Letter to The Editor

To The Australian
Liberal senator James Paterson describes ‘Holocaust deniers’ as ‘serious wrongdoers’ who should not be able to ‘avoid liability’ under a reformed section 18C (‘Reform 18C now or risk losing it’, 17/3). I wonder why this defender of free speech is unwilling to extend it to dissident historians, irrespective of how right or wrong they may be. Indeed, I wonder why he does not use the truer term ‘Holocaust revisionists’ and on what grounds he declares them to be wrongdoers.

An inadequately discussed aspect of the current free speech controversy is the position under present or reformed legislation of revisionist historians. The principle of free speech demands that no particular religious, political, historical or scientific view be peculiarly privileged as a result of special pleading.
NJ, Belgrave, Vic