All animals are equal, but some want to tell us what we can say

"NAPOLEON, with the dogs following him, now mounted on to the raised portion of the floor where Major had previously stood, to deliver his speech. He announced from now on the Sunday-morning Meetings would come to an end. They were unnecessary he said and wasted time.

"In future all questions relating to the working of the farm would be settled by a special committee of pigs, presided over by himself. These would meet in private and afterwards communicate their decisions to the others. The animals would still assemble on Sunday mornings to salute the flag, sing 'Beasts of England' and receive their orders for the week; but there would be no more debates."
George Orwell, Animal Farm.

BY deciding on allegory, George Orwell disarmingly presented his morality tale in a way that would most resonate with his readers. Orwell believed that people often see in abstract what they fail to grasp in the real world.

Contemporary readers should find little difficulty joining the dots between Orwell's animal intelligentsia and their human counterparts. By undermining their society's values and institutions they cleared the way for Napoleon's rise to unchallenged authority. They determined what was politically acceptable, rewarding the true believers and punishing the nonconformists, just as things are evolving in our world.

Like it or not, we are accustomed to being lectured to, or hectored, by intellectual elites. Our children are conditioned to believe their country's history is dark. It is commonplace to have iconic anniversaries such as Australia Day and Anzac Day demeaned as celebrations of violence.

We are urged to celebrate diversity through multiculturalism but must repress feelings of outrage when recent arrivals show contempt for our way of life. We are often reminded that Christianity, the flag and the monarchy are cultural relics. Businessmen are portrayed as class enemies, to be reined in by more regulations and stiffer penalties. The green movement is lauded as our saviour for whom the rest of us must be reined in. The list is endless, but the narrative is consistent. Our values and traditions are sadly wanting and barely worth defending.

As in Animal Farm, on multiple fronts, these shortcomings are driven home by so-called progressive intellectuals who manipulate the language to denigrate the established order and to present the utopia they would impose on us. Little wonder that in a recent Lowy Institute poll, 60 per cent of Australians are now indifferent to democracy while only 39 per cent of 18 to 29-year-olds believe democracy is preferable to other forms of government.

One of the remaining obstacles to the full realisation of the intelligentsia's utopian dream is obedience. If critics can be controlled through propaganda and having the law narrowly define what speech is legal, we will arrive at their promised land more quickly.

As the concerted attacks last year on Alan Jones and Andrew Bolt illustrate, progress is being made. Indeed, so ferocious was the furore over Jones's insensitive remarks, that a broadcaster with a lesser following would have been shut down by opponents who don't even listen to him. The findings against Bolt were straight out of Orwell. It is a reminder that if laws are created to limit freedom of expression, they will be used.

Determined to increase its control over the media and using the News of the World controversy as a pretext, the federal government established the Finkelstein inquiry into the media's codes of practice. The inquiry found that regulation of Australia's news media was inconsistent, fragmented and ineffective, in part, the consequence of technological change. But it was also based on the Press Council's lament that it can't do its job properly. This begs the question of how wide its remit should be?

Finkelstein seemed concerned by the public's loss of trust in the media. But neither he nor any future regulator can effectively deal with this. When editors and journalists do not report fairly, cover up the truth, or advocate values at odds with their market, it is unsurprising that audiences switch off. Clearly there is a large unsatisfied demand for balance and truth and, sooner or later, this will be recognised by proprietors, investors and better journalist schools. In the meantime the internet will be the default, not government.

A key Finkelstein recommendation was to replace self-regulation with a government authority. This confidence in government suggests that freedom of speech was not paramount in his deliberations.

The government's determination to control our lives did not stop at a media inquiry. The draft Human Rights and Anti-discrimination Bill 2012 seeks to further restrict our freedoms. While softened somewhat following strong criticisms, including from eminent retired judges, the reverse onus of proof remains, along with an expansion of victimhood.

The government says it never intended to restrict free speech, but the fact is, while it preaches liberty, it is about coercion. The bill is an ambit claim. We may ask, to whom is the government appealing? Since when has limiting our basic freedoms been advocated in an election campaign?

There is no popular groundswell. The government is responding to the collectivist instincts of those intellectuals who hold liberty in low regard. It isn't so long ago that an academic floated the idea that we "suspend democracy" to silence climate change sceptics. Authoritarian government appeals to these people.

All the while, the public has been detached from the consequences of the government's actions, accepting, somewhat gullibly, the well-meaning intent of minority protection without appreciating the erosion of its own rights. What it should know is that ceding freedom is never temporary. It simply leads to regular Sunday-morning assemblies, but without the debate. Far fetched? Believe that at your peril.

Maurice Newman is a former chairman of the Australian Securities Exchange and the ABC.