Australian Politics

I've seen some very interesting arguments from legal practitioners that the US's highly political constitution is a significant part of the reason their courts are so political, and that this is a good reason to have a much less political constitution like Australia does.

The US constitution says "you have the right to have weapons" and also "you have the right to freedom of speech", among many other things. Australia's constitution is almost entirely dedicated to stuff like "the Commonwealth has the power to make laws about trade between states" and "politicians must be Australian citizens exclusively".

So in America you get the unelected Supreme Court making very politicised decisions like inventing a "right to privacy" based on the right against self-incrimination (and other express rights), and then taking that right to privacy that was invented by unelected judges, and using that as the basis for inventing a right to abortion. Now, like me, you might think having a right to abortion is a good thing, but in this case the way it was enshrined is obviously bad, because it was invented by unelected judges, and decades later was removed by future unelected judges, rather than the actual elected representatives of the people enshrining it in law.

Yes, I think we should have a bill of rights that explicitly enshrines a number of important civil liberties, including free speech. But I'm not sure that a conditional amendment is the best way to do that.

@ajsadauskas @australianpolitics yes, but we did just prove how difficult it is to pass a sensible low risk constitutional change.

Depends. What are you trying to achieve? The US has constitutional protection for freedom of speech, but it doesn't seem to prevent police aggressively breaking up protests they don't like.

There are other things I think are more of a priority. For example, I would rather have strong media laws that prevent the mega-rich from using the media as de facto cheerleaders for their political interests.

@ajsadauskas @australianpolitics Interesting. Here in Canada we went through this process 40 years ago with the incorporation of the "Charter of Rights and Freedoms" into our constitution in 1982. Prior to that we were like you, using British common law. The Charter isn't perfect by any means, but on the whole it has expanded rights and been a positive thing.

@ajsadauskas @australianpolitics At least for now it seems failed defamation actions will do far more to advance the cause of free speech in Aus than any law could, although I'd love to see Aus with something like a Bill of Rights

@ajsadauskas @australianpolitics Or you could join a public protest. And be arrested for causing "incovenience"!