WATCH: ‘Q&A’ Just Reminded Us All How Fuckin’ Great Free Speech Really Is

Every now and again, we need a reminder of how swell shit-talkers have it in Australia. We are at liberty to deliver the hottest of take on any issue that comes into our purview, provided we don’t incite hatred or violence. That means even us plebs can launch volleys at the pollies, too. 

It’s a liberty we take very seriously. 

Well, tonight’s ep of Q&A has done a pretty great job of demonstrating just how valuable that right is, and how thankful you should be we aren’t all subjected to the same censorship on offer in Turkey. 

The topic turned to Germany’s recent pledge to punish a satirical poet for reading a super-scathing piece about the Turkish leader Tayyip Erdogan

As part of a pollie-free panel, philosopher Julian Baggini summed it all up, saying “I often find myself thinking ‘you have the perfect legal right to say what you’ve said, but I think it was damned irresponsible and you shouldn’t have done it.’”

“And you’ve got to be able to distinguish that right to condemn and say people were wrong to do it, with having a fairly generous legal conception that always has to err on the side of freedom over anything else.”
That was followed up by author Ayaan Hirsi’s assertion “he is a satirist, and if you start to care, as the head of a state of a country like Turkey – you know, 80 million people – it just shows how insecure he is, how tyrannical he is.”

You should make the time to catch the whole episode, which roared through a number of super-relevant issues relating to free speech and tolerance. But, if you’ve only got four minutes to re-assess why you’re allowed to sling shit at the PM and hyper-nationalists alike, watch below:


Source: Q&A / Twitter. 

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