The greatest writer and thinker on free speech is Murray Rothbard. This essay of his deserves pride of place in any archive of free speech issues, even this archive of neglected Australian articles on the subject, which also covers related areas including consumer protection, freedom of choice, media ownership, media bias and government-sponsored/directed media like the ABC, which is currently crowdfunded at gunpoint when it could be crowdfunded (if its supporters are to be believed) through consensual means.

  1. The Case Against the Australian Classification BoardLennie Lower’s Annual: A Side Splitter (Sydney: National Press, 1944), pp. 111-12; originally: “No More Cowboys and Indians,” Smith’s Weekly, October 21, 1944, p. 9. Lower also addressed the subject in an article republished in Here’s Lower (Sydney: Hale & Ironmonger, 1983), pp. 90-91, as “Let’s Become Purer.”
  2. John Singleton, “Protect who from a ‘mindless’ wife?,” Advertising & Newspaper News, September 19, 1969, p. 4; followed-up in John Singleton, “Remember trading stamps?,” Advertising News, November 26, 1971, p. 4.
  3. John Singleton, “Mr. Ralph Nader,” Advertising News, August 20, 1971, p. 4; and John Singleton, “Mr. Ralph zzzzzz,” Advertising News, July 7, 1972, p. 20.
  4. John Singleton mocks university students on civil liberties and freedom of choice — John Singleton, “Freedom of Choice,” Advertising News, October 22, 1971, p. 4.
  5. John Singleton, “Censorship should be banned,” Advertising News, March 30, 1973, p. 4.
  6. John Singleton, “The great consumer protection trick,” Nation Review, May 28-June 3, 1976, p. 802. An earlier version titled, “The consumer protection confidence trick,” was published in 1975 over two issues of Advertising News: October 3, pp. 6-7; and October 17, pp. 8-9. Also in John Singleton, True Confessions (Stanmore: Cassell Australia, 1979), pp. 68-73, as “And Now Announcing Consumer Protection.”
  7. Shit State Subsidised Socialist Schooling Should Cease Says Singo — John Singleton, “The day the parents became citizens,” Nation Review, August 6-12, 1976, p. 1044.
  8. John Singleton, “How the whores pretend to be nuns,” Nation Review, August 27-September 2, 1976, p. 1116.
  9. John Singleton, “How many tits in a tangle?,” Nation Review, September 10-16, 1976, p. 1162. Excerpt: “We see interminable arguments about what should and should not be on the ABC when the argument should really be why the hell we need the ABC in the first place.”
  10. John Singleton, “The impossible dream,” Nation Review, December 9-15, 1976, p. 187.
  11. John Singleton, “A crime must have a victim,” The Australian, March 16, 1977, p. 8.
  12. John Singleton with Bob Howard, Rip Van Australia (Stanmore: Cassell Australia, 1977), pp. 52-56, on “Consumer Protection.”
  13. Singo and Howard on Murdoch, Packer and Monopolistic Media — John Singleton with Bob Howard, Rip Van Australia (Stanmore: Cassell Australia, 1977), pp. 16-19, under the heading “Aunty A.B.C.” This is almost identical with what appeared earlier in: John Singleton, “Let the airwaves sing unfettered,” Nation Review, April 9-15, 1976, p. 632; and that was a rewritten version of: John Singleton, “The media mafia,” Advertising News, September 5, 1975, p. 8. Excerpt: “[T]hose who wish to see their TV without interruption from advertisements should take up collection of $250,000,000 per annum and for that amount they could buy their own TV airwaves throughout Australia and do whatever they like with them. But at the moment, none of us has the choice.”
  14. And also the “Journalism” entry in Rip Van Australia, pp. 139-40. Excerpt: “We naturally believe that newspaper proprietors have the right to print what they like, however biased it might be. We do not believe in equal time or equal space rules being foisted upon anyone. We do not believe that anyone — especially journalists — can rightfully be forced to give all sides of a story. In other words, while many of us might disagree with what a newspaper says and how it says it, (and try and hope to convince them to say it differently) we should all in the last analysis, fight for the right of all individuals to say what they think as they please.”
  15. Mark Tier, “Too few unbiased guardians and fewer angels,” Nation Review, March 19-25, 1976, p. 560. Excerpt: “The simplest way to disperse ownership of newspapers would be to reduce income tax. Income tax pushes up the cost of labour. Newspapers — and all media in fact — are labour intensive industries. Reducing income tax would reduce the cost of labour and would increase the profitability of newspapers.”
  16. Jim Fryar, “The best solution is to sell the ABC,” The Australian, July 26, 1978, p. 6, as a letter to the editor.
  17. Are you a real friend of the ABC? — Viv Forbes, “Money to burn?,” The Bulletin, August 5, 1980, p. 18, as a letter to the editor. Excerpt: “It would seem fairly obvious that most people would prefer not to have their viewing interrupted by advertising. They would also prefer free housing and hot dogs and beer.”
  18. Lang Hancock, “Bizarre rights,” The Australian, February 1, 1979, p. 6, as a letter to the editor.
  19. Lang Hancock, “Govt should sell the ABC,” The Sydney Morning Herald, July 17, 1981, p. 6, as a letter to the editor. Excerpt: “If Rupert Murdoch wishes to buy a television station and has the money to do so, good luck to him. It is none of my business and none of the Government’s. If the Government has the taxpayers’ interests at heart, it should sell him the ABC, thus saving the public a lot of money.”
  20. Maxwell Newton, “Manipulating the Media,” Australian Penthouse, April 1980, pp. 125-28, 144-45. Excerpt: “In sum, the process of manipulation, of management of ‘news’, of pressures, of favours, is so widespread and so diverse that I find it laughable that anyone could seriously talk about a ‘truthful’ press or an ‘objective’ TV news service.”
  21. Bert Kelly, “Great ‘freedom of choice’ mystery,” The Bulletin, February 10, 1981, p. 91.
  22. Bert Kelly, “Problems of a pressure-packed society,” The Bulletin, October 26, 1982, p. 138.
  23. The media bias against media bias — Robert Haupt, “Oblique News: The need for media bias,” The Age Monthly Review, August 1987, p. 10.
  24. Editorial [Paddy McGuinness], “Time to sell the ABC,” The Australian Financial Review, March 13, 1985, p. 12. Excerpt: “No one, of course, has the slightest expectation that the present Federal Government would consider for a moment a proposal to sell the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Indeed, there is grave doubt that anyone would want to buy it, in its present form.”
  25. Padraic P. McGuinness, “Why not pay for the ABC?,” The Australian Financial Review, February 26, 1988, pp. 88-87. Excerpt: “Why not try applying the user pays principle to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation? After all, while there is a case for minority and supposedly quality radio and television, there is no good reason why it should be free of charge.” And: “… no good reason why ABC TV should not become a subscription service, so that those who enjoy it, or cannot stand advertising, could pay for it …”
  26. Padraic P. McGuinness, “Watching for media bias,” The Australian Financial Review, July 6, 1988, pp. 64-63. Excerpt: “[Defenders of taxpayer-funded broadcasting] would reply that this is a change from a media dominated by the agenda set by commercial advertisers. Fair enough: this makes a case for subscription television or radio; it is not a case for the use of taxpayers’ funds for propaganda purposes.”
  27. The ABC and the self-evident — “Stop the rot at the ABC: divide and rule,” The Australian, March 9, 1990, p. 13; “Bureaucratic zealots rule the policy roost,” The Weekend Australian, May 30-31, 1992, p. 2; “Politically correct ABC campaigns for Labor,” The Weekend Australian, February 27-28, 1993, p. 2; “Voices of diversity deserve to be heard,” The Australian, February 23, 1994, p. 11; “The Liberals’ media hurdle,” The Sydney Morning Herald, January 28, 1995, p. 30; “Political correctness: intolerance unplugged,” The Sydney Morning Herald, April 13, 1996, p. 34; “‘Our ABC’ under scrutiny,” The Sydney Morning Herald, July 18, 1996, p. 13; “Good riddance to political correctness,” The Sydney Morning Herald, July 12, 1997, p. 41; and “The trouble with censorship is we are two-faced about it,” The Sydney Morning Herald, July 8, 2003, p. 11. Excerpt: “There is a kind of corporate culture which has grown up in the organisation which is shared by, it seems, just about all of its talking heads and which treats what are really controversial and contentious positions as if they were self-evident.” And: “[On the ABC] there will be no balanced presentation of the case for reducing [ABC] funding, changing its direction and introducing genuine diversity into its coverage of social policy issues.” Also: “There is an overwhelming case for some forms of public broadcasting. Nevertheless, there is no open and shut case for any present specific aspect of it. No aspect of the present organisational structure of the ABC ought to be treated as sacrosanct.” And on censorship in particular: “Let’s be honest about it. All the fuss about censorship is a smoke-screen. Censorship is good if it prevents the dissemination or the promotion of views or matters which all right-thinking people agree are bad and harmful. Censorship is bad if it prevents the same people from seeing anything which they feel like, regardless of any possible harmful effects.”
  28. Is Australian culture a soft boring begging sheltered obedience? — Padraic P. McGuinness, “We’re safe from foreigners,” The Weekend Australian, October 12-13, 1991, p. 2. Excerpt: “It is a peculiarly middle-class intellectual concern to worry about what the Australian identity is — possibly because it is a good excuse for demanding more and more subsidies, protection and tax concessions to foster and define the fragile flower of national identity.”
  29. Paddy McGuinness, “Aunty should hang up her boots in face of premature senility,” The Australian, July 1, 1992, p. 17. Excerpt: “Happy 60th birthday to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. That said, it also has to be added that it is time the ABC, in its present form, was wound up and put out to grass.”
  30. Paddy McGuinness, “New ABC Tory chief won’t rock the boat,” The Australian, May 23, 2006, p. 12. Excerpt: “ABC TV will continue to invent a need for yet more channels. The ABC octopus will grow and grow.”
  31. Benjamin Marks, “Sell the ABC to Rupert Murdoch: Lid Blown on ABC Funding Disgrace!,” Economics.org.au, September 1, 2011. Excerpt: “The ABC commits far more dubious activities than Rupert Murdoch, and constantly continues to do so, largely in full public view, and, also largely, in secret.”
  32. Neville Kennard, “My Journey to Anarchy: From political and economic agnostic to anarchocapitalist,” Economics.org.au, December 4, 2011. Excerpt: “just as you can choose your brand of toothpaste and supplier of groceries, so might you choose your security and legal services supplier instead of having a government monopolist forced on you.”

Also, Albert Langer was an Australian imprisoned for speaking out about non-violent political disagreements. He was one of the few Australians actually imprisoned for political (or non-political) speech, so he was an Australian martyr for free speech. Paddy McGuinness wrote about him regularly, as you can see from this archive.

Another collection of McGuinness columns relevant to free speech is: Paddy McGuinness on ethicsat that link are the following articles on business ethics, especially codes of ethics in journalism, a field in which McGuinness had some experience.
(1), (2) & (3) “Ethical questions: how to keep the businessmen honest,” The Australian, March 11, 1992, p. 11; “Right or wrong? Ethical questions above the law,” The Australian, April 8, 1992, p. 13; and “Lying can be good, as long as you know when it’s not,” The Australian, April 9, 1992, p. 11. Those three report on St James Ethics Centre’s “Truth in Business and the Professions” conference.
(4) & (5) “The journalists’ ‘shield’,” City Ethics, Spring 1992, p. 1; and “Risk of jail comes with the job for journos,” The Australian, July 23, 1993, p. 15.
(6) “Corporate honesty is the best policy,” The Australian, Dec 1, 1992, p. 44.
(7) “Those bold entrepreneurs may not have been all bad,” The Sydney Morning Herald, October 6, 1994, p. 21.
(8) “Elusive ethics,” The Sydney Morning Herald, November 17, 1994, p. 20.
(9) “Ethical standards for journalism should not become a pretext for control of media,” The Sydney Morning Herald, September 5, 1995, p. 12. Excerpt: “When journalists are licensed and have entry and educational requirements imposed on them; when journalists, media, and proprietors can be punished for breach of ethical as distinct from legal standards; when the media are regulated by government; when judges or tribunals can prescribe and proscribe content — then freedom of speech will be at an end in our society. That is of course the objective of most of the would-be regulators. They would permit freedom of speech only to those who agree with their prejudices, and deny it to “tycoons”, to big business, to small business, to community organisations not on an approved list, to racists, to sexists, to eccentrics, to dissidents, to offenders against fashionable moral and ethical sensibilities.” And: “In the long run, the only proper discipline is that exercised by the community. Not by self-appointed tribunes of the community, not even by legislators and the murky processes of political wheeling and dealing, but by the consumers who can buy or not buy, tune in or turn off, according to what they, the consumers, really want. That is what freedom of speech is about.

Lastly, here’s our famous Kerry Packer video touching on these issues: