LORD HAW HAW’S REVENGE

Ruddock firm on sedition (Mark Day, The Australian, December 1st, 2005)

Last-minute appeals by representatives of Australia's big media organisations have failed to persuade the Howard Government that it should shelve its sedition laws.

After a trip to Canberra late yesterday for talks with officials in the Prime Minister's office, media executives were gloomy about the prospect of change.

Media companies and industry bodies, supported by arts and legal organisations, have united in an unprecedented display of opposition to the sedition sections of the Government's anti-terror legislation. They have branded it a threat to press freedom, a scaling back of free speech, and unnecessary. But the Government has been unmoved.

One media executive who has been involved in the long-running negotiations with the government told Media: "There is very great disappointment that the Government plans to enact an imperfect bill."

He said after the meeting with officials in the PM's office there may be minor changes to the sedition section of the anti-terror bill relating to a person's intent to incite ill-will or disorder, but little more. [...]

Sedition laws have been in force in Australia since 1914, but have rarely been used. There have been no prosecutions since the 1950s.

In many countries sedition laws have been abandoned. The documentary film-maker Robert Connolly, representing Arts and Creative Industries of Australia, gave evidence to the Senate committee that similar laws had been repealed in Canada, Ireland, Kenya, New Zealand, South Africa, Taiwan, Britain and the US.

He said countries that continued to use sedition laws included China, Cuba, Hong Kong, Malaysia, North Korea, Singapore, Syria and Zimbabwe, and added: "I know which list most Australians would like to be on."

Sedition laws certainly are used in tyrannical regimes to spread fear and stifle dissent. So are laws against murder, libel, theft, fraud and tax evasion. The issue is whether the concept of freedom has become so abstract and debased that society is now powerless to sanction the intentional undermining of the state and armed forces during a time of war or threat to national security.