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A uniting, not dividing, approach is needed to reform restrictions on free speech, writes Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson, in an opinion piece first published in The Australian on 9 August 2014. View the news story from the Commission's website.

Storms on social media demonstrate we don't need laws to regulate free speech – social norms are enough Internet outrage tells us more about how we ensure civil conduct face-to-face, than how we behave online. People behave in strange ways online. But social media provides the clearest evidence of people behaving on their first instinct. All that the internet has demonstrated is there were…

Opinion by Human Rights Commissioner, Tim Wilson. First published in The Australian on 17 May 2014. Reform is not the end of debating free speech in Australia, it is the beginning The “forgotten freedoms” provide the foundations of our liberal democracy, and we have to reconnect with them. There are competing views about how human rights and freedoms should be approached. After all, human…

Before anyone screams "free speech", they should actually know what they are talking about. Earlier this week the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet released new social media protocols. The protocols limit the capacity of public servants to make statements that are "harsh or extreme in their criticism of the government, government policies, a member of Parliament from another political…

Arguing that old rich white men have too much power is just a backdoor attempt at censorship, writes Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson, in an opinion piece first published on 5 April 2014 in The Australian.

THE proposed amendments to the Racial Discrimination Act provide the basis for correcting the legal limits of free speech, ­promoting pluralism, opposing reprehensible racism and highlighting the importance of ­responsibility. Arguably the most important change is assessing an 18C violation based on “the standard of an ordinary reasonable member of the Australian community”. Inter­pretations…