The First Amendment to the US Constitution enshrines free speech, including the ‘the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances’.

Perhaps the NSW Supreme Court judge has never grasped the essence of free speech. They have allowed the misguided Palestine Action Group to block traffic and disrupt thousands of commuters, unnecessarily costing the state millions in security, alongside the dangers of crowd crush and the inability of ambulances to get to crushed people.

‘Peaceable’ as defined by Merriam Webster, means ‘disposed to peace. not contentious or quarrelsome, quietly behaved, free from strife or disorder’ – it’s arguably of a higher order than being merely peaceful.

In Australia, we permit peaceful assembly only as a consequence of being a signatory to international human rights treaties, rather than having such rights enshrined in our Constitution. Australia is a party to seven core international human rights treaties. The right to freedom of assembly and association is contained in articles 21 and 22 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR).

But even here, the ICCPR recognises that:

Under article 21 freedom of assembly may be subject to restrictions imposed in conformity with the law and which are necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security or public safety, public order, the protection of public health or morals or the protection of the rights and freedoms of others [emphasis mine].

Your freedom to travel across the Sydney Harbour Bridge, a state-owned piece of infrastructure, is being trampled upon, not to mention the feelings and morals of those stringently opposed to the arguably false narrative of IDF-led genocide and manufactured starvation.

In any event, blocking other people from going about their business is not speech.

Elected representatives in Australia are accessible by email, and sometimes via meetings. Even electoral candidates are inundated with emails. As a candidate for the federal Lower House myself in the May 2025 federal election, I was flooded with emails threatening lack of support if I were not to fall for the leftist narrative on Palestine, much more so than I was as a candidate in the April 2024 federal by-election.

But emails can be ignored, even by those elected. Individuals wanting to exercise free speech can also get together in groups at locations where private owner-managers do not object due to content, group size, or any other issue. No, you should not have a right to protest political issues on university campuses, which are meant for education, unless a privately-owned university allows such disruption – good luck with that.

However, as we stand here today, taxpayers have funded a range of public property, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge, that is unlikely to be privatised any time soon. The managers of these properties, including parklands, bridges, and media mastheads like the ABC and SBS, are arms of governments or delegated entities that morally owe a general duty to all citizens, or, arguably, at least to all taxpayers.

In the early to mid-1900s, when radio was the main form of mass communication, and limited bandwidth could be potentially captured by a few owners, the Mayflower doctrine was a mandate implemented by the US Government Federal Communications Commission (FCC) that required American radio broadcasters to ‘provide full and equal opportunity for the presentation to the public all sides of public issues’. The Mayflower doctrine was replaced by the fairness doctrine in 1949, and it stood the test of time until 1987.

The fairness doctrine had two basic elements: it required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: it could be done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials.

It might seem odd that a Libertarian Party-endorsed two-time federal election candidate would invoke, of all things, the fairness doctrine, which in its time, the New Left, wary of dominant conservative ownership of the media, loved.

However, from a libertarian standpoint, the fairness doctrine was partially right. It was wrong for government to control media via licensing, which practise should be abolished in Australia. Nor should there be any public ownership of TV and radio stations. Then we won’t need a fairness doctrine.

But, while TV and radio stations are publicly owned, a fairness doctrine is applicable, and the public deserves to hear all sides of a major conflict, including what may at first seem the most heretic. E.g., the ABC must present, to the public, the scientists and scholars that dissent vigorously from climate alarmism. Even those accused of murder or paedophilia get their day in court, but never those who dissent from popular leftist narratives.

It is eminently sensible to impose a fairness doctrine but only on all publicly-owned media properties. As also a version of the Zapple doctrine, amended such that there would be no restriction on any political party buying any amount of ad time on any public or private media, but which would require the ABC and such publicly-owned broadcast stations to devote a certain amount of time to minor electoral parties and their policy positions.

What about physical properties? Where may the people ‘peaceably assemble’?

People can peacefully assemble on any privately-owned land with the permission of the owner, provided they also do not cause nuisance to neighbours.

Arms of government own numerous physical locations, some of which, such as the Sydney Harbour Bridge, are used by millions every day. Today, people have the opportunity of having their say on social media at no cost besides time. The physical town square of the Athens of Ancient Greece, the birthplace of democracy, has been replaced by the digital town square. The when and where of physical assembly can now also be organised on the digital town square.

The state government could choose from its set of properties, those that would be least disruptive to commuters, and other taxpayers and citizens, when used by a minority section of the populace to proclaim their grievances. Such a facility can be a section of parkland that’s always designated as a soapbox area, such as the Speakers’ Corner in Sydney, NSW, and which should ideally be exclusively reserved by time at a modest cost per hour to avoid conflict. Whether such events attract publicity will be entirely up to the media, when privately-owned, but, following the fairness doctrine, publicly-owned media must mention all bookings on their websites, and carry some reportage when the event exceeds a pre-determined hurdle with no discretion allowable to the public-media editors.

This is our true free-speech battle.

Sadly, some who have their hearts in the right place, but a mind that’s not keeping up, may invoke a Voltaire-attributed sentiment to defend the rights of those who disrupt our lives with blockading actions that have no resemblance to speech. We should remind them of another quote, also perhaps wrongly, attributed to Voltaire: ‘Anyone who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.’