Yes there is though it's not in the constitution directly its been inferred by t...

cormacrelf · on June 16, 2019

It would be almost misleading not to mention that the implied freedom of political communication is very limited and doesn't have even close to the depth and breadth of jurisprudence that 1st Amendment arguments have in the US.

The argument at its most extreme that various unauthorised disclosure criminal provisions could be invalid for IFPC reasons is outlined here:

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0067205X1804600... (Or as a blog post if you don't have access: https://auspublaw.org/2016/04/public-sector-whistleblowing/)

But it's shaky at best. Who is to say that the nature of Special Intelligence Operations and the restrictions on their existence don't justify having no public interest exceptions to disclosures about them, for example? The paper makes this point accidentally (via a Wotton v Queensland analogy, at 362). I just don't see the current applications as being strong enough, especially where the legitimate object of the legislation is national security.

cyphar · on June 17, 2019

There isn't. The High Court's decision on political freedom of speech is ridiculously limited in scope and doesn't apply to the vast majority of actions most Aussies would call "free speech". I also want to point out just how much the High Court has been forced to stretch the wording of the constitution in order to grant rights which are "obviously present" in our society:

* The amount of decisions which had a basis on "on just terms" had such a massive effect that almost every piece of legislation drafted in the past 50 years has a special provision saying that it should not be interpreted to violate the "on just terms" section of the constitution.

* The freedom of political speech comes from the High Court's reading of the preamble of the constitution, and the fact that it mentions Australia as being a representative democracy. They then ruled that in order for a representative democracy to exist you must have freedom of political speech. We're very lucky that our High Court is ruling in favour of the public's freedom rather than against it, because some people might see that as reason to question the legitimacy of the High Court (which would end very badly).