Freedom of speech is an important part of the way Australia is seen by other countries as being the land of opportunity worldwide. This freedom of speech may also incite hate speech and other racism views among other discriminatory views.
If freedom of speech brings about discrimination towards religion, sexual orientation and cultures then should Freedom of Speech itself be regulated to protect victims from the opinions of others?
Australia does not have explicit freedom of speech in any constitutional or statutory declaration of rights. There is an implied freedom of speech that was recognised in Lange V Australian Broadcasting Corporation.
In 1992 the High Court of Australia judged in the case of Australian Capital Television Pty Ltd V Commonwealth
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David Lange was featured in the program Four Corners as the subject of a report which was entailed with defamation proceedings due to the content of the particular episode. At the time David Lange was the Prime Minister of New Zealand. The report suggested that the New Zealand Labour party had become inappropriately influenced of large business interests from large donations from those companies. In a unanimous judgement, the Court required clarification of interaction between the implied freedom of political communication and defamation laws. The implied freedom was held to be a negative right, not a grant of a free-standing positive right, and operated chiefly as a restraint on executive and legislative power to the extent that such power would burden the implied freedom.
In response to the Lange v ABC (1997) case, the court developed a two-part test:
1. Does the law effectively burden freedom of communication about government or political matter? The scope of political communication was amended to mean matters that could affect their choice at elections, or the affairs of federal ministers and the executive.
2. If the law does burden that freedom, is the law reasonably appropriate and adapted to serve a legitimate end which is compatible with the maintenance of representative and responsible government? The objectives of the government in making the law are