The Famine Upon Our Minds.

Our right to free thought and speech

The year is 1643. The English Civil War between the Royalists and the Parliamentarians has begun. The new revolutionary Parliament has refused to relax laws around censorship of books and has now passed a new law to license the press – Ordinance for the Regulating of Printing, also known as The Licensing Order of 1643.

The political theorist and poet, John Milton, was prompted to write an appeal to Parliament arguing that England required a free press, unshackled from the strict licensing that Charles I had imposed via his infamous Star Chamber, which had been abolished in 1641.

The argument failed.

Australians need to be mindful of the inflammatory use of such weaponised language by those who are meant to “serve” us, rather than “manage” us.

Milton’s pamphlet, entitled Areopagitica, was designed to be delivered in the same manner as at the Council of ancient Athens on the Hill of Ares, north-west of the Acropolis, known as the Areopagus.

Yet here we are in 2023, post tyrannical regimes, famines, and great wars, still fighting to retain our right to free thought and speech . And as far as the press goes, the inimitable Kerry Packer would be turning in his grave to see what the modern media has become.

Is it any wonder that some of us question the whole idea of progress?

Surely, we have passed through that archaic and staid period where people could not speak their mind or write their thoughts down without fear or favour.

Are we not the ones chosen to live in a time of great innovation that will march our species into the world of wild imaginings of the kind that require open minds and the freedom to articulate those ideas?

As we stare down the imminent passing of a Misinformation and Disinformation Bill, it is clear the answer is NO.

The Minister with oversight of this Bill, Michelle Rowland, recently presented a speech at the Press Club in Canberra in rousing support for, and defence of, the Bill. The section of gravest concern is that of the new powers which the government seeks to impose on what they consider to be misinformation and disinformation.

Ms Rowland highlighted what she regards as a “gap in our existing regulatory framework,” which she stressed needs to be tackled “seriously.” (I can feel Kerry’s presence as his spiritual wrath arises!).

She claims that 70% of Australians are concerned with misinformation, with the press release inferring that the people see this as solely a responsibility of the government. There is no room for consideration that the government should step back from regulating.

The Opposition doesn’t get a free pass: as the Minister states, her predecessor, the Liberals Paul Fletcher, “announced that ‘his’ government would legislate to give the regulator new information gathering and enforcement powers in this area.”

So heinous are the people of Australia that they know not what they do when stating their views. The Minister refers to a report by the Chief of the Defence Force in which he says, “disinformation operations” have the potential to “fracture and fragment entire societies.”

So, not only are we unable to manage our own thoughts and words, but we are mounting “operations.”

Surely, we have passed through that archaic and staid period where people could not speak their mind or write their thoughts down without fear or favour.

Australians need to be mindful of the inflammatory use of such weaponised language by those who are meant to “serve” us, rather than “manage” us.

If we fail to stop this Bill, we will surely be at the mercy of our very own proverbial Star Chamber .

We should be declaring our belief in the right we have as human beings – to think and speak freely and to understand that offence is taken and not given

Milton argued that should the new Parliament fail to rescind the law, it will succumb to the same fate as that which it fought the King to abolish:

“We can grow ignorant again, brutish, formal, and slavish, as you found us; but you then must first become that which you cannot be – oppressive, arbitrary, and tyrannous, as they were from whom you have freed us.”

It is a question we need to ask our politicians: How do they see themselves after this Bill is enshrined? Do they believe they will be immune under the law, a law which they themselves put in place? Why would they escape it? How did they manage to conjure up such a miserable decree in the first place? And more importantly, why?

Australia operates as a representative parliamentary democracy; a place where Truth and Falsehood engage in battle in the hope that Truth wins the day. As Milton so eloquently expresses:

“And though all the winds of doctrine were let loose to play upon the earth, so Truth be in the field, we do injuriously by licencing and prohibiting to misdoubt her strength.”

Let us insist that our own Areopagus in Canberra be used for purposes that demonstrate a sense of responsibility, humility, and honour, lest this great Famine leave our minds a desperate wasteland.