Free Speech Alliance Australia
Forum at Parliament House Hobart
Date: 23 November 2022 Time: 6-8.30
The Free Speech Alliance Australia would like to give a warm welcome tonight for everyone attending our first forum, Conversion laws: risks and harms? We welcome our guests who will shortly be speaking to you and we would like to thank Lara Alexander, MP, for kindly hosting this important event.
Freedom of speech, robust debate, right to information and a fearless and impartial media should all inform and enhance the political process that underpins our democracy.
It is important for us all to be reminded that it is only through a willingness to listen in good faith to other people’s points of view that tolerance, respect and goodwill can flourish within our community.
The Tasmanian Law Reform Institute released its Conversion Practices Final Report in May this year. This report follows on from the passing of sex self ID legislation in 2019. It is worth noting here that the affirmative approach promoted in the TLRI report as best practice and currently used by the Tasmanian Gender Service, is the same affirmative approach abandoned by the NHS in the UK and largely in Sweden and Finland also.
It is regrettable, that the Tasmanian Law Reform Institute failed to invite any person with alternative views to present at any of the forums they held on these issues. Most Tasmanians were completely unaware of the implications for the community of these laws, which many claim to have already been fast tracked through our parliament.
Across Australia, many stakeholders who have considered views on what have now become controversial issues have been subjected to retaliation for speaking out.
They have endured smear and misinformation campaigns particularly through social media, they have been: doxed, no platformed from speaking at public events, expelled, banned or sacked, complaints have been taken to their employers, and worryingly, more and more are receiving threats of violence. These are the typical methods used to attack whistleblowers or dissidents all too common in totalitarian regimes. But they are also tactics now being employed by political lobby groups and sectional interests in order to suppress robust debate, and intimidate those willing to speak out.
A Conversation article from 2018 highlighted that:
According to new research, almost half of Australians are worried about what their friends, family and colleagues will think of them if they express their political views on social media. This is an important contribution to understanding the changing nature of the Australian public sphere and the way citizens moderate their behaviour in different media setting.
Last week, in an article in Crikey, journalist Bernard Keane wrote:
The media is regarded as Australia’s least ethical sector and that should ring alarm bells.
Media generally seeks to present the gender identity controversy simplisticly as either a pro or anti trans issue. Many view the common media response as just ‘taking sides’. However, the role of the Media should not be dismissed lightly, Edmund Burke warned that there were “three Estates in Parliament, but in the Reporters’ Gallery yonder, there sat a fourth Estate more important far than them all”. As a consequence of this privileged position, the Media has a responsibility to impartially and objectively inform, criticise and stimulate debate in a manner that can only enrich and enhance our democratic processes – rather than being allied to forces that seek to subvert them.
The debate over gender identity reforms continues to be plagued by censorship, bias and misinformation in the media. So much so that Paul Barry, from ABC Media Watch, has dedicated two major stories attacking his own ABC for lack of impartiality. On 15 August his first story concerned the ABC failure to report on implications for gender clinics in Australia of the closure of the controversial Tavistock Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS) in the UK. In the 3 years up 2019, 35 psychologists had resigned from the Tavistock gender clinic over concerns about the fast tracking of young people through the service. Several high profile former employees and whistleblowers of Tavistock including a former client of GIDS, Keira Bell, who you will hear from tonight, blew the whistle on the fast tracking by medical interventions and lack of thorough psychotherapy for young people struggling with gender dysphoria.
This year the ABC received numerous complaints about unfair and biased reporting on the gender identity controversy. ABC4C and Aust Story have produced 5 investigative features on gender identity, yet interestingly the only one not available online is the story about the detransitioner.
Then, on 17th October, Paul Barry blew the ABC out of the water by calling for a review of the ABC’s relationship with the Aids Council of New South Wales’ Australian Workplace Equality Index, AWEI. ACON operates an award scheme where organisations win points for performing activities stipulated by ACON. This amounts to an institutional game of ‘simon says’ that has resulted in ACON’s editorial policy capture by the ABC.
Earlier this year, a colleague and I had an hour long meeting with Craig Warhurst, Editor of the Mercury, to discuss the Mercury’s lack of impartiality and misinformation in covering diverse views on gender identity law reforms. Additionally, the Mercury’s failure to publish several Op Eds from a number of people on the proposed conversion laws and the elephant in the room – the affirmative approach. It was deeply concerning to hear Craig Warhurst excuse the Mercury’s bias by suggesting that impartiality might ‘cause harm’ to trans people. The same argument proffered by the ABC for not reporting impartially also. Many are suggesting that the media’s failure to report on these issues impartially is what will cause more harm to people struggling with gender dysphoria. After repeated requests to the ABC in Tasmania, we have yet to hear any interviews with our speaker tonight Dr Dianna Kenny or Dr Phillip Morris, President of the National Association of Practising Psychiatrists, even after repeated requests to the broadcaster over several years.
Cancel culture is alive and well in Australia and nowhere more so than in our media organisations. At this forum we are providing a platform to people who have not yet been heard in this critical debate.
There may be people who express views here tonight, views you or I find very challenging. Australians don’t need to be shielded from challenges when it comes to public health or legal debates, especially those that concern laws that may impinge on freedom of speech or the founding principle of the medical profession ‘first, do no harm’.
As the Scottish Bard Robert Burns so aptly put it in 1792:
Here’s freedom to him who would read;
Here’s freedom to him who would write;
None ever feared that the truth should be heard,
But those who the truth would indict.