Last week HRLA Principal Lawyer John Steenhof made an appearance on John Anderson’s Conversations show to discuss religious freedom.

John Anderson is, of course, the former Deputy Prime Minister of Australia. On his program Conversations, he interviews the world's foremost thought leaders about today’s pressing social, cultural and political issues.

On this latest episode, filmed in February this year and titled Religious Freedom: The New Blasphemy, Anderson discusses l the state of religious freedom in the West, the threats of hate speech laws, the erosion of freedom of speech, and the increasing culture of stamping out dissent.

The panel of three guests features John alongside Paul Coleman, a British lawyer and Executive Director of Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) International, and Kristen Waggoner, CEO, President, and General Counsel of ADF in the US.

John argues that unelected bureaucrats like the eSafety Commissioner have been using broadly written offence laws “to censor the social media platforms and issue take-down notices, such as against our client, Billboard Chris”.

Billboard Chris is the online persona of Chris Elston, who earlier this week won his case against the eSafety Commissioner after the Administrative Review Tribunal found his social media comments did not amount to “cyber-abuse”.

John continued:

If the eSafety Commissioner has any concerns about a post that you've made, they’ve been issuing informal takedown notices to social media companies on a regular basis despite the fact that it doesn't meet the legal requirement. This is the kind of activism that these unaccountable bodies often undertake and is such a threat to free speech on such important issues.

HRLA is hopeful the recent Tribunal decision will be a precedent that shifts the legal landscape for free speech, but these attacks on fundamental freedoms are ongoing all over the world.

Paul Coleman discusses some of ADF International’s European cases, such as Finland MP Päivi Räsänen, who is facing court for questioning her church’s promotion of LGBT “Pride” events.

The panel also discusses US Vice President JD Vance’s warning that free speech in Europe is “in retreat”.

As Kristen Waggoner states during the discussion:

It’s important as we’re talking about free speech to recognise religious freedom and free speech are intertwined. You really can't have one without the other.

Anderson says the driving force behind Conversations is that “proper, robust dialogue is necessary if we are to maintain our social strength and cohesion” because “you cannot get good public policy out of a bad public debate”.

Improving the public debate on freedom of speech and religion is welcome, given so much of the threat has come with a lack of scrutiny and debate.

This is an important conversation about defending core values of our civilisation, so please take the opportunity to watch the full episode here: