The Coalition: Where protesting free speech is only a right for the Right – Independent Australia

The Morrison Government, for all its pretensions and rhetoric, has shown that its commitment to basic human rights such as of freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and freedom of association is paper-thin at best.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has demonstrated his contempt for our democratic freedoms on many occasions. Most recently, by snubbing the UN Climate Change Summit, before summarily dismissing themost significant display of freedom of assembly of our era, in which300,000 Australians took to our streets protesting climate inaction.

Morrison could hardly disguise his derision, as he insisted Australias response to global warming was just fine and declared that climate protests were causing needless anxiety in children.

Democratic freedoms, as far as the openly Pentecostal PM is concerned, only refer to so-calledreligious freedoms. The most recent manifestation of this commitment to freedom involves the establishment of religious freedomlegislation which seeks to give special rights to those who refer to themselves as religiousto say whatever they like to whomever they like, while not extending the same freedom" of speechto their non-denominational counterparts.

Meanwhile, that beacon of the freedom of speech brigade, Home Affairs Minister Peter Dutton, now wants to cancel welfare payments for anyone exercising such freedoms by protesting climate inaction. Dutton has called for mandatory gaol terms, as well as urging others to name and shame protesters on Newstart. Senator Michaelia Cash, unsurprisingly, supported this view.

And now, Member for Goldstein Tim Wilson explains, for all our ignorant benefit, the difference between good protests and bad protests.

In 2016, when his Government subjected LGBTI people to a same-sex marriage plebiscite, Wilson cried, with dramatic effect, but backed it anyway. Today fresh from enjoying the LGBTI communitys campaigning while he toed the party line on marriage equality Wilson is now practically a rebel.

Suddenly, so interested in the democratic right of free speech is Wilson, that he went to the Hong Kong protests and joined in with pro-democracy activists along the way ensuring to take plenty of selfies for his social media campaign.

Wilson then resorted to the old Im-the-adult-in-the-room-logic when, in a train-wreck interview on ABCs Afternoon Briefing, Patricia Karvelas questioned his commitment to freedom of speech, asking him:

Is it just some protests you like and not others?

Thats a sort of childish assertion, frankly, he replied. Firstly, people have a right to protest and Ive always argued that.

Got it. Unless, of course, you count the time, only eight short years ago, when Wilson tweeted about protesters:

Walked past Occupy Melbourne protest, all people who think freedom of speech = freedom 2 b heard, time wasters ... send in the water cannons.

A garbled explanation followed in which Wilson claimed he had been joking about the water cannons and that the

The Occupy Melbourne protest wasnt just a protest it was an occupation You cant just take over public land

Hong Kong represents good protesting, it seems, while protesting of any description in Australiais extremist, disruptive and not to be tolerated. Apparently, the distinction is in the occupation of public land!

For the record, as the former IPA policy director for climate change policy and intellectual property and free trade, Wilson was an active critic of the Human Rights Commission presumably until a convenient act of cronyism saw him appointed as its Commissioner.

Key policies pertaining to democratic freedoms from that little gem, 20 Policies to Fix Australia, include the following:

Naturally, Tim took these fundamental principles to his role as Human Rights Commissioner, where he enthusiasticallyadvocated for changes to Section 18C of theRacial Discrimination Act, and referred to the prosecution of Andrew Boltfor vilification of Indigenous Australians, as an infringement on Bolt's right to freedom of speech.

Freedom of speech for the Morrison Government is a right, but only for the Right.

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The Coalition: Where protesting free speech is only a right for the Right - Independent Australia