Australia's populist right embraces unconstrained freedom of expression - but only when it suits them | Julianne Schultz

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

50% : As the book bans show, even in the US, freedom of speech is not absolute and a robust classifications regime regulates the non-virtual world.
47% : The two recent local events - the request to remove an unflattering portrait of one of the richest women in the world and the attempted ban of a book on same-sex parenting - highlight a paradox of an age which is very different to the one when censorship was routine and pervasive.
45% : By the early 1970s, the draconian Commonwealth censorship system toppled under the weight of legal challenge and public agitation, but it lingered in Queensland under Joh Bjelke-Petersen's slap dash autocracy.

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