Guest Post: Australian lawyer on free speech
A guest post from an Australian lawyer who looks at free speech battles in Australia and NZ:
I am an Australian lawyer working in Australia.
I care about free speech.
My firm disparages free speech and its ‘Nazi’ adherents.
Mr Farrar generously agreed I could guest post as anonymous.
I reached out after I saw Lauren Southern and Stefan Molyneux speak in Melbourne, then abused and banned in New Zealand.
It is surreal New Zealand disdains free speech more then Victoria. Victoria has a dedicated Minister to end free speech and create inequality called the ‘Minister of Equality’.
I’m not here to criticise New Zealand. Free speech in New South Wales (NSW) is worse.
On 27 June 2018 the Crimes Amendment (Publicly Threatening and Inciting Violence) Bill 2018 (Act) was assented. A new section 93Z of the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW) is now in force in NSW.
In summary the Act:
- makes all speech an offence depending on the reaction of a recipient (this bit’s technical – but examples clarify);
- punishes true statements;
- makes it illegal to try not to get AIDS/HIV in NSW;
- makes a bureaucrat (the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP)) the speech God of NSW;
- Wrecks personal/national security, kills free speech
Do not let the Act happen to New Zealand.
I will describe for you how the Act must work.
To follow along, copy paste and open the Act in your browser.
The Act creates a new indictable offence committed when:
A person who:
by a ‘public act’;
‘Intentionally’ or ‘recklessly’;
‘threatens’ or ‘incites’ ‘violence’;
towards ‘another person’; or
‘group of persons’;
on the ground of a ‘protected trait’ [my term] being:
‘race’; ‘specific religious belief or affiliation’; ‘sexual orientation’; ‘gender identity’; ‘intersex status’; ‘that the other person has, or one or more of the members of the group have, HIV or AIDS’.
The max penalty for an individual is 3 years in prison and/or $11,000.00. For a corporation – $55,000.00.
The key term in the Act is ‘violence’.
All Speech is Potentially an Offence
‘Violence’ is the trigger for an offence and is undefined. That’s deliberate.
The Act’s coverage says its purpose is to punish standard Islamic clerics like Ismail Al-Wahwah who say muslims must kill all non-muslims. As the peaceful Koran says ‘metaphorically’.
It can do that. But that’s not all the Act does.
Look at the qualifications; the paragraphs immediately after the penalties section. Consider the second one:
“in determining an offence…it is irrelevant whether…any person formed a state of mind or carried out an act of violence”.
Take the element ‘incites’.
How do you prove speech (a public act) ‘incites’ violence?
Examine the scenario used to justify the Act:
- Imam calls for Jihad (Speech)
- Fanboy (Recipient) consequently drives truck of peace into a European pedestrian (Violence).
Formula: Speech plus action by its Recipient = Violence.
You have to prove the Imam’s speech caused the Fanboy recipient to be violent to punish the Imam.
The problem is connecting the truck of peace to the Jihad obligation reminder.
Because maybe it wasn’t the speech. Maybe it was the Koran. The weather. Alcohol. Maybe all four. To what extent? Etc.
That ‘problem’ of proving a consequential link between speech and action has been prohibitive. For 30 years pre-Act that problem’ prevented successful prosecutions of pure speech in Australia. Speech was free. You couldn’t punish speech as an action.
Now read the second qualification.
It means you don’t have to prove that causal link between speech and action. Or between speech and change in state of mind. i.e. Imam calls for Jihad, muslim kid in London buys acid. The kid doesn’t use the acid. But its possession proves speech changed state of mind.
It means to prove speech incites violence, you don’t have to identify any actions which objectively proves that.
Before?
Speech plus action by its Recipient = Violence (to discharge the element ‘public act incites’).
Now?
Speech = Violence. Because it’s irrelevant if anyone does anything in response to the speech.
Under the Act, all speech is violence.
But that’s unworkable.
If you don’t have to prove speech causes an action, you must prove it does something. Otherwise how can you distinguish between speech that ‘incites’ absent action, and speech which doesn’t incite absent action?
Here’s the only way. Define violence so you don’t need an intermediary to do the violence. i.e. the guy who hears the Imam and drives the peace truck and hurts someone. Take out the middle-man.
To make this Act work a NSW adjudicator must define violence so broadly words can cause violence by themselves. Remember, you offend as a person who:
“By a public act [speech], intentionally or recklessly…incites violence”.
Words can’t incite broken bones. What can they do? Incite hurt feelings.
What violence hurts feelings? Psychological violence.
Violence under this act must & will be defined as largely spurious non-DSM psychological violence – ‘stigma’, ‘exclusion’, ‘peripheralization’, ‘cultural denigration’, ‘fear inducement’ etc. Subjective things proved by unimpeachable assertion. ‘It hurt my feelings – 3 years jail, racist’.
This example clarifies:
- Imam calls for Jihad (Speech) Sonia Kruger says Muslims commit terrorist (Speech)
- No intermediary does anything
- But, speech incites psychological violence in Recipient (Violence).
= Offence
Speech = Violence = Offence
To punish words that ‘incite’ without linked actions, violence under this Act must be defined as psychological violence. That’s why violence was left undefined. It’s a door left open by the Act’s ancient and esteemed clever architects to enable total speech suppression in Australia.
Under this Act, speech will be an offence if someone can claim it caused them psychological violence. All speech in NSW is now an offence, depending on the reaction of a recipient.
The architects of the Act, the ‘Keep NSW Safe Alliance’ (Alliance), were 31 different non-European minority bodies. Led by one. They’ve designed the Act cleverly so that subjective ‘psychological violence’ will trigger the Act. Speech in NSW, after a tribunal defines violence broadly, as it must for the Act to work, is going to be at the mercy of progressives’ psychological resilience.
Which means speech is dead in NSW.
‘Threatens’ works the same way.
But that’s not it. Because additionally…
The Act Punishes True Statements
The Act punishes true statements:
“it is irrelevant whether the alleged offender’s assumptions or beliefs about an attribute of another person or a member of a group of persons….were correct or incorrect”.
It’s irrelevant to committing an offence if what you say is true.
So, if you say a true statement in NSW about any protected traits and that true statement incites or threatens ‘psychological violence’ in a recipient – you go to prison for 3 years.
Truth about a protected trait is an offence under the Crimes Act 1900 (NSW).
The Speech God
The DPP decides what cases get standing under the Act. Until Labor get in. Then it will be the Police. Ah yes, the corrupt NSW Police on a muslim recruitment drive – they’ll be great at picking speech winners. Labor will also lower the standard from ‘incite’ to ‘promote’.
The ‘AIDS or GULAG’ Act.
The Act makes it illegal not to get AIDS in NSW.
The Act should be called the ‘Get AIDS or Get GULAG’ Act. Why?
The Act punishes true statements.
The Act will punish psychological violence or ‘potential’ violence (via the ‘threatens’ element) caused by those true statements.
Look at the last protected trait on the list: ‘a person who has HIV/AIDS’.
The only way a person can avoid AIDS they might get from someone who won’t tell them they have AIDS is to be informed by a third party. The Act makes such notification illegal.
Because that notification is a true statement. Truth is irrelevant to determining an offence under the Act. Does disclosing that someone has AIDS due to its stigma potentially threaten or incite violence against that person. Yes. Violence in the usual sense, and absolutely violence in the leftie sense it will be defined – ‘social exclusion’ blah blah blah.
I don’t dismiss the right of someone with AIDS to privacy. Individuals with AIDS deserve minimisation of the condition, empathy, kindness, solidarity. But it’s not violence to not have sex with them and die from AIDS. Look at what the ‘Keep NSW Safe Alliance’ has done:
Person A – has AIDS, won’t tell Person B.
Person B – doesn’t have AIDS. Probably doesn’t want AIDS. Going to have sex with person A.
Person C – knows Person A has AIDS. Knows and likes Person B. Likes not being in prison.
The Attorney General of NSW, the ‘conservative’ member of the ‘Liberal Party’ Mark Speakman said the Act strikes the right balance between freedom of speech and ‘stopping violence’. Lets look at Speakman’s ‘balance’.
The Act says the right of person A with AIDS not to be embarrassed and suffer ‘sexual exclusion’ ‘violence’ 100% overrides the right of person B not to get AIDS and die, horribly, and person C not to go to prison for three years for saving B from the AIDS.
Succinctly, this Act is going to cause lots of people to get AIDS in NSW and die. Or, it’s going to cause lots of people to break the law because they’d rather not get AIDS.
It’s the ‘make it illegal not to get AIDS’ Act. From the ‘Keep NSW Safe Alliance’.
The Sonia Kruger Exemplar
Sonia Kruger, an Australia TV personality, faced hearings from 19 June 18 at the NSW Civic and Administrative Tribunal for saying the startlingly obvious trite truism:
“there is a correlation between the number of people who, you know, are Muslim in a country and the number of terrorist attacks”.
She said that before the Act – and is currently moving through hearings for racial vilification.
Well, Sonia should be happy. Because now, if you say the empirical truth that Muslims commit most rape, almost all terrorism, steal welfare etc, you go to prison for 3 years.
Ramifications
Just two:
National Security
The Act makes it impossible to make true statements linking protected traits to bad things they do. Per Sonia Kruger.
President Trump just banned funding to all communist Chinese Confucius Institutes in the United States because they are centres for corruption and espionage.
If he was subject to the Act, he couldn’t say the Confucius Institutes were Chinese. Australia has dozens of Confucius Institutes. Oh well, can’t say anything about that now. I’m sure it’s different.
Senator Dianne Feinstein, has been senior on the United States Senate Intelligence Committee for nearly 20 years. It was just disclosed via Politico and others she employed a communist Chinese spy as her office manager for 20 years, called Russell Howe. If America had the Act, no one could say things like ‘Russell betrayed America to China because he’s Chinese’. I’m sure it’s different in AU too.
The Act is going to wreck Australia’s national security against Chinese and muslim hostility/exploitation. And of course, Chinese and muslim groups led by another group demanded the Act. Seditious? Subversive? Hostile? No, surely not. Australia is a multicultural utopia.
Personal Security
All the minority groups say the Act will make Australians safer when it makes them get AIDS and sends them to muslim run prisons for saying muslims’ run prisons.
Conclusion
The Act is a joke. Except it’s not a funny one. Free Speech is dead in NSW. The Alliance will kill it everywhere else too. Don’t let the fake diverse destroy your free speech.
Our leftist imbecility will retard our economy. Don’t be like us. Defend your free speech.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGSfHIPnupY – This video I think has media footage in NZ. The world noticed your primitive media. Quite amazing. Have a look.
Thank-you Kiwiblog