if a credible writer wanted to put it forward. [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/about/backstory/investigative-journalism/2019-06-08/federal-police-raid-abc-office-john-lyons-live-tweeting/11192898 https://www.abc.net.au/news/about/backstory/investigative-jo...
- stevenjohns 7y ago
  Well, for one, it's not a raid. The fact that it has been presented as such is incredibly misleading. Then they tried to suggest that it was linked to the Australian government, spreading conspiracy theories about the timing - asking why it happened after the election and not before[0]. The AFP didn't wake up one day and send armed men to storm a building. After two year's worth of investigation, they gathered enough evidence to request a search warrant for a single ABC office which was granted. They then notified the ABC that they were on their way and entered without conflict to find and collect the data they wanted to take. Nobody was arrested, nobody was beaten, nobody was threatened. Nobody was even insulted during the process. The Australian Federal Police are not even allowed to access the data until ABC's lawyers have reviewed the entire process within a two week window. I'm not sure how much more democratic that can be. It's difficult for me to comment on this because I feel like I'm coming across as if I support an overreaching government. I support an extremely small government but one thing that catches me out is national security. The only role a federal government should play, in my view, is national security and I don't see a problem when they're doing exactly that in a way that dots all the i's and crosses all the t's. [0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-05/abc-raided-by-australian-federal-police-afghan-files-stories/11181162 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-05/abc-raided-by-austral...
  - 7y ago
tnolet 7y ago
Many, many western / European countries would find a “raid” on a journalistic organization to reveal a source a massive, massive journalistic rights issue. It would cause mass protests here in Germany...
- hsbaut76 7y ago
  Australians don't share the same political will and motivation as the Germans. By large we are a politically apathetic country with no strong leadership or vision for the future. We don't value personal liberties and personal freedom because we don't understand what it means not to have them. We would rather be bubble wrapped and protected by the state than exercise personal responsibility. I have lived in both countries long enough to see this.
  - mekazu 7y ago
    Yeah if the last election result wasn’t a perfect demonstration of voter apathy and disengagement I don’t know what would be. Having said that, that’s just the majority - the rest of us are very engaged I promise! Just uselessly, impotently quiet.
  - SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
    The succinctly fits with almost every conversation I've had with Australians I've run into while traveling around Asia. As an American I've immediately been thrown off with "why are you/they allowed to do that" or "there aught to be a law" or "I have nothing to hide-type conversations. It's just a flat out different personal liberty viewpoint than I have. That's not atypical, but the quickness I find myself disagreeing is.
gwicks56 7y ago
Total unadulterated horsehit. The Aus government maintains the legal right to jail journalists who publish stuff they don't like, for decades. And in this specific incident, the AFP refused to rule out they would charge the journalists.[0] But "wasn't a journalistic rights issue". [0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-06/afp-wont-rule-out-journalists-being-charged/11186828 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-06/afp-wont-rule-out-jou...
- stevenjohns 7y ago
  > The Aus government maintains the legal right to jail journalists who publish stuff they don't like, for decades Yeah, no. The only total unadulterated horsehit is this unsourced nonsense that tries to suggest Australia is a police state.
  - gwicks56 7y ago
    More horeshit. Not sure if you are lying, ignorant or just enjoy carrying water for the government, but is a FACT that you can go to jail for possessing or publishing classified material in Australia, journalist or not.[0] [0]https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-23/journalists-at-risk-of-jail-under-foreign-interference-laws/9353606 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-23/journalists-at-risk-o... I should add that this has only been the case for 6 months, so the fact that the AFP is now raiding multiple journalists, not for any reason actually related to national security, but for stories which embarrassed the government like soldiers killing women and children in Iraq, is somewhat concerning.
TomMckenny 7y ago
>Neither libel nor slander is protected under the American first amendment. No but... Valid defenses include: the statement is true. The statement is the speaker's opinion. And even if those fail, it must proven that it was spoken with malice. So defamation in the US is close to unenforceable.
- _0ffh 7y ago
  I rather have it thus, than the opposite way.
- Lazare 7y ago
  > Valid defenses include: the statement is true Also a defence under Australian law. > The statement is the speaker's opinion. Also a defence under Australian law, as long as the speech falls under the concept of "fair comment and criticism", which is the same rule the US follows (albeit interpreted quite differently). > it must proven that it was spoken with malice NOT a defence under US law, unless the plaintiff is a public figure, which is a category defined quite narrowly in the US. > So defamation in the US is close to unenforceable. There are a lot of libel suits in the US, many of them are won by the plaintiffs. The difference in law is less than you seem to think, and what differences exist are mainly on the extent that opinions ("I think Joe is an asshole") should be protected; both countries agree that factual claims ("Joe murdered his wife") are not. And offhand, it's hardly clear that Australia had drawn the line in the right place. See, eg: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/opinion/australia-defamation-laws.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/opinion/australia-defamat... https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/nov/30/your-right-to-know-how-australias-defamation-law-stifles-public-interest-journalism https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/nov/30/your-right-to-... https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-s-defamation-laws-are-ripe-for-overhaul-20181207-p50kwk.html https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-s-defamation-laws-...
A1kmm 7y ago
The problem is the misuse of classifications to keep the public from finding out things which are in the public interest but embarrasing to the government. The raids are the furtherance of the suppression of public interest material being made public through the media, so that is absolutely a free speech and journalistic rights issue.
Vibrelli 7y ago
> Australia has a very mono-cultural society. I have to disagree with you here... Sydney & Melbourne have the world's 3rd and 4th largest foreign born populations. 45% of people living in Sydney weren't born in Australia... Melbourne 41%. Agree that outside Syd & Melb though, it's very mono cultural. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_born#Metropolitan_and_Urban_regions_with_largest_foreign_born_populations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_born#Metropolitan_and_...
- tomhoward 7y ago
  Understand that this disagreement is over definitions/interpretations, not statistics. The question is whether the populations are separated into heterogeneous cultural communities, or rather are integrated into a more homogenous society. In my experience (having spent effectively all of my >40 years living in Melbourne) is that it's a bit of both, but that cultural disharmony is not a problem.

roenxi 7y ago

I'd just like to put it out there that I very much agree with everything you said, and would have tried to write a similar post had you not already said everything better than I would have. Particularly the idea that Australia has a very multicultural society; we don't. We have lots of immigrants, but very limited cultural clashing such as is seen in, eg, the US where they actually have to manage all the different cultures they keep incubated. Ironically the fact nearly everyone is first- or second - generation immigrant promotes somewhat homogeneous culture although that is a gross generalisation as all generalisations are. That said, there is one other point that deserves to be kept in focus - why exactly does the Australian government need to classify the fact that they are killing unarmed men and children. That shouldn't be classified information; if someone is killing unarmed children on my behalf I'd like to know about it tyvm.

jddj 7y ago
I'm curious about the monoculture point. I reflexively disagreed with your parent post when they said it but now that someone else has agreed I'm second guessing. Where is your line for where a culture starts and stops? Do we really need to be managing some kind of clash/conflict between the Greek suburbs or communities of Melbourne and the Lebanese, Hispanic or Italian ones for their cultures to be considered different? Because they drive on the left and follow Australian laws have the Chinese population in Sunnybank abandoned their culture because they aren't clashing with the Anglo-australian population? These communities are speaking their own languages, importing/selling their own ingredients and products, cooking their own foods, watching their own style of entertainment, practicing their own religions, socialising at unique times and locations, listening to their own music and raising their children in a style informed by their community's historical norms. If you (and GP) formed your opinions outside of the major eastern cities, or haven't really ventured into the outer suburbs I could see how you could arrive at monoculture, but otherwise I think by requiring a "clash" you may be setting too high a bar for your definition of culture. If you visit Oakleigh (I think Melbourne is still the city with the highest concentration of Greek people outside of Greece) and see the same culture that you see in the Northern Beaches of Sydney, which has the same culture that you see in Mareeba I'd be very interested in hearing more.
- smallnamespace 7y ago
  > practicing their own religions The freedom of religion is explicitly within a Western cultural and political framework. For example, there is a long history of Islamic jurisprudence that also allows for freedom of religion - as long as Islam remains the 'established' religion, and other religions remain on a lesser footing. This is not obviously compatible with the level of separation of church and state in the West - but Muslim immigrants who might prefer a more theocratic system are obviously in the minority. > have the Chinese population in Sunnybank abandoned their culture because they aren't clashing with the Anglo-australian population Chinese civilization has had a markedly non-democratic political tradition for a couple thousand years, and many mainland immigrants lack a strong preference for democratic society. Similarly, Thailand has strong lese-majeste laws to protect the dignity of the king and royal family. These political traditions are pretty alien to the modern West, even though Westerners three hundred years ago would have found them utterly normal. Culture is not just what you eat or where you worship, but encompass habits like 'How do we treat other groups?', 'How should we be ruled?', or even 'Is it morally acceptable to break laws (like evading taxes)?' Immigrants are only allowed to act out certain cultural beliefs—the ones that don't threaten or conflict with the dominant culture.

yxhuvud 7y ago

Right to unconditional source confidentiality is very much a journalistic rights issue.

stevenjohns 7y ago
I'd like to preface this by saying that I don't consider threats to national security to be something that is a journalistic rights issue. That said, in this case we haven't had a magistrate order a journalist to reveal who their source was, so journalistic source confidentiality hasn't been breached. Instead we saw a portion of a slow, deliberate and year-long investigation by the federal police with no pressure placed on the journalists themselves - either in the form of arrests or coercion to reveal secrets. So this still wouldn't be a journalistic rights issue.
- sjy 7y ago
  I think most journalists would argue that they should have the right not to have their email searched by police to discover a source's identity, even if, as a matter of law, they don't.

avinium 7y ago

I don't follow - why do you think this is not a journalistic rights issue?

sjy 7y ago

Why do you say that the ABC intentionally misreported the situation? An ABC journalist live-tweeted the execution of the search warrant and claimed that he was the first to live-tweet an AFP 'raid' [1], which I think is valuable public interest journalism. I thought the reporting was accurate, although the journalist's commentary does presume that the media deserves special treatment, because of its role in our democracy and the potential chilling effect of the law as written on whistleblowers. This is a fair assumption and it's obviously popular with journalists, but I think the ABC would publish a contrary view if a credible writer wanted to put it forward. [1] https://www.abc.net.au/news/about/backstory/investigative-journalism/2019-06-08/federal-police-raid-abc-office-john-lyons-live-tweeting/11192898 https://www.abc.net.au/news/about/backstory/investigative-jo...

stevenjohns 7y ago
Well, for one, it's not a raid. The fact that it has been presented as such is incredibly misleading. Then they tried to suggest that it was linked to the Australian government, spreading conspiracy theories about the timing - asking why it happened after the election and not before[0]. The AFP didn't wake up one day and send armed men to storm a building. After two year's worth of investigation, they gathered enough evidence to request a search warrant for a single ABC office which was granted. They then notified the ABC that they were on their way and entered without conflict to find and collect the data they wanted to take. Nobody was arrested, nobody was beaten, nobody was threatened. Nobody was even insulted during the process. The Australian Federal Police are not even allowed to access the data until ABC's lawyers have reviewed the entire process within a two week window. I'm not sure how much more democratic that can be. It's difficult for me to comment on this because I feel like I'm coming across as if I support an overreaching government. I support an extremely small government but one thing that catches me out is national security. The only role a federal government should play, in my view, is national security and I don't see a problem when they're doing exactly that in a way that dots all the i's and crosses all the t's. [0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-05/abc-raided-by-australian-federal-police-afghan-files-stories/11181162 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-05/abc-raided-by-austral...
- 7y ago

tnolet 7y ago

Many, many western / European countries would find a “raid” on a journalistic organization to reveal a source a massive, massive journalistic rights issue. It would cause mass protests here in Germany...

hsbaut76 7y ago
Australians don't share the same political will and motivation as the Germans. By large we are a politically apathetic country with no strong leadership or vision for the future. We don't value personal liberties and personal freedom because we don't understand what it means not to have them. We would rather be bubble wrapped and protected by the state than exercise personal responsibility. I have lived in both countries long enough to see this.
- mekazu 7y ago
  Yeah if the last election result wasn’t a perfect demonstration of voter apathy and disengagement I don’t know what would be. Having said that, that’s just the majority - the rest of us are very engaged I promise! Just uselessly, impotently quiet.
- SlowRobotAhead 7y ago
  The succinctly fits with almost every conversation I've had with Australians I've run into while traveling around Asia. As an American I've immediately been thrown off with "why are you/they allowed to do that" or "there aught to be a law" or "I have nothing to hide-type conversations. It's just a flat out different personal liberty viewpoint than I have. That's not atypical, but the quickness I find myself disagreeing is.

gwicks56 7y ago

Total unadulterated horsehit. The Aus government maintains the legal right to jail journalists who publish stuff they don't like, for decades. And in this specific incident, the AFP refused to rule out they would charge the journalists.[0] But "wasn't a journalistic rights issue". [0] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-06/afp-wont-rule-out-journalists-being-charged/11186828 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-06-06/afp-wont-rule-out-jou...

stevenjohns 7y ago
> The Aus government maintains the legal right to jail journalists who publish stuff they don't like, for decades Yeah, no. The only total unadulterated horsehit is this unsourced nonsense that tries to suggest Australia is a police state.
- gwicks56 7y ago
  More horeshit. Not sure if you are lying, ignorant or just enjoy carrying water for the government, but is a FACT that you can go to jail for possessing or publishing classified material in Australia, journalist or not.[0] [0]https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-23/journalists-at-risk-of-jail-under-foreign-interference-laws/9353606 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-01-23/journalists-at-risk-o... I should add that this has only been the case for 6 months, so the fact that the AFP is now raiding multiple journalists, not for any reason actually related to national security, but for stories which embarrassed the government like soldiers killing women and children in Iraq, is somewhat concerning.

TomMckenny 7y ago

>Neither libel nor slander is protected under the American first amendment. No but... Valid defenses include: the statement is true. The statement is the speaker's opinion. And even if those fail, it must proven that it was spoken with malice. So defamation in the US is close to unenforceable.

_0ffh 7y ago
I rather have it thus, than the opposite way.
Lazare 7y ago
> Valid defenses include: the statement is true Also a defence under Australian law. > The statement is the speaker's opinion. Also a defence under Australian law, as long as the speech falls under the concept of "fair comment and criticism", which is the same rule the US follows (albeit interpreted quite differently). > it must proven that it was spoken with malice NOT a defence under US law, unless the plaintiff is a public figure, which is a category defined quite narrowly in the US. > So defamation in the US is close to unenforceable. There are a lot of libel suits in the US, many of them are won by the plaintiffs. The difference in law is less than you seem to think, and what differences exist are mainly on the extent that opinions ("I think Joe is an asshole") should be protected; both countries agree that factual claims ("Joe murdered his wife") are not. And offhand, it's hardly clear that Australia had drawn the line in the right place. See, eg: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/opinion/australia-defamation-laws.html https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/05/opinion/australia-defamat... https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/nov/30/your-right-to-know-how-australias-defamation-law-stifles-public-interest-journalism https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/nov/30/your-right-to-... https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-s-defamation-laws-are-ripe-for-overhaul-20181207-p50kwk.html https://www.smh.com.au/national/australia-s-defamation-laws-...

A1kmm 7y ago

The problem is the misuse of classifications to keep the public from finding out things which are in the public interest but embarrasing to the government. The raids are the furtherance of the suppression of public interest material being made public through the media, so that is absolutely a free speech and journalistic rights issue.

Vibrelli 7y ago

> Australia has a very mono-cultural society. I have to disagree with you here... Sydney & Melbourne have the world's 3rd and 4th largest foreign born populations. 45% of people living in Sydney weren't born in Australia... Melbourne 41%. Agree that outside Syd & Melb though, it's very mono cultural. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_born#Metropolitan_and_Urban_regions_with_largest_foreign_born_populations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_born#Metropolitan_and_...

tomhoward 7y ago
Understand that this disagreement is over definitions/interpretations, not statistics. The question is whether the populations are separated into heterogeneous cultural communities, or rather are integrated into a more homogenous society. In my experience (having spent effectively all of my >40 years living in Melbourne) is that it's a bit of both, but that cultural disharmony is not a problem.