TRANSCRIPT:
(This transcript is derived from an automated process. The video recording is authoritative.)
Drew Hutton:
Thank you to Jewel and to Voting Matters for this invitation to speak to you tonight. I'm very privileged to do so. And it's my honour and delight actually to be able to speak in support of Jillian Spencer. Jillian is a heroic sort of person. She might look quite ordinary and she's not very tall and she doesn't look like she's any great hero, but she is. And I'm very privileged to be able to be the introductory speaker here tonight for her. She's got a story that is well worth hearing and a cause that is well worth supporting.
A bit about myself, I was the founder of the Greens here in Queensland back in 1990. And the Australian Greens began with a conversation that I had with Bob Brown, the later leader of the Australian Greens, in the canteen of the parliamentary building in Hobart back in 1990. And one of us asked the other, "Do you think it's time for a green party in this country?" We can't remember who asked the question first of all, but one of us did. And so we started a process then that by 1992 formed the Australian Greens. And then I proceeded to become a fairly absent husband for the next 16 years when I was wandering the country, wandering the state, building the Green Party. And then by about 2009, I was getting older and I though, "Oh, well, it's time to pass the baton onto new people." And I went off and I formed a campaign against coal and coal seam gas called the Lock the Gate campaign.
I was the president of the Alliance that formed, which was a national alliance to try to stop coal and coalsium gas from ruining our best agricultural land. And so I was out of Green Party politics for well over a decade and came back ... Well, I didn't actually reengage with it until 2022.
I was on Facebook, but I only used Facebook for family stuff, keeping in touch with family and friends. And I saw this notice on Facebook which said that the convener of the Victorian Greens had been virtually sacked because she wrote an article several years earlier in which she had said the Greens should look at whether they should change their policy on gender because legislation had been passed through the Federal Parliament, which allowed males who were identifying as females to enter all sorts of women's only spaces, like toilets or change rooms or prisons, sporting teams, refuges, lesbian groups. Just about anywhere there was a woman's only space, a man who identified as a woman could legally go. And she said, her name was Linda Gale. She said, "The Greens should look at this because they're supporting a policy which is highly contentious." Anyway, she was sacked as the convener.
So I said on Facebook, "Well, I think that's ridiculous." I thought the Greens stood for free speech. It did. It did when I was founding the party. And in fact, back in the 80s, 70s and 80s, I was very much involved in campaigns to have free speech, freedom of speech in Queensland. And I was part of a civil disobedience. In fact, I was the main part of civil disobedience campaigns to support freedom of speech in this state against the Bjelke Petersen government, which outlawed it. And I went to jail about 20 times during that period of time. And it was a funny time. I remember being thrown into the paddy waggon one time and this fellow came in after me and he was a lawyer. And years later, I was involved in another civil disobedience campaign and this guy had become a magistrate in the meantime.
And here I was before this guy, he said to me, "Mr. Hutton, I think you're going to get off this judge." Anyway, that's enough of my stories. I'll go all night if I keep going.
So free speech was always important to me, and I thought it was absurd that this woman got sacked because she said something which a few people in the party disagreed with. So anyway, on my page, on my Facebook page came this tsunami of comments, hundreds of comments. In fact, thousands probably, if I went back and looked at it, some of them supporting what I'd said and some of them abusing the hell out of me. And so I thought, "Oh, well, okay." And after a while I closed it off, so I don't want any more of this. At that stage, I was supporting the Green's policy on it because the Green's policy was totally in support of young people, children, being given puberty blockers or cross-sex hormones or even surgery in order to, if they said they were having identity problems. Sometimes all I needed to say was they were having troubles and they were given this sort of treatment.
I thought, well, I'm a member of the Greens. I support the Greens party policies. But then I started looking at it. I thought, "Well, that's pretty awful policy." I mean, these are just kids and what you're cutting off their girls' breasts because they say they think they're a boy. I mean, that just seemed weird to me. But anyway, I didn't challenge anything, but then a complaint was laid against me inside the Greens because I was a "transphobe". Well, I didn't even know what a transphobe was, and I had to look it up. And anyway, the committee of the party said, "Well, look, Drew, you're a transphobe. There's no doubt about that. And you're going to have to delete all those comments, these comments that we disagree with, that backed you up on that." And I said, "Well, I'm not going to do it. And I believe in free speech and that's a core part of Green philosophy."
There are four pillars in Green's philosophy: ecological sustainability - number one, that's what I was always mostly on about. Social justice, democracy, and nonviolence. And democracy, the core of democracy is free speech. I said, "I'm not going to censor people for stating things that they believe in and they're not being abusive, they're not being defamatory, they genuinely believe in these things." Some of these people were professors at university who were making these comments that I was told I had to delete. Anyway, I refused to do it, and so they suspended my membership. And this one, I kept saying, "Look, your process is completely dodgy. It's wrong. This is a kangaroo court." I kept saying that and they kept going on with it.
And then after two and a half years, I said, "Look, I've had enough," because they were clearly going to just wait me out until I got sick of it and either deleted the comments or resigned and left the party. So I said, "Look, resolve this issue or I'm going public." They didn't resolve the issue, so I went public. And I had an article in one of the national papers and they said, "Okay, well, we're going to resolve this by expelling you." And so they expelled me and then it really hit the papers. And anyway, I said, "All right, well, the trouble is I'm a bit of a tough old bastard. You wouldn't have a Green party here today if I hadn't been, and I'll show you what a tough old bastard I can be."
So I took them to court and their own lawyers told them that they breached my natural justice with regard to me on four separate occasions and that they would need to settle. So they settled with me and they had to readmit me. They didn't like that one little bit. And what they liked even less was that by the terms of settlement, they had to pay up $160,000.
And so I said, "And if you try it again, I'll take you to court again." And so they haven't tried it since, but they'd love to expel me and we'll just see whether they do or not. So I say whatever I like in forums like this or on Facebook or if the media asks me anything, I'll tell them what I think of the Greens or anybody else who wants to deny free speech. And the reason I feel so strongly about freedom of speech is that I agree with the liberal philosophers over the last two or 300 years have all said that freedom of speech is not just morally right. It's not just because you believe in democracy that we should have freedom of speech, but you get a better society. If you can have ideas that people engage in ideas forums, you get the best outcomes.
If all people do is live in their little bubbles or live in silos and talk with people who agree with them, you're never going to get your ideas challenged and you're never going to move on as a society. That's why democratic societies are always more effective societies because people feel that they can engage with others on issues and you get better outcomes at the end of the process. And John Stewart Mill, the great liberal philosopher of the early 19th century, mid 19th century, said, "Freedom of speech..." That was his argument. "Freedom of speech is always best because it gives society not only the most just outcomes, but the most effective outcomes in terms of the progress of that society." But he said, he advocated what he said, the harm principle, that you should be able to exercise freedom of speech as long as it doesn't directly and severely harm another person.
Now, the key things there are directly and severely. So if you're offended by something that I've said, and I've probably offended several of you already, have I? No. Okay. Well, but I'm likely to, believe me, it's not just a matter of if I offend you, but that's not harm. It's harm if I'm in a crowded theatre and I say, "Fire, fire." And there's a stampede and people get killed.That's harmful free speech. Or if somebody says, "Kill the Jews." That's hate speech.That's a horrible thing to say, and it's a dreadful thing to say, and it could lead in certain situations to Bondi massacres, so you don't say it, and that's the harm principle and action, but it's not saying a man can't be a woman.That's not the harm principle in action. That's just somebody engaging in a philosophical or even a medical argument. And that's the way freedom of speech should operate.
The harm principle is not something that says, "I feel uncomfortable with this person saying that." That's not harm. That's just the free interplay of ideas, which is a core part of democratic societies and should be respected as that. Now, the Greens have adopted, and I might add, not just the Greens, there's plenty of organisations who are like this, including regulatory bodies that do things like suspend Dr. Jillian Spencer for engaging just simply in clear free speech for the good of society.
But the Greens think that what's more important is that their particular favoured minority groups who they identify as being the most discriminated against, if you say anything that makes any of them feel uncomfortable, then you're engaging in hate speech. So if you say, "I believe a man can't be a woman" in the Greens, then what's likely to happen to you is what happened to Gail over here, you get expelled from the Greens. That's what she said. A man can't be a woman. I mean, we've lived on that basis for two million years. That's been accepted. And in the last eight to ten years, all of a sudden, somebody who says that is potentially breaking the law of this land. Did you know that?
So this is a situation that is out of control. It's out of control. They get away with it because there's a whole lot of liberal, humanitarian type people who think that all this issue is about is being kind to people, being kind. There are people who have identity problems and we should be prepared to accept them and acknowledge that they shouldn't be discriminated against. I accept that. I accept it totally. If somebody thinks that they're a woman in a man's body, sorry, man, whatever, a man in a woman's body or a woman in a man's body, I've got nothing opposed to that and I'm prepared to deal with that person respectfully and in fact advocate that they not be discriminated against.
But these people, these ideologues, these people who've taken up this issue in order to impose their particular beliefs, their philosophical, even religious beliefs I might add, it's almost a religion, on other people, to impose those beliefs on other people and to punish them for having beliefs which are contrary to their own. That is simply not on as far as I'm concerned and it has to be opposed. It needs to be defended.
Now, I've spent my entire adult life defending against authoritarianism. I'm nearly 80 years of age and I'm not going to stop now. I've lived my life under a mantra. I've said it any number of times, and it's never been more true than it is today. That is when governments fail us, ordinary people have to become heroes, and that's what this issue is going to take. It's going to take some courage. And somebody like Jillian has shown enormous courage because the people that she works with, that she's been colleagues with for years, most of them agree with her, as do most of the people in the Greend party, I might not agree with me, but they're not going to stand up and say it.
Now, until ordinary people start becoming heroic, these people are going to get away with it. They shouldn't be allowed to. They shouldn't be allowed to. We've got to develop a social movement in this country which is prepared to stand up for freedom of speech and which is prepared to support brave people like Jillian Spencer. Thank you.
