Free Speech Means Defending Even the Jokes We Find Offensive
The Australian comedy sketch "Please Explain," satirising Anthony Albanese and his government's enthusiasm for internet censorship, makes some legitimate political points. The Albanese government's attempts to regulate online expression, particularly through its social media policies and broader approach to online safety, deserve vigorous scrutiny and ridicule. Political satire has always been one of the weapons available to ordinary citizens against governments that take themselves too seriously. Yet there was one aspect of the sketch that I found distinctly distasteful: its treatment of Senator Jacqui Lambie's publicly disclosed gynaecological condition.
The sketch depicts political figures gathered around a table discussing internet censorship, with Lambie repeatedly suffering from a prolapse. Lambie has publicly discussed her experience of pelvic organ prolapse, a serious condition involving the weakening of the tissues supporting the pelvic organs. It is not merely an embarrassing inconvenience but can be painful, disabling and profoundly disruptive to everyday life. Lambie deserves criticism for her political positions where that criticism is warranted, just as Albanese and his colleagues do. However, turning an intimate medical problem into a recurring comic spectacle strikes me as unnecessarily cruel. There is a substantial difference between exposing political foolishness and making someone's physical suffering the object of ridicule.
Perhaps my reaction is influenced by personal experience. My mother suffered from the same condition, and I know something of the distress it can cause. Consequently, I did not find that particular joke amusing. There are countless legitimate grounds upon which to criticise Jacqui Lambie's political judgments, parliamentary conduct and positions on public policy without resorting to the humiliation of a medical condition that affects many women, particularly following childbirth and with advancing age. Nor should a politician's decision to speak openly about a sensitive health problem become an invitation to turn that disclosure into a weapon against her. Such ridicule may discourage other sufferers from discussing their own experiences or seeking medical assistance.
Nevertheless, and this is the central point, my personal distaste provides no justification whatsoever for censoring the sketch. As an old-school liberal influenced by John Stuart Mill, I regard freedom of expression as a principle that must apply especially to speech we dislike. It is easy to defend the right of comedians to mock politicians when we agree with their targets and enjoy their jokes. The real test comes when the humour is offensive, insensitive or directed at someone for whom we have sympathy. A commitment to free speech that evaporates whenever our personal sensibilities are offended is no commitment to free speech at all.
Mill's On Liberty remains relevant precisely because it rejects the assumption that prevailing opinion, social disapproval or personal offence should determine the boundaries of permissible expression. His defence of liberty was not based upon the proposition that every opinion is intelligent, every criticism fair or every expression morally admirable. Rather, it rested upon the recognition that individuals and institutions are fallible, that intellectual and moral progress depend upon open contestation, and that the coercive suppression of expression threatens the conditions under which truth and error can be distinguished. Mill's harm principle also requires us to distinguish genuine harm from mere offence, although applying that distinction to particular circumstances can be difficult.
There is a further irony here. A comedy sketch criticising politicians for restricting internet expression would undermine its own message if its defenders demanded censorship whenever the satire offended their own political or personal sympathies. The proper response to objectionable humour is not to summon the state, demand criminal penalties or insist that the material disappear from the internet. It is to exercise precisely the freedom that the comedians themselves enjoy: to criticise the joke, explain why it is objectionable and leave others free to reach their own conclusions.
Of course, freedom of expression does not mean that every utterance is beyond moral criticism or that there can never be legitimate legal restrictions upon speech. Threats, targeted harassment and direct incitement raise issues quite different from ordinary political satire. But the mere fact that a joke is vulgar, offensive or hurtful is not sufficient reason to prohibit it. Indeed, once governments acquire broad powers to suppress expression on the basis of subjective offence, those powers can readily be employed against political dissenters, religious critics and unpopular minorities of opinion. Today's supposedly compassionate censorship can become tomorrow's instrument of ideological conformity.
The temptation to censor is particularly dangerous when political authorities themselves are among the principal objects of criticism. Governments naturally prefer a public sphere in which criticism is polite, manageable and compatible with official expectations. Satire, however, has historically flourished by refusing precisely those conventions. It exaggerates, caricatures, insults and occasionally crosses the boundaries of good taste. Some of its products are brilliant; others are crude and unpleasant. But permitting governments to determine which political jokes are sufficiently tasteful to circulate would be far more dangerous than tolerating a considerable amount of offensive humour.
My conclusion, therefore, is deliberately twofold. The "Please Explain" sketch deserves credit insofar as it subjects the Albanese government's approach to internet regulation to comic scrutiny. At the same time, its recurring treatment of Jacqui Lambie's medical condition was, in my judgment, a regrettable lapse into personal cruelty. I did not find it funny, particularly given what my own mother endured. But I would defend the comedians' freedom to publish it, just as I defend my freedom to say that this particular joke went too far in matters of taste.
That is the difference between a principled defence of free speech and the increasingly fashionable demand for freedom only for approved opinions. A free society does not require us to enjoy offensive expression. It requires us to tolerate its existence while retaining the liberty to answer it. We can reject a joke without demanding its suppression, condemn its cruelty without calling for legal punishment, and defend the rights of people whose judgments we consider poor. If freedom of speech means anything, it must include the freedom to offend even those who passionately believe in it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HpXzSx2qOs
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2026/aug/20/jacqui-lambie-prolapse-emotional-speech-female-veterans-cap
