Terry Lane

Liberty: A History of Civil Liberties in Australia by James Waghorne and Stuart Macintyre

November 2011, no. 336

In 1988 the Hawke government put a constitutional amendment to a referendum. On the recommendation of the government’s Constitution Commission, we were invited to vote to enshrine guarantees of trial by jury, property rights, and freedom of religion. The proposition was rejected by all states. There is nothing surprising in that. We almost always do vote against constitutional amendment because the politicians of the right have always succeeded in persuading us that the original document (a free trade agreement between the federating colonies) is perfect and, in any case, any proposal for change is a left-wing plot to deprive her majesty’s loyal subjects of their common law freedoms.

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Speech Matters: Getting Free Speech Right by Katharine Gelber

by Terry Lane •

April 2011, no. 330

Australians quite like the idea of freedom of speech, except in almost any situation you can think of. We hold that speaking freely is acceptable and commendable except when it is rude, upsetting, unpatriotic, in poor taste, or blocks the traffic.

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Shorts

by Chris Feik •

April 1996, no. 179

‘What I wanted to do was to write a story that would confront me with a number of incidents requiring moral, philosophical or theological reflection,’ Terry Lane writes in the postscript to this novel. There’s something a little unfashionable about such an aim: most contemporary fiction markets itself in more secular terms. But Lane was once a religious minister, prior to his career in broadcasting, and this book testifies to that history. It is a novel that returns obsessively to questions of spiritual crisis and dissent. From the perspective of the dissenter, it targets public morality, and doctrinaire religious observance. From that of a sceptic, it asks how senseless disasters can be squared with a divine plan.

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Letters

by Hidden Author •

April 1996, no. 179

Dear Editor,

I am flabbergasted at the savage, totally unjustified hatchet job that Richard Hall has done on Hugh Mackay in the National Library Voices Essay (ABR, Feb/March 1996). Is the National Library now paying for character assassination?

I know both Hugh Mackay and Richard Hall. I think that the Pot should always think carefully before calling the Pan sooty-arse. If Mr Mackay looks like ‘a possum thinking about an apple’, the curmudgeonly Mr Hall looks a bit like the possum’s bum.

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