‘The state should never be the arbiter of what people can think’

‘I’m a John Stuart Mill man’, Brandis tells me, over too much booze and amazing food at one of Sydney’s oldest political haunts, which is called – wait for it – Machiavelli’s. Brandis is the senator for Queensland for the ruling right-wing Liberal Party, a key cog in the government of Liberal PM Tony Abbott, and, most importantly, the attorney general of Australia. This basically means he’s in charge of Australian law and justice. And since taking office with the election of Abbott in 2013, Brandis has doggedly, and often controversially, devoted himself to reforming the section of the Oz Racial Discrimination Act that forbids people from ‘offending, insulting or humiliating’ a person or group on the basis of their racial or ethnic origins. Why has he done this? Why is he so determined to rip up restrictions on insulting ethnic minorities? Why has he allowed himself to be branded by many on the Australian left as a ‘friend of bigots’ who is using his power to help ‘unleash Australia’s racists’?
‘Because’, he says, ‘if you are going to defend freedom of speech, you have to defend the right of people to say things you would devote your political life to opposing. Your good faith is tested by whether or not you would defend the right to free speech of people with whom you profoundly disagree. That’s the test.’

But there’s much much more. Read it all, and then send it to your favourite members of the governing class. (h/t Maz2)