Letter to The Editor - My statement unequivocally condemned this heinous act of murderous violence

To The Age        The argument of Gillian Triggs and Julian Burnside in favour of stronger legislation to prevent events such as the Christchurch massacre ("We need stronger laws to deal with hate speech", 15/4) is fraught with danger for the principle of free speech, which is so vital to the wellbeing of the open society, such as we currently enjoy in Australia, but which millions of human beings in closed societies around the world do not. Their plea in fact looks like a carefully manicured proposal for the political censorship of views they happen to dislike and disagree with. This is suggested by their thoroughly misleading description of Senator Fraser Anning's commentary on the massacre. In his open letter to the Prime Minister dated 27th March the senator wrote: "My statement unequivocally condemned this heinous act of murderous violence. After putting the immediate blame where it belongs, I looked for contributing causes." There is thus no justification for the description of his comments as "a vile response" that "constitute an abuse of free speech."
  Nigel Jackson, Belgrave, Vic