Showing posts with label free speech. Show all posts
Showing posts with label free speech. Show all posts

Sunday 17 April 2016

Special Broadcasting Services Corporation (SBS) not trailing clouds of glory on settlement of unfair dismissal dispute


mUmBRELLA, 11 April 2016:

Multicultural broadcaster SBS has reached a confidential settlement with its former sports reporter Scott McIntyre after he launched legal action against the broadcaster claiming it did “not follow due process” when it fired him…..

Asked what he meant by the phrase “vigilantes & hypocrites” Bornstein accused former Communications Minister and now Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, News Corp columnist Chris Kenny and former Human Rights Commissioner Tim Wilson of seeking to “crush” free speech.

“The vigilantes & hypocrites who sought to have Scott sacked and his freedom of speech suppressed after the event included (then Communications Minister) Malcolm Turnbull, (News Corp columnist) Chris Kenny and (Australia’s Human Rights Commissioner) Tim Wilson,” said Bornstein.

“These are people who speak loftily about freedom of speech and when it is inconvenient to them ditch it and try and crush someone whose views they disagree with. They should be ashamed of themselves.”…..


11 April 2016

SBS and Mr McIntyre have now resolved their dispute over the termination of his employment on 26 April 2015.

SBS acknowledges that Mr McIntyre was a well respected sports reporter with SBS for a period spanning over a decade, and SBS is disappointed that it was unable to continue with his services following his Tweets.
Mr McIntyre acknowledges that the views expressed in his Tweets on 25 April 2015 were his views and that they were contentious. Mr McIntyre regrets any attribution of his views to SBS and acknowledges that SBS was drawn into controversy following the expression of his views.



BACKGROUND

McIntyre v Special Broadcasting Services Corporation [2015] FWC 6768 (1 October 2015) – Fair Work Commission Decision:

Conclusion

[43] In this instance the respondent employer, SBS, has made a challenge to an application for unlawful termination of employment which was taken under s. 773 of the Act. The applicant had made a previous general protections application under s. 365 of the Act. The challenge to the application made by SBS relies upon the purported operation of s. 723 of the Act.
[44] I have concluded that in the particular circumstances of this case, s. 723 of the Act does not operate as a jurisdictional bar to the application, as the applicant is not a person who is entitled to make a general protections court application in relation to the conduct that he complains of. Further, I have decided that exceptional circumstances exist such that the time for the making of the application should be extended and the application permitted to proceed accordingly.
[45] My conclusions have been broadly drawn from a purposive interpretation of the Act cognisant that it is beneficial legislation. In simple terms, I believe that the Act, and s. 723 in particular, should not be interpreted in a manner which would deprive an individual of access to a fair hearing or, as may be euphemistically described, a person’s “day in court”. In the circumstances of this case the applicant does not seek multiple proceedings or remedies but simply seeks to have his day in court.
[46] It is perhaps sadly ironic that many members of the Australian Defence Force lost their lives in the earnest pursuit of the protection of rights and freedoms such as the access to a fair hearing which the applicant is entitled to obtain.
[47] The jurisdictional objection raised by SBS is dismissed, the extension of time for the application to have been made is granted and a certificate shall be issued pursuant to subsection 776 (3) of the Act.

COMMISSIONER

Sunday 21 September 2014

David Marr's list of how our rights are faring under 'Freedom Abbott'



In this September’s issue of The Monthly David Marr discusses Values Abbott, Politics Abbott and Freedom Abbott and sets out this list of how basic rights are faring under Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott since 18 September 2014:

10 October 2013: The state and territory attorneys-general meet in Sydney without discussing shield laws. The issue was on the agenda. With the change of government it vanished. It hasn’t appeared since. Efforts begun under Gillard to introduce uniform national laws to give effective protection to journalists and their sources have ceased.
25 October: Scott Morrison first utters the phrase “on water operations” to justify the unprecedented secrecy that surrounds the Abbott government’s blockade of refugee boats. Morrison whittles away the few rights and freedoms left to those caught up in Operation Sovereign Borders.
2 December: Brandis authorises an ASIO raid on the Canberra office of Bernard Collaery, the lawyer representing East Timor in its dispute with Australia over the Timor Sea Treaty. In March this year, the International Court of Justice at The Hague orders Australia to seal the material seized and keep it from all officials involved in the dispute. The order is binding.
3 December: Abbott rages against the ABC and the “left-wing” Guardian for together reporting that Australian spy agencies had targeted the phones of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono and his wife. “The ABC seemed to delight in broadcasting allegations by a traitor,” he later told Ray Hadley of the Sydney radio station 2GB. “This gentleman Snowden, or this individual Snowden, who has betrayed his country and in the process has badly, badly damaged other countries that are friends of the United States, and of course the ABC didn’t just report what he said, they took the lead in advertising what he said.”

11 December: Brandis announces terms of reference for the Australian Law Reform Commission’s audit of Commonwealth laws that compromise freedom. The terms’ focus is not individual liberty but “commercial and corporate regulation; environmental regulation; and workplace relations”. Free speech barely makes the list. Brandis tells the Australian Financial Review he is most perturbed by the “reversal of the onus of proof, the creation of strict liability offences, the removal of lawyer–client privilege and removal of rights against self-incrimination”. It reads like a list of everything tax evaders loathe about the law.

17 December: Brandis appoints the policy director of the IPA, Tim Wilson, to the Australian Human Rights Commission. Wilson’s mission is to restore balance to a body which the attorney-general believes “has become increasingly narrow and selective in its view of human rights” under Labor. This is code for the culture war complaint that the left is manipulating anti-discrimination laws to impose its moral agenda on a reluctant society. The Bolt case is a particular focus of the fear that protecting blacks, gays, foreigners and cripples from discrimination is stripping the rest of us of our freedom.
29 January 2014: Abbott blasts the ABC for reporting claims that Australian military personnel have punished asylum seekers by burning their hands. “I think it dismays Australians when the national broadcaster appears to take everyone’s side but our own,” says the prime minister. “You shouldn’t leap to be critical of your own country.” News Ltd joins the attack. The ABC falters. Its managing director, Mark Scott, apologises for imprecise wording in the original report, but three days later, Fairfax’s man in Indonesia, Michael Bachelard, finds asylum seeker Yousif Ibrahim Fasher: “He says he has no doubt that what he saw at close quarters on about January 3 was three people’s hands being deliberately held to a hot exhaust pipe by Australian naval personnel to punish them for protesting, and to deter others from doing one simple thing: going to the toilet too often.”
6 March: Abbott threatens to cut the ABC’s budget if it doesn’t cave in to Chris Kenny. The Chaser team had crudely photoshopped the head of the News Ltd pundit onto a man with his pants down mounting a labradoodle. Kenny sued for $90,000. Missing in action is Abbott’s defence of lively debate where “offence will be given, facts will be misrepresented”. He tells 2GB’s Ben Fordham the ABC should settle the case or else: “Government money should be spent sensibly and defending the indefensible is not a very good way to spend government money. Next time the ABC comes to the government looking for more money, this is the kind of thing that we would want to ask questions about.” The ABC buckles. Kenny gets an apology and cash.
13 March: Brandis decrees artists who refuse private sponsorship on political grounds may be stripped of public funding. Troubled by Transfield’s links to offshore detention centres, a handful of artists had pressured the company to withdraw sponsorship from the Sydney Biennale. Brandis asks: “If the Sydney Biennale doesn’t need Transfield’s money, why should they be asking for ours?” He directs the Australia Council to find a formula for deciding when public funding will be withdrawn because private sponsorship has been “unreasonably” rejected. He does not rule out compelling arts organisations to take tobacco money. Months later, the council is still labouring over the words. However it’s done, Brandis wants artists to know they will pay a price for embarrassing the government. This threatens direct political intervention for the first time in the allocation of Australia Council funds.
24 March: Brandis tells Senator Nova Peris: “People do have a right to be bigots, you know.” The next day, he releases draft legislation to gut sections 18C and 18D of the Racial Discrimination Act. Abbott backs him. The proposal – drafted by Brandis himself – would allow almost unrestrained racist abuse in the name of freedom. Ethnic community leaders lobby for the act to be left as it is. Polls swiftly show nine out of ten Australians disapprove of the changes. Three-quarters of the 4100 submissions received by Brandis’ department are hostile. The department blocks their release.

23 May: Morrison strips the Refugee Council of Australia of half a million dollars allocated in the budget only ten days before. The minister explains: “It’s not my view, or the government’s view, that taxpayer funding should be there for what is effectively an advocacy group.” The CEO of the council, Paul Power, calls the cuts petty and vindictive. “This in many ways illustrates the state of the relationship between the non-government sector – particularly organisations working on asylum issues – and the government at the moment.”
1 July: Community legal centres across Australia are also forbidden to use Commonwealth money for advocacy or to campaign for law reform. During the Labor years, funding for NGOs had come with the guarantee that they were free “to enter into public debate or criticism of the Commonwealth, its agencies, employees, servants or agents”. Under Abbott, the guarantee disappears. So do many sources of independent advice. The budgets of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Legal Service, the Environmental Defender’s Offices and the National Congress of Australia’s First Peoples are slashed. Axed are the Social Inclusion Board, the National Housing Supply Council, the National Policy Commission on Indigenous Housing, the National Children and Family Roundtable, the Advisory Panel on Positive Ageing, and the committee of independent medicos advising the refugee detention network, the Immigration Health Advisory Group.
16 July: Brandis threatens laws to double the sentence for reporting “special intelligence operations” by ASIO. Whistleblowers would not be protected, and journalists would not even need to know the operations were “special” to find themselves in prison for up to a decade. No public interest defence would be available. The shadow attorney-general, Mark Dreyfus, says: “We will not tolerate legislation which exposes journalists to criminal sanction for doing their important work, work that is vital to upholding the public’s right to know.”
4 August: Twenty-two-year-old student Freya Newman, a former part-time librarian at the Whitehouse Institute of Design, is charged with unauthorised access to restricted data following reports of Frances Abbott’s scholarship, after complaints to the police by the institute. The chair of the institute is Liberal Party donor and friend of the prime minister Les Taylor.
5 August: Abbott announces the metadata of all Australians is to be kept by internet service providers for two years and made available to ASIO and police. That trawl will, of course, include the metadata of whistleblowers and journalists. He abandons at the same time his two-year crusade to amend the Racial Discrimination Act. Both moves he justifies in the light of terrorist outrages by Australian nationals in Syria. “When it comes to counter-terrorism, everyone needs to be part of ‘Team Australia’,” he says, “and I have to say that the government’s proposals to change 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act have become a complication in that respect. I don’t want to do anything that puts our national unity at risk at this time, and so those proposals are now off the table.”

Wednesday 20 March 2013

Making sure that one remnant of the Howard era, NGO gag orders, never surfaces again


Introduced into the Australian Senate on 13 March 2013:


The Bill engages and promotes the right of freedom of expression as set out in Article 19 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Right (ICCPR). The Bill will prevent the Commonwealth from including clauses in agreements that prevent or restrict NFP entities from advocating on Commonwealth policy issues.

Sunday 17 March 2013

Take a look at the News Media (Self regulation) Bill 2013 for yourself

The Daily Telegraph 13 March 2013
 
With various minions within Rupert Murdoch's media empire screamimg about this bill in the most lurid terms, perhaps it's time for ordinary citizens to look at these bills and make up their own minds.
 
The News Media (Self-regulation) Bill 2013 and the News Media (Self-regulation) (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2013 together with the Public Interest Media Advocate Bill 2013, the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (Convergence Review and Other Measures) Bill 2013, the Broadcasting Legislation Amendment (News Media Diversity) Bill 2013 and the Television Licence Fees Amendment Bill 2013 form a package of measures representing the Australian Government's response to two independent media reviews conducted in 2011 and 2012 - the Convergence Review and the Independent Inquiry into the Media and Media Regulation. [Explanatory Memorandum]
 
Download the Bill here and the Consequential Amendments here.