<
https://theconversation.com/no-the-liberal-party-does-not-have-a-history-of-upholding-the-right-to-protest-in-australia-just-look-back-to-the-vietnam-war-241241>
"More than a year after the eruption of conflict between Hamas and Israel, the
escalating war in the Middle East is roiling Australian society and politics.
Demonstrations about the conflict are a routine event, with mobilisations by
pro-Palestinian activists especially commonplace on the streets of the major
cities. In this impassioned climate, an unfocussed debate has emerged about
political protest. Questions have been raised – though far from cogently
answered – about what ought to be the acceptable limits of political expression
and dissent in this country.
In this context, writers have contended that it is the Liberal Party that has
traditionally upheld the right to freedom of political speech and the
expression of dissenting views in Australia. Working from that premise, some of
these writers have further suggested that Peter Dutton’s intimidatory remarks
about pro-Palestinian demonstrators constitutes a significant departure from
the party’s conventional habit of mind. Dutton has urged, for example, that
flag waving activists be “subject to the full force of the law”, demanded
amendments to Commonwealth law to empower the Australian Federal Police to
arrest transgressors and made threatening noises about deporting them.
At a certain level this misconception is understandable. After all, it seems
reasonable to assume that the Liberal Party, being a liberal party, stands on
the side of the sanctity of individual rights, of which freedom of political
expression is a fundamental subset. Yet, as those familiar with the story of
modern Australian politics know, it illustrates that the Liberal Party has in
practice a history of intolerance towards political dissent and protest.
In a
Nine newspaper column, the former Liberal attorney-general, George
Brandis, who one would expect to put forward a more nuanced argument, exalted
the party’s founder, Robert Menzies, as the fountainhead of its forbearance of
the expression of dissenting political viewpoints, no matter how repugnant to
them. Menzies is indisputably among Australia’s greatest prime ministers, and
he was emphatically more of a liberal than many of his current successors in
the Liberal Party. Yet part of his governing record was a determined effort to
outlaw the Communist Party of Australia. Those attempts were first by
legislation in 1950, which was struck down as unconstitutional by the High
Court, and then through a 1951 referendum that the Australian people wisely
rejected. To say the least, these actions strain at the idea of a Liberal Party
steadfastly committed to the defence of a free market of political ideas even
those contrary to their own.
It is the Vietnam War era, however, that most unambiguously explodes the myth
of the Liberal Party holding sacrosanct the right to expression of political
dissent. The historical reality is that in that period it was the giant of the
Labor left, Jim Cairns, who, both through the articulation of a powerful
underpinning intellectual case and brave and strategic activism, supported by a
legion of anti-war and anti-conscription foot soldiers, legitimised political
protest in this nation. It is now mostly forgotten that the opponents of the
war in those years had to run the gauntlet of an array of Commonwealth, state
and city council laws and regulations that significantly circumscribed
political expression. Only through defiance, by acts of civil disobedience,
were those impediments to protest pushed back."
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/ Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/ Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/ Manager, Serious Cybernetics
