Don’t call Brandis’ statement a gaffe

When Attorney General George Brandis said this week that 'People have a right to be bigots,' half the country rushed to proclaim its outraged disagreement. This was not surprising. What is surprising is that the other half of the country – those that agree with the current government's position on political censorship – also acted scandalised by Brandis' statement, gasping with dismay as if the Attorney General had dropped a tray of glassware in a quiet restaurant.

Coalition supporters, including proponents of 18c's repeal, scrambled to think of ways to distance themselves from Brandis' remarks without denying that he had been correct in his facts and his analysis.

NSW Premier Barry O'Farrell said pointedly on Thursday that 'bigotry should never be sanctioned, intentionally or unintentionally.' One federal backbencher told The Sydney Morning Herald, anonymously, that Brandis' 'bigot comment' had 'completely inflamed the whole situation.' The Australian's political editor, Dennis Shanahan, concluded that the AG had put the government 'on the back foot' and 'on the defensive.' Even Andrew Bolt backed away from Brandis' line, stating 'I would put this a bit differently.'

There is no reason why Brandis' statement should be treated as some sort of gaffe. As a description of what freedom of expression entails, his remarks were straightforward and unremarkable.

In the past, when artistic rather than political expression has been up for debate, anti-censorship activists have always been quick not just to defend but to celebrate the legal protections afforded to the provocative and the unpopular. Film critic Margaret Pomeranz, for example, trumpeted the public's right to see offensive movies during the controversy over banned film Ken Park. When Bill Henson's nude photographs of underage models were seized by police over obscenity concerns, Pomeranz scoffed, 'You may find his work confronting, controversial. Surely that's a function of art.'

Pomeranz also said in 2003 that she would extend the same protections to Holocaust denier David Irving's documentary The Search for the Truth in History because 'I think as a society we ought to be strong enough to combat those sorts of fallacies.'

It is unfair for those who embrace the principle of freedom of expression to suggest that the Attorney General should have minimised or downplayed the range of opinions legally protected by that principle. The breadth of freedom of speech is not something around which a healthy society needs to tiptoe.

Helen Rittelmeyer is a Policy Analyst at The Centre for Independent Studies.