The Permission Slip.

In the Senate chamber, where the air hangs heavy with the scent of earnest paperwork and deferred decisions, Pauline Hanson occasionally rises to defend something called free speech. It is a cause that sounds noble enough, until one notices the choreography involved. On 1 July 2024, she moved a motion for an inquiry into enshrining free speech protections in the Constitution. The vote was lost, as these things often are when the major parties align against the crossbench theatrics. Labour and the Greens opposed it; independents like David Pocock and Lidia Thorpe either abstained or were elsewhere. The moment passed, leaving behind a press release and a petition drive.

One Nation's free speech policy is neatly laid out on their website, a document that promises constitutional referendums, the repeal of Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, and an end to what they term the "misinformation" bureaucracy. It is the sort of platform that pairs well with complaints about immigrants taking jobs and tariffs protecting local steel. There are no actual bills introduced by One Nation senators to make this happen, no private member's legislation gathering dust in the legislative pipeline. Instead, there are motions, speeches, and the occasional Free Speech Conference, where supporters gather to affirm, unanimously and at length, that the real threat to democracy is the suppression of unpopular opinion.

Hanson herself has tested the boundaries of this system, with results that complicate the narrative considerably. In 2022, a Federal Court ordered her to pay $250,000 to a former colleague over claims of sexual harassment she had broadcast on television and social media. Plain speaking, it emerged, carried a market rate. The following year, her tweet telling Senator Mehreen Faruqi to "piss off back to Pakistan" was ruled a violation of Section 18C: the very provision she has spent years campaigning to repeal had, in the interim, found a use for her. One might have expected this to prompt reflection. It prompted a press release.

The losses become exhibits in the grievance gallery, proof that the establishment is indeed out to silence the plain-speaking from Ipswich. It is a familiar script, one that echoes across borders. In Britain, Nigel Farage rallies Reform UK voters with tales of BBC bias and the Online Safety Act's chilling hand. In Washington, Donald Trump positions the Justice Department as his personal censor. The rhetoric unites them: free speech is under siege, and only the populist outsider can restore it. The proposals, when they arrive, are much the same, repeal the laws that might constrain, hold inquiries that go nowhere, and frame every courtroom defeat as martyrdom.

What is striking is not the consistency of the message, but its portability. Australians, like their British counterparts, appear to warm to the idea that immigrants strain benefits and housing, even as economic data suggests otherwise. Tariffs against China sound like sensible patriotism, until the supermarket prices tick up. Support for bombing Iran was robust and widespread, right up to the point the bowsers ran dry and the price board outside the servo became a source of public grief. Free speech fits neatly into this worldview: it is the permission slip for saying the unsayable, underwritten by the quiet conviction that the rules, when they apply, apply to someone else.

The Senate moves on to other business. One Nation's free speech crusade continues much as before.

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The views expressed are those of the correspondent. Factual claims draw on publicly available sources.