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A veteran’s warning from the Menzies era resurfaces: vague “hate speech” laws empower elites, erode free speech, and threaten Australia’s democratic trust in ordinary citizens.

When I was very young, Prime Minister Menzies tried to outlaw the Communist Party. My father was a trade union official and a highly decorated World War II veteran. At the time, Menzies had valid security concerns for his proposal. Communism was murdering millions of its own citizens in Russia and infiltrating its brutal political ideas into Australia. Dad was deeply involved in countering that subversion. Yet for him, Menzies’ proposal was a bridge too far.

His view was brief but wise. If Parliament can outlaw the Communist Party today, it can outlaw your political party tomorrow. He understood that if we want to remain free, we must allow evil ideas to be exposed to the light of public scrutiny. He trusted the good sense of the great majority of our people because they have shown time and time again throughout history that they are able to hear, judge, and reject evil ideas.

Why Free Societies Must Tolerate Dangerous Ideas

That faces us with a key question. If we don’t trust the good sense of the majority of Australians, whom should we trust? Should we trust politicians or judges to hear and judge the range of ideas for us? Do you trust politicians or judges to do that for you?

Do you, for example, trust politicians and judges who treat machete-wielding teenagers as if they were sick, give them a tap on the wrist, then release them into our community to terrorise other innocent people? What about those who approve sexual mutilation of teenage kids, or the woolly-headed geniuses who think it’s OK to risk injury to women and girls by allowing men to participate in women’s sports? Does their view of good and evil reflect the good sense of the Australian people?

For example, do you trust the values of the self-serving politicians whose policies allowed Islamic hotheads to make veiled and even explicit threats against Jews after the barbaric butchery of 7 October 2023? They let it happen simply to placate voters in heavily Muslim electorates, and they callously left Jewish Australians feeling abandoned and afraid, which no doubt emboldened the perpetrators of the Islamic atrocity at Bondi.

Do you trust their motives now that they have suddenly aligned themselves with the feelings of all decent Australians toward the grief-stricken Jewish members of our community?  Do you really think these politicians have the wisdom to make laws that clearly distinguish between whether what you said was valid criticism or whether it was “hate speech” that lands you in jail?

These are the same politicians whose State colleagues are ignoring the decision of a large majority who said no to the divisive Voice referendum. They’re showing dictatorial tendencies. They seem quite willing to make decisions contrary to our expressed wishes.

Obviously, they don’t trust the good sense of the majority of the Australian people.  That is why they’ve decided now is the time they might be able to get away with vaguely defined “hate” speech laws that will crush free speech – especially speech that criticises the government policies that have caused our recent social disintegration.  They know they wouldn’t stand a chance of passing such dictatorial laws in less emotional times.

“Hate Speech” Laws: A Weapon Against Free Debate and Dissent

Hate speech is a term that is much too broad. It will be used to persecute Australians who want to criticise the damage done by wrongheaded immigration policies. For example, we accept immigrants whose religion classifies the parts of the world where Islam rules as “the house of peace” and all other parts of the world as “the house of war”. It advocates achieving a position of dominance in “the house of war” and then killing all Jews and Christians who refuse to either become Muslims or accept second-class citizenship as “dhimmis” who must pay the annual Jizya tax.

Even the term antisemitism is too vague and variously defined to be used in laws that could jail people for what they say.  In the present grievous circumstances, it is understandable that Jews might want antisemitism to be prohibited, but that is because our laws against inciting violence were either ignored or badly drafted and need amending. Australians must be free to criticise the actions of the Israeli state or its politicians, for example.

Free citizens of a free country should never be subjected to laws that prohibit reasonable criticism of any group or person, even if the criticism offends someone. It is outrageous that Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act already allows Australians to be dragged before a politically staffed tribunal, not an impartial court, simply because someone claims you have offended them. This is not proper law. It is the government using lawfare to clamp down on free speech.

Section 18C was used to persecute two pastors who had simply quoted from the Quran. They refused to retract as requested by the tribunal and were nearly impoverished by the cost of legal challenges, while the tribunal was funded from the deep pockets of government. Fortunately, the Victorian Appeals Court held that the tribunal had wrongly interpreted the Act and the need to retract was dropped.

From Multiculturalism to Managed Belief: The Real Target of Speech Control

Mark my words. “Hate speech” laws will be used to impoverish or jail people who criticise the policy of multiculturalism. Culture comes from the Latin word cultus, which means a religion. So, it would be more accurate to call the policy multi-cult-ism or multi-religion-ism. The effect of this policy is to encourage immigrants not to integrate. Instead, it preserves beliefs and behaviours that historically have made nations vulnerable to dictators, disease, and poverty.  Those problems drive people to leave their homeland and even risk their lives to reach the justice, freedom, and prosperity that we inherited from Christian forebears.

It is naïve to think that socialist politicians who are members of the Fabian Society will not use so-called hate speech laws against all religions, including Christianity. These people are humanists who largely adhere to the Humanist Manifesto, which makes no bones about its ultimate objective of controlling churches:

“Humanism maintains that all associations and institutions exist for the fulfillment of human life.  The intelligent evaluation, transformation, control and direction of all such associations and institutions with a view to enhancement of human life is the purpose and programme of humanism.  Certain religious institutions, their ritualistic forms, their ecclesiastical methods and communal activities must be reconstituted as rapidly as experience allows in order to function effectively in the modern world.”

The Humanist Magazine once contained an article that said:

“The battle for mankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school class room by teachers who correctly perceive their role as proseletisers of a new faith.  The class room must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new; between the rotting corpse of Christianity on the one hand, and the new faith of humanism on the other.”  (Humanist Magazine, January/February 1983)

Professor Manning Clark, a secular humanist, was quoted as saying of his friend, the late Justice Lionel Murphy:

“it had been one of Murphy’s aims to dismantle the Judeo-Christian ethic of Australian society.” (page 8, The Sydney Morning Herald, 30 October 1986).

Murphy’s protege, ex-Senator Gareth Evans, former president of the Humanist Society and architect of the infamous Bill of Rights, was himself once quoted as saying:

“children want a right to sexual freedom and education and protection from the influence of Christianity.” (page 11, The Sydney Morning Herald, 7 May 1976).

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