January is when we start easing back into our yearly routines. The chaos of Christmas behind us,.
Xmas leftovers finally eaten; newly minted New Year resolutions most likely already breached, the return to school or work looming and perhaps a last trip to the beach to test out that latest ‘must have’ beach accoutrement the cabana.
Disturbing news from overseas still continues but for many hovers only at the edges of their concerns.
The tyranny of distance even in this connected age allows a feeling of complacency.
This year however these summer routines are shadowed by the December 18th Bondi tragedy and its aftermath; followed in the last two weeks by devastating fires and floods.
For me personally the Bondi tragedy brought back innocent childhood memories.
Growing up, Bondi was my closest beach and I can still taste the strawberry ice cream cones from the Pavilion, feel the hot sand under my feet and smell the suntan oil on my skin.
But now this loved local beach and tourist mecca will always be remembered for the murder of 14 innocents celebrating the Jewish Holiday of Hanukkah, clearly targeted for who they were.
The shock has been felt not only in that community but also in the wider community and seen across the world.
These were confronting alien scenes.
We pride ourselves as the world’s most successful multicultural country and in most respects we are but prejudices still persist.
Antisemitism is a long-standing form of prejudice, hostility, or discrimination directed at Jewish people.
Its history stretches over more than two thousand years and has taken different forms in different times and places.
But it is not the only one that …. As a shocked city, indeed the whole country, watched, the questions came thick and fast.
How and why did it happen? So too the calls for government action and answers.
What was a human tragedy very quickly became a political one.
The immediate unedifying behaviour of politicians as one after the other made appearances of performative grief, laying flowers on the growing mound, has now grown into a partisan jockeying for political expediency.
Our political culture does not allow for time to reflect, to weigh up the national good. The media plays a part in promoting hyper partisanship, loudness leading to knee jerk reactions.
There is no time to reflect, to change your mind.
So after weeks of escalating public, political and community pressure — from business leaders, victims’ families, Jewish community groups and even former Labor MPs, the Prime Minister was pushed into calling a Royal Commission and then to abandoning his all – encompassing Omnibus Bill, which combined several major reforms into one package: hate speech and crimes, migration, gun law reforms.
This is being strongly challenged and at the time of writing a consensus on issues like gun restrictions and hate crimes and speech are still unresolved.
It is hoped the debate which is necessary will not be just motivated by politics only.
And though the tragic deaths at Bondi were clearly aimed at those of Jewish faith and the government focus has revolved around anti – Semitism, Islamophobia is an equally disturbing problem as seen by the attack on an Imam and his wife last week.
Time and time again we hear of Muslim women accosted for wearing hijabs.
Attacks on mosques do not receive the same coverage as other crimes.
Independent MP Allegra Spender has rightly argued that any legislation should protect all minority groups not only on the basis of religion but also gender, sexuality and disability.
A democracy doesn’t weaken by protecting minorities —it weakens when protection becomes selective, politicised, or incoherent.
It is timely to remember that unlike other countries freedom of speech is not enshrined in our constitution.
And as a society we do not have a culture of deep and uncomfortable conversations in social settings.
Universities have always been places where the contest of ideas took place.
But lately this has been threatened and certain courses where controversial ideas could be voiced and debated have been downgraded or cancelled.
Equally culpable is mainstream media which does not foster public debate on substantive issues or give space to dissenting voices.
However, throughout history writers and poets have always been the strongest defenders of free speech and across eras have written powerfully—sometimes directly, sometimes obliquely—about freedom of speech, censorship, and the moral duty to speak truth.
Defending free speech isn’t just legal or institutional — it’s also deeply cultural and humanistic.
Many of these figures argued not just for their own right to speak, but for the right of ideas they despised to be expressed.
As French philosopher Voltaire put it: I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
John Stuart Mills’s On Liberty remains one of the strongest philosophical defences of free speech, especially of unpopular or minority opinions: Give me the liberty to know, to utter, and to argue freely according to conscience.
And in the 20th century George Orwell was perhaps the clearest literary defender of free speech: If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”
If you watched or read Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaids Tale, Atwood consistently links literary freedom with democratic survival, warning that censorship often arrives disguised as protection or morality: The moment when freedom of speech becomes restricted is the moment when a society starts sliding toward authoritarianism.
Australia has a strong group of contemporary poets whose work engages directly with democracy, free speech, protest, and who gets heard.
Some are indigenous poets such as Lionel Fogarty, Ali Cobby Eckermann, Ellen van Neerven and Samuel Wagan Watson : We learned early how to speak quiet in a loud country.”
Today Writers Festivals have often been left to provide safe spaces for wide ranging discussions to take place.
The Adelaide Writes Week is the premier event of this kind, attracting writers and speakers from across the world.
SO what happened at the Adelaide Writers week should send a warning to anyone who values free speech as foundational to a democracy.
This year Australian Palestinian writer Randa Abdel Fattah was ‘disinvited’ with the reason given that it would be ‘culturally insensitive’ to have her attend following the Bondi shooting.
An outspoken supporter of the Palestinian cause, her latest book Discipline explores the experience of Australian Palestinians during the Gaza War.
By January 13th around 180 writers had withdrawn from Writers Week in protest and all members of the board bar one had resigned, including the director Louise Adler who said she could not be party to silencing writers.
Writers and writing matters, even when they are presenting ideas that discomfort and challenge us.
We need writers now more than ever, as our media closes up, as our politicians grow daily more cowed by real power, as Australia grows more unjust and unequal.
This week Parliament has reconvened to debate the proposed bills.
We hope that foremost in their sights will be the need for national cohesion and the ability to put aside personal political and partisan politics to achieve this and build on the positives of our much lauded multiculturalism.
For the rest of us we must stay informed and involved.
Silence is a political act and democracy is eroded when language itself is regulated or suppressed.
For there is always light,
if only we’re brave enough to see it.
If only we’re brave enough to be it.
From The Hill we Climb by Amanda Gorman
The poem insists that free speech is not merely permitted in a democracy—it creates democracy.
