Posts tagged Free speech
Proposed local government electoral expenditure caps scheme

The expenditure cap for third parties should strike a fair balance between respect for freedom of speech and association, and the importance of preventing third parties exercising disproportionate influence in elections and being used to circumvent expenditure caps. The current proposal is that each third party can spend the same amount as all the mayoral candidate caps combined. This is absurd. This system permits every third party the same influence, in expenditure terms, as all the mayoral candidates combined. It is hard to see how this system would not inevitably lead to the exact outcome the system purports to be trying to avoid – that being the complete drowning out of other election participants’ voices.

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Submission in relation to Social Media (Anti Trolling) Bill

The Internet is the new public square. So much of public debate, discussion and exchange of information now takes place on the Internet. On that basis, the doctrines of freedom of speech must be applied to the Internet.The rights of speakers on the Internet need to be protected. Another fundamental aspect of the right to freedom of speech is the right to do so anonymously. History is replete with examples of people having exercised their right of speech then being subject to reprisals by government or individuals

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Shield Laws for Journalists

the press is and must be independent from government and has a presumptive, though not unconditional, right to seek out the news. Freedom of speech is rooted in a distrust of the government’s capacity to regulate speech, particularly political speech, where it is in a position of a conflict of interest. This conflict is no starker when it is seeking to restrain the use of embarrassing information obtained by journalists

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Submission to Queensland Human Rights Inquiry

In the Council’s view the case for a Human Rights Act is quite simply irrefutable.  In saying that the Council does not think that a Human Rights Act will constitute a revolution in either sense.  That is, a Human Rights Act will not create a human rights nirvana in Queensland.  Nor will it wreck the separation of powers between the branches of the government or destroy our democracy.  What it will do is represent a bold statement of commitment by the Queensland Government to bring human rights closer to the heart of political culture in this state and provide a place where the marginalised and disadvantaged in our community can seek redress for their grievances.

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Campaign Finance - Trade Unions

Both industrial organisations and corporations are economic actors pursuing their economic interests in the economic market and the political market.The interests of shareholders and the members of industrial organisations are in this regard indistinguishable from one another. There is no legitimate basis for subjecting one set to a series of burdens and controls which do not apply to others. Or to put it in a positive way, there is no reason why one set of individuals, that is members of industrial organisations, should have more rights than shareholders.

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Submission to National Human Rights Consultation Committee

The members of this Council do not think that there is any single way to protect civil liberties in this country.  The pluralistic, open, democratic society in which we live only survives because the citizens of this country believe in it sufficiently to be active in support of it.  This however does not mean that we cannot improve our institutional arrangements to ensure that they best support the continued existence of that society.

 

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Review of the Power to Proscribe Organisations as Terrorist Organisations

It is actions that should be the subject of criminal sanctions not indications of support or involvement in political organisations.  All of the conduct which is alleged against the organisations to be proscribed which is said to justify that proscription could be the subject of an ordinary criminal charge.

 

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