From FREEDOMWATCH.ipa.org

Hopefully there is freedom to copy this on my blog.

This important report in The Age today is a must read. It picks up the IPA’s concern about the increasing coercive powers of government regulators – who are sometimes given even more power than the police. The report also covers new IPA research that has demonstrated the right to silence was removed by eight pieces of legislation passed in 2012 alone.

Thanks to the support of IPA members, the erosion of our fundamental legal rights is generating the interest it deserves.

The Australian Human Rights Commission‘s failure to defend freedom of speech

Last week, the IPA’s Tim Wilson appeared on ABC’s The Drum program, where he condemned Sex Discrimination Commissioner Elizabeth Broderick for the Australian Human Rights Commission’s failure to defend freedom of speech. You can watch Tim here:

And the IPA’s Simon Breheny recently debated the president of the Australian Human Rights Commission, Gillian Triggs, on Channel 7’s Weekend Sunrise program, criticising the taxpayer-funded commission for leading the charge in trying to restrict free speech. Watch the debate here:

The commission’s failure to defend freedom of speech is why we’ve called for the complete abolition of the commission. Last week Simon argued in The Australian that if we can’t abolish the commission perhaps it could appoint freedom commissioners. The Senate committee inquiry into the Gillard government’s anti-discrimination draft bill reported last week. As Simon explained here, the committee’s recommendations fail to address the many fundamental problems in the draft bill.

And here’s the letter Simon wrote to the new Attorney General, Mark Dreyfus, asking him whether he would support the draft bill.

This might be why the shadow Attorney General George Brandis asked Gillian Triggs why the commission isn’t more like the IPA! Here’s what he said:

“Whereas your commission is a dedicated and committed advocate of anti-discrimination principles, I do not see the commission being a dedicated and committed advocate of freedom principles. You have think tanks, like in the Institute of Public Affairs, which has something called a ‘freedom project’. I do not see a freedom project in the Human Rights Commission.”

FreedomWatch would not be possible without the generous donors to the Freedom of Speech Fighting Fund we launched last year. We can’t do anything without the 2,639 members of the IPA. If you’d like to support our work, you can donate to the Fighting Fund here, or if you haven’t already done so, join the IPA at join.ipa.org.au.