Search
This area does not yet contain any content.
Justinian News

Fresh upsets ... Hunt & Hunt writes to a judge ... Unwarranted correspondence slapped down ... Failure to reply to email from judge's chambers ... Impertinence ... ART Deputy President birched ... Failure to understand the law of legal professional privilege ... Ginger Snatch reports ... Read more >>

 

Politics Media Law Society


The rotten fruit issue ... Corruption busters busted for bias, concealment, and conflicts … Mistress of the office couch more damaged than the rape victim … Next round for Linda Reynolds … Reputation damaged by former attorney general … Miranda Devine smooches Trump ... Read on >> 

Free Newsletter
Justinian Columnists

From the cutting room floor...Handsy Heydon goes to Perth ... Celebrity tour ... Conferenceville ... Dicey's job application speech from 2002 ... Other High Court judges mocked as "vegetables" ... Mason CJ ridiculed ... Speech bowdlerised for public consumption ... Courage of conviction MIA ... From our National Affairs Correspondent ... Read more >> 

Blow the whistle

 

News snips ...


 

Lib-Nat government of Queensland appoints two new senior judges ... Court of Appeal and Northern Supreme Court ... Doyle KC and Johnstone KC ... Both from the same chambers ... Diversity at work ... More >>

Justinian's Bloggers

Letter from London ... Weather report ... Starmer sinking ... Farage rising ... Fake law firm ... Fake cases ...  NHS employee cleans up with woke case for hurt feelings ... Floyd Alexander-Hunt files from Blighty ... Read more >> 

"If there’s one family that hasn’t profited off politics, it's the Trump family."

Eric Trump, reported in the Financial Times, June 27, 2025 ... Read more flatulence ... 


Justinian Featurettes

Holding onto Hope ... Gina Rinehart's Bleak House ... Seeking chunks of the huge iron ore pit, Hope Downs ... Tracing the tangled Wright, Hancock, Rinehart litigation ... Allegations of fraud against the family trust ...Manoeuvring ... Tax "advice" ... Shifting vesting date ... Money, the root of unhappiness ... Anthony-James Kanaan reports ... Read more >> 


Justinian's archive

The High Court of Queensland ... Where to now for Bookshelves Brandis? ... Banana Benders in charge ... Eleven names scratched by CJ from Sunshine silks list ... Prosecutors dominate NSW Dizzo appointments ... Farewell to Equity Queen ... What life looked like nine years ago ... From Justinian's Archive, December 2, 2016 ... Read more >> 


 

 

« Not quite gelling | Main | Wayne's world »
Monday
Dec092013

Brandis' secret scheme to stop the presses

Brandis watch ... Uncomfortable straddle on free speech ... Where was Soapy when the "F*** Tony Abbott" T-shirts were being marched off campus ... The attorney general's forgotten "back door" scheme to injunct the media

Brandis: freedom of speech not really important
SADLY, aspects of Soapy (Bookcase) Brandis rallying cry for freer speech are sounding hypocritically hollow. 

To explain we'll have to go back to May this year and Brandis' Freedom Wars oration to Gerard Henderson's "think tank".  

It was the speech in which he unveiled to the wizened attendees three frightful examples where speech had been throttled or insufficiently protected, principally by leftist forces. 

Here are the examples he cited: 

1. There was insufficient criticism from journalists of Senator Conroy's plans for media "regulation". The Press Freedom dinner hosted by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance, was a disappointment to Soapy because he didn't feel as though he was among a "nest of freedom fighters". 

2. The Human Right Commission has been assaulting freedom of speech. It did not sufficiently defend press freedom against Finkelstein, Conroy and those fair skinned Aborigines mauling poor Mr Bolt. 

3. Academics at the University of Melbourne failed to support the student Liberal Club after security staff ordered its Orientation Week booth off the campus. The Young Libs had displayed a banner, which quoted a slice of the great helmsman's brilliant oratory: 

"We will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come." 

Apparently some people found it offensive and complained. 

So there you are. What can you expect from journalists, bureaucrats and academics? - all letting us down in the struggle to throw off the chains that inhibit thoughts that are busting to be expressed. 

As Soapy put it: 

"Who defends freedom of speech in Australia today? Is it really to be left to a few conservative commentators like Andrew Bolt and Janet Albrechtsen; a couple of think tanks like the Sydney Institute and the IPA and the Liberal Party?" 

Rising to a crescendo, flecks of foam gathering atthe corners of his mouth, Brandis declared: 

"At least the debates about freedom of speech and freedom of the press, which we have seen in the past couple of years, have been a sharp reminder to the Liberal Party of his historic mission. 

For the freedom wars, there has been one party which has stood steadfastly on the side of freedom." 

Polite applause as the ancient audience rushed to escape. 

But hold, fresh evidence is to hand to be met with an eerie silence from Soapy. 

Free speech at workRecently members of the Socialist Alternative and others were escorted off the Macquarie University campus for wearing and selling T-shirts with the succinct slogan "Fuck Tony Abbott". 

Young Liberals, who control the Student Advisory Board, were appalled and complained to security. 

As the Socialist Alternative and their T-shirts were booted out, they must have had ringing in their ears the inspirational words of Brandis: 

"The mentality of the left in the practice of freedom of speech, equating  to 'I don't want to see it therefore it can't be displayed', is arrogant and abusive. 

We might also call it absurd, if not for the chilling glimpse of the totalitarian mindset determined to crimp and control all conversation and thought on campus." 

*   *   *

Brandis' embrace of free speech seems to date from the Justice Bromberg's 2011 decision in Eatock v Bolt & Herald and Weekly Times.  

In fact, 20 years earlier, when Brandis was a part-time lecturer in law at the University of Queensland, his views were decidedly anti-free-speech. 

In a famous seminar he attacked the old common law rule in Bonnard v Perryman

That's the rule that says in the interests of free speech, generally speaking, injunctions should not be available in defamation cases, where damages are the proper remedy. 

In his view the rule should be scrapped by either "frontal" or "back door" attacks, so that allegedly defamatory material can be subject to the refreshing breeze of injunctive relief.   

He seemed particularly fond of the "back door", such as actions in injurious falsehood to which injunctions can be attached. 

"Freedom of speech, then, is neither a principle of general application to the grant of interlocutory injunctive relief, nor is the only interest to be considered. Why should it not merely be part of the equation according to which the court assesses the balance of convenience? ... 

It seems almost absurd that not only should an interlocutory injunction not be granted, but that the justification for its refusal should lie in the noble rhetoric of liberal democratic values." 

So, which is the real Soapy Brandis - the hero of Rupert's oppressed scribblers or the back door man armed with a quiver of injunctions? 

You can read the full seminar presentation here (warning: free speech buffs may never recover). 

Reader Comments

There are no comments for this journal entry. To create a new comment, use the form below.
Editor Permission Required
You must have editing permission for this entry in order to post comments.