You Can't Say That!: The Demise of Free Thought in Australia

By Melinda Richards

This book is about freedom and the right to have an opinion. A concept that has been fought over for centuries. Whilst we think of Australia as being a free society, You Can't Say That! challenges this notion, arguing that the freedoms all Australians once enjoyed have been systematically eroded over last few decades, and how, as a nation, we must fight to get them back.

 

Let this book guide you to a place where you ask:

• Who are my masters?
• How much do I desire to fit into the current trend of "progressive" thought and "woke" ideas which are fast becoming societal norms?
• How far am I willing to go to accept the current trends of collectivism, conformity, hypocrisy and cancel culture?

 

The Purpose of You Can't Say That! is to encourage discussion and debate in the current stifling politically correct environment, as well as providing a platform for those fighting to gain back their basic rights for freedom of speech.

 

If you are tired of the opinions of elitist bullies telling you what you must say and think, taking over all debates in the mainstream media and within our institutions, then you can read this book and feel empowered that you in fact CAN say that.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ocean Reeve Publishing
• Release date: Aug 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781922644626

Book preview

Author’s Note

Thanks for picking up my book. I want to make it very clear from the outset that this is an opinion piece and therefore, because it is largely a book against the current ‘woke’ narrative permeating society and the damage it is causing, it will be controversial. That’s the point of writing it. To provide a small voice of balance against those who keep saying, ‘You can’t say that.’

I’m a conservative. In 2022, this is almost a shocking admission. I have been called everything from a fascist to a racist, a wearer of a tinfoil hat, a murderer, a conspiracy theorist, a cooker, selfish, and the list goes on. Most of the attacks levelled at me are when I express conservative opinions in relation to maintaining individual rights and freedoms, bodily autonomy, individual responsibility, and self-determination; treating every person, regardless of race or religion, with a certain amount of respect; and holding people to account for their behaviour regardless of race, religion, or gender. I am also strongly opposed to the sexualization of young children and the mutilation of teenagers in the form of changing their gender before they have the level of emotional maturity to make such life-altering decisions. This last point is particularly galling to many on the left or socialist ‘woke’ side of politics.

Identifying as a ‘conservative’ has always been difficult for me, as my life has been anything but ‘conservative’ in the truest sense of the word based on its original definition. However, it is the collective term to identify those who are now deemed in society as those on the right wing pushing back against a collective ‘woke’ narrative that has infested our institutions, corporations, and governments across the globe. It is a narrative that has gone too far and is pummelling our human rights, our freedom of speech, and our ability to maintain a healthy, respectful, resilient, and tolerant society into the future.

This book is about my experience as a conservative member of society in the twenty-first century. It is merely my opinion, and for the most part, I have tried to illustrate this opinion with as many examples as possible without writing a thousand pages.

Because it is merely my opinion, I feel that in this era of cancel culture, I should say up front: I am entitled to my opinion, and I have given you fair warning, so if you don’t like it, please feel free not to read it.

It is here, in any event, prodding society, along with many other outspoken conservatives, to at least put fear on the shelf for a while and consider for a moment that there are many people out there with other perspectives than the politically correct ones you are forced to digest day after day through the mainstream media and our institutions.

A key subject of this book is the social elites, a growing force of upper-class social commentators and influencers shaping debate, virtue signaling, and shaming anyone who dares disagree. Who knows what the primary motivator is? Perhaps it is merely power and control. They have given birth to ‘wokeism’, which is taking Western society on a path of a new era of cancel culture and censorship as the elites simultaneously spruik their ‘woke’ agenda shutting down anyone who speaks out against it.

You no doubt hear phrases and narratives around ‘diversity’, ‘climate change’, ‘inclusion’, ‘equality’, etc., and you must ‘blindly’ follow these at all costs because they are good and righteous. However, these same elitists never alert you to the negative impacts of woke ideology, which has seen a widening of the gap between a myriad of groups in our society and significant wealth transfer. The Institute of Public Accountants (IPA) has released research that shows the quality of life in Australia has actually declined since 2000. For those on the front line of the economy actually delivering goods and services, this would come as little surprise.

Progressive ideology is all very nice, but if it doesn’t benefit society as a whole and move a country forward economically as well as socially, it is little more than a set of pretty words and policies that have weighed Australia down in social division, massive debt, and a cost-of-living crisis led by high inflation and soaring energy costs.

Once a person deems themselves successful, morally superior, or above the broader intellect of society, it is not up to them to pick a trendy topic and force this onto others to blindly display how virtuous and righteous they are and attempt to shame and abuse you if you disagree. Very often they are wealthy enough to escape their ‘socially just’ causes. You won’t find them living amongst refugees or unable to afford their power bills.

If you do have an alternative view, you are indeed free to express it. You are free to say that ‘wokeism’ is fraught with hypocrisy and double standards, and that perhaps we all need to laugh at ourselves a little more, accept that everyone is different, and learn how to undertake respectful debate rather than screaming into a faceless screen to get your point across every time. Don’t be afraid to open up to the world again and express a view against the ‘woke’ standard. Yes, you may lose some friends in the process, but you will find many more, and the more people who join together to protect our right to freedom of speech, the stronger and more interesting we leave society for future generations.

If you have decided to read my book, I am grateful, flattered, and humbled. For I wrote it just as much for me as I did for you. To help all of us bring some sense of balance back into the world and into Australia—a country that was once the greatest place in the world to live. I hope this book goes some way to show that you are not alone in your daily thoughts and frustrations with the socialist and politically correct path we are heading down. I hope you are inspired to hold on to what little freedom we have left and fearlessly gain back some ground that has been lost so we do not lose forever the freedom to truly express ourselves now and into the future. We owe this at least to future generations, for our freedom, once gained, was never something we had the right to give away.

Foreword

Lawrence Money

Ino longer patronise a local store where I used to purchase my wine. The store bowed to the woke militia of the Offence Industry and stopped stocking a beer branded Colonial, an adjective supposedly evoking past crimes of the original Australian colonisers. This is the same crowd of finger-pointers who have tried to bully Streets into changing the name of its long-established Golden Gaytime icecream, claiming it is offensive to the LBGT-etc. brigade. Amusingly, the fact that the newly woked wine chain is called Blackhearts and Sparrows has been ignored – I guess management had purged their sin (for now) by bending a knee on Colonial. But how long before a new-generation warrior reopens the innings. BLACKhearts? I can hear the screams of racism already.

I had never previously bought Colonial beer but I do now. I still buy the odd Gaytime but see no inherent disrespect to those of different sexual persuasion. Wokeness. It’s an intellectual dysfunction weaponised considerably by social media, a concept that originally promised to give every citizen a voice but instead has been turned into a poison swamp patrolled by a global lynch mob that demonises those whose thoughts and actions do not accord with approved Marxist dictates. The social media platforms amplify these views out of all proportion to the size of the lynch mob but the noise created often scares the corporate world into submission. It’s a mystery to me why all the billionaire owners of the social platforms seem to be left-wing but this was never more apparent than during the Donald Trump presidency. Trump used Twitter as no US President had done before but in the end, while whacko preachers and feminist cranks still rant obscenely in this space, Trump was permanently suspended.

As a newspaper veteran who worked 50 years in the Aussie metros, I was appalled at the way objective reporting went out the window during the Trump era. So many journalists, from Day One, were blatantly intent on destroying this democratically elected leader. The classic example was the sneering report in the Independent newspaper – and re-reported in at least one Australian metro – that Trump’s team was meeting in the dark because they couldn’t find the light switch in the White House meeting room. Such ludicrous rubbish was reported without question yet any positive achievements by Trump on border protection, economy etcetera were ignored. The social media’s anti-Trump wing-nuts were off the chart. Their psychiatric condition was dubbed Trump Derangement Syndrome.

As a leading columnist on the Age during its Fairfax days, I was intrigued when a former co-worker one day exploded with rage on-line after I ran a Facebook post mocking the socialist Victorian premier. How could you have worked at the Age with these views? she marvelled. Apparently the lady believed all staff at a media company had to march in lockstep politically – which sure makes a mockery of one of the golden rules of political correctness -- diversity. Another of my FB posts prompted a patronising comment from another old Fairfax colleague (and golfing buddy): Politics is not your strength. Translation: anything other than left-wing orthodoxy is simply ignorance. I suppose conservatives should be flattered by these eruptions – the more strident the abuse and scorn from the Left, the more you know the target is seen as a serious threat. Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott is a case in point. Leftists assailed him from every angle during his incumbency. He represented everything they loathed – happily married white heterosexual male, intelligent (Rhodes Scholar), a devout Christian, super-fit, devoted father of three charming daughters. Andrew Bolt – a conservative opinionator who throws the fear of god into the socialists – put it nicely: If Tony Abbott found the cure for cancer he’d be criticised for putting doctors out of work.

Fear of being branded with a label is everywhere. Sportspeople are allowed to use major events to virtue-signal by taking a knee’’ or crossing arms or lifting a fist for coloured victims – and organisers are helpless. It would be racist to stop them. Biological men now compete in women’s sport despite the obvious physical advantage – organisers don’t dare object because that would be transphobic. There are now Welcome to country segments at functions at which Australians, born here and whose families may have migrated multiple generations ago, are welcomed to their own homeland by Australians claiming Aboriginal heritage. It is part of the holy process of inclusion which, hypocritically, involves exclusion because it separates the community into demarcated groups. At a meeting of Australia Day organiser’s years ago I once had the temerity to suggest that these public tributes to indigenous elders past and present" could perhaps be paired with a salute to the brave pioneers who founded modern Australia. The suggestion was ignored.

Alongside the hate speech labels are fashionable labels of approval. My golf club now carries a banner on its website – Respectful. Inclusive. Progressive. Not sure how diverse missed out but the banner is a fair summary of today’s touchy-feely world. Often there are calls for safe spaces where tremulous souls can shelter from the possibility of being upset. Add to that the trigger warning, an additional layer of cotton wool to insulate these quailing snowflakes. Uttering the wrong thing – even phrasing the right thing in the wrong manner – can spark a cascade of abuse and shaming. What a sickening sight it is to see a drooling media pack baying at their prey for repentance. Are you going to apologise? Either way, the pack will get its headline but the preference is to report that X refused to apologise because that serves to tarnish X further.

In Liberty Lost, Melinda Richards does a commendable job in untangling the woke web being spun around the western world today. She sounds a warning about the erosion of hard-won freedoms and the perils of losing them. As Joni Mitchell sang in Yellow Taxi, you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone. History teaches us that when liberty’s gone, it’s always a herculean task to get it back.

•Lawrence Money was twice voted columnist of the year by the Melbourne Press Club

Preface

Australia, We Have A Problem

A man who stands for nothing will fall for anything.

—Malcolm X

Before we get started … does this sound like you, too?

Ilove my country, and I feel incredibly grateful to be an Australian, as Australia is a nation that prides itself on its diversity and tolerance. It is a place where I have the freedom to be an individual and I can achieve anything that I set out to do.

But the mood is changing, and there is a growing feeling that ordinary people like me can no longer speak their minds. At the moment, I still feel free, but that very liberty feels under threat, which is why I deplore political correctness, identity politics, and the hypocrisy and intolerance that is served up with them.

So, who am I? I am neither ‘the top end of town’, an ‘ordinary Australian’, nor a ‘battler’. I am an individual who values her freedoms. I am a free thinker; tolerant, but opinionated; accepting, but critical when I need to be. I deplore cultural obsession and professional victimhood. If you are a good person, if you are an interesting person, then I will like you regardless of your colour, race, or gender. I do not like confrontation, but I enjoy a healthy debate, and because I love and value free speech, I will never try to stop you from having an opinion—unless, of course, you are a terrorist who preaches hate. (And the definition in this context of the word ‘hate’ should remain in its narrow form—that of expressing extreme hostility and aversion usually derived from intense fear or anger, extreme dislike or disgust—otherwise it can be used to systematically bully, and therefore should not be thrown around lightly when criticising someone you don’t agree with.)

This is a book about freedom. A concept that has been fought over for centuries. The right to be free has been an accepted and embedded concept in Australian society since Federation in 1901. This book is about how these freedoms—which Australians, prior to 2020, took so much for granted—have been systematically taken away over decades and how, as a nation, we must strive to get them back.

The idea that Australia is now shackled to both our seen and unseen masters inevitably pushes our minds towards our history, to how this modern Australian society started: as a penal colony. The convicts who arrived in Australia were essentially slaves. They were treated no differently from any other slave throughout history. Being predominately white, it puts pay to the notion that Australia is a racist country overall—an attitude I explore in more detail further on. The parallels between how original convicts found themselves imprisoned on an island and had to work towards creating a free, wealthy, and inclusive Western nation lasting generations and today’s stripping of civil rights in our own modern-day prison cannot be underestimated.

Humanity always has people in power trying to fully control the masses. This concept is nothing new, and any history book, modern or ancient, can attest to bloodshed and battles in the name of religion, power, money, and, most of all, freedom. Or at least the idea of it, as people fought for the right to self-determination.

My goal is to take you to a place where you ask the questions ‘Who are my masters?’ and ‘How much do I agree with current societal norms, which are shifting to a place of collectivism and conformity?’ And if you are honest, how much further are you prepared to go towards the final destination, totalitarianism? In twenty-first-century Western culture, the word ‘freedom’ has taken on a different persona. It has become chattel to be traded, chipped away at, and dangled in front of us as a reward for being ‘good’. The steady erosion of our freedom occurs incrementally over decades, barely noticeable on a day-to-day basis as we go about our daily lives.

The hard-won equal opportunity for women, minorities, and our overall right to self-determination is under attack, culminating in the introduction of complete governmental control in 2020. The freedoms we once enjoyed (and realise now that we took for granted) must be regained for future generations.

To understand how we arrived at this point, this book aims to explore the pathway from hypocritical leftist mantras, to indulging social influencers and narcissistic elites, to the newly defined art of virtue signalling, to the power of the new politically correct environment, and to the slow smothering of our freedom of speech. A new form of government and societal control sets us up for the complete erosion of our individual freedoms and basic civil rights. Some call it being ‘progressive’; others call it being ‘woke’. I call it a new wave of thought control. For how much longer are we going to be ‘lucky’?

Despite deliberate attempts to divide us by stoking fears about racism, we know Australia remains one of the world’s most successful multi-cultural societies – to which many people want to migrate, because they can depend on the community bonds of trust behind that success.

—Peter Kerch, Article in The Canberra Times 23/8/20 ‘Beware the sinister dangers of cancel culture’

With its endless blue skies (with a dash of dark, bruising, torrential rain), relaxed lifestyle, and traditions of friendship and tolerance, Australia is an easy place to love.

When Australia was tagged the ‘Lucky Country’ some sixty-odd years ago (probably perfectly out of context), the name stuck and is still used today, albeit less often. The description is very fitting, as Australia is a peaceful Western island nation with abundant natural resources which means it can be completely self-sufficient. This bounty and a fortunate location in the Pacific Ocean have helped Australia become rich and form close bonds with other nations. The vast Australian coastline, where most people live, is one of the country’s greatest assets, but it also makes it potentially vulnerable. As a result, we have an impressive navy and defence forces to protect our relatively small population of 26 million. But there is a lot to protect—and it is certainly worth protecting.

Despite the ongoing debate about Aboriginal reconciliation (more about this issue later), in my opinion, after reading countless descriptions of Australia, Australians were viewed globally as an egalitarian and inclusive society, and one that enjoys shining on the world stage and winning the approval of others. As a small, relatively isolated country geographically, we love it when the rest of the world notices us, and, even better, when they heap praise on us—a bit like a child always striving to win approval from the stronger sibling or older parents.

Our colonial past means that part of our cultural identity will always have a stigma attached to it about the poor cousin when our origin is compared to that of our founding nation, the UK. This is deeply ironic, given the way of life many people suffered in the UK and subsequently left to settle in Australia during the latter half of the eighteenth century and early nineteenth century. Nevertheless, we have been trying to prove ourselves as a nation worthy of praise and attention ever since. As Western settlement goes, we are still young.

However, something is starting to turn in Australian society, and in other Western cultures, and if we do not address it now, future generations of the ‘Lucky Country’ may not be so lucky. Sitting among economic complacency is the shadow of the suppression of freedom of speech and a nation constrained by its own overbearing, almost totalitarian government. Australians have recently emerged from not being able to move freely between state borders, having to carry a vaccination pass. Many are unable to now access basic services or keep their job, were beaten and arrested for protesting to gain basic civil rights and freedoms back, and are being overtly censored if they question anything about the COVID-19 narrative, from health issues in relation to the wearing of masks, vaccinations, or any of the data associated with the virus if it is seen to contradict the mainstream narrative. Doctors who speak out against COVID-19 vaccination are being threatened or having their medical licences revoked. This is the culmination of decades of increasing government controls and legislation and the influence of elitists and institutions on social behaviour and thought patterns, which is the key subject of this book.

There are two streams of thought, or sets of political ideals, that define how we express ourselves and show the world what we believe in. They are broadly described as the ‘left’ and the ‘right’. Anyone reading this book would say that I clearly sit on the centre right, as most people on the left would disagree with almost every idea and point laid out in this book.

Having become two clearly identifiable points of reference in the twentieth century, the opposite ideals and aspirations of the right and the left still permeate all public policy and debate within democratic nations today, and the gap between them seems to get no closer. If anything, the divide is widening again, as time inevitably diminishes our recollections or understanding of the reality of life in Communist or Socialist states. The constant debate on equality never seems too far from the surface.

The Left and Right debate defines a country’s value system and who a person votes for (in a democracy), and this differentiation creates individual identities. There are very clear points of difference between the two sides, but as we emerge into the second decade of the twenty-first century, something disturbing is happening. Instead of the traditional Left and Right positions of ideology, which have always been clearly and openly debated in our mainstream media and among our politicians, we have arrived in a place in which the debate now rages between censorship and freedom of speech, globalism and nationalism, conformity and individuality, and, most importantly, elitist fascism and freedom.

Defining our core values

If you don’t stick to your values when they are being tested, they’re not values: they’re hobbies.

—Jon Stewart

I have a friend who is seventy-seven years old. He is a multi- millionaire, worth (those of us around him estimate) around $30–40 million. He is as traditionally Aussie as they come. Thick accent, honest, friendly, hardworking, and a risk taker. Most importantly, when he sees opportunities, he does not hesitate to take advantage of them. He has built a fortune from nothing and has done it with grace and humility. However, the most extraordinary thing about my friend is that he cannot read or write.

Close your eyes for a moment and imagine the Australia he would have grown up in to become this successful without having the ability to read or write. Now look around at present-day Australia (2022)—and try to convince yourself he could have achieved the same thing.

In the end, it is not about money, politics, or government control—it is about options, opportunity, and dreaming big. If you want to. That is the Australia we once had, and it is not the Australia we live in now.

As humans, we unite ourselves collectively under common threads: laws, hierarchies, beliefs, and a value system that underpins how we decide what is right and what is wrong. Embracing these common beliefs help us to create a society designed to ensure the ultimate happiness and prosperity for our children and future generations.

As we look back into history, we can see that humans are in a perpetual state of continuous improvement (albeit with a few major global destructive phases running concurrently with this ongoing progress in technology, science, art, and governance, much of it borne from the necessity of fighting world wars, overthrowing totalitarian rulers, overcoming religious persecution, and surviving genocide, in which incorrect pathways were trodden and countless were killed). Values are gained from history’s lessons. If we did not have the capacity to look back and review the behaviours and values of our past to determine what we think of as acceptable, then as an animal species we would never have evolved or developed the capacity to care about each other the way we do now. Of course, we tend to be drawn more to people who generally espouse the same values and code of conduct. Others who do not fit neatly into this code are harder to understand, harder to like, and therefore harder to care about. But Australia has done a pretty good job of assimilation. Despite all the rhetoric from the politically correct elites and our national media, we live in one of the most tolerant countries in the world today.

In my opinion, every country, as well as Australia, has a particular set of values. These are ideas we have arrived at collectively over a relatively short period of time and which we have at times struggled to define—but they are important nonetheless. When debates are stifled and opinions hindered due to an overreaching application of political correctness, it goes to the heart of what most Australians believe is an infringement of one of our most defining core values: freedom of speech.

What are Australia’s values? In my view, we need to define the core triggers that join us together and allow us to really connect as a nation. While there will