Your right to know

There are many ways in which the freedom to speak is constrained in Australia (we do not have a First Amendment right that is found in the US Constitution). However, we do have an implied right of political communication, developed from the early 1990s by the High Court and illustrated in SA in the case of Bass v Roberts and Case. So, we do have a democratic right to speak out (especially in relation to protests of a political nature) but it is constrained in many legitimate ways. I will list those restraints and appraise them. The key task for us, as citizens, is to gauge whether the current (and foreshadowed) constraints are reasonable and lobby to reject those that are not. I will give a checklist of the matters that need urgent attention in order to ensure that the balance between freedom to speak and a government’s right to limit speech is appropriate.

Bio

Emeritus Professor Rick Sarre was, until his retirement in April this year, the Dean of Law at the School of Law, University of South Australia. He has degrees in law and criminology from universities in Adelaide, Toronto, and Canberra, and in 2015 was awarded an honorary doctorate from Umeå University, Sweden. He is the immediate Past President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology, and a Fellow of the Society. He is a Professorial Fellow at the Australian Institute of Police Management.

7:00pm @Republic, 120 Magill Road, Norwood 5067