There is something almost comical about the Australian Labor government's growing enthusiasm for regulating speech, satire and political expression. The political class increasingly appears to believe that ordinary Australians cannot be trusted to hear offensive opinions, encounter disturbing jokes or make their own judgments about controversial subjects. Now even Bluey, Australia's beloved cartoon dog, has been drawn into the controversy.
As discussed in the October 31, 2026 episode of Spectator Australia TV, the dispute over Pauline Hanson's satirical cartoons has become another front in the struggle over freedom of expression. Yet there is a deeper question that receives insufficient attention. Suppose the advocates of censorship eventually succeed. Suppose they obtain the politically sanitised, ideologically conformist society they apparently desire. Will they actually enjoy living in the ruins of the civilisation whose freedoms made their own prosperity and political influence possible?
The immediate controversy concerns One Nation's Please Explain animated satire, which has attracted criticism for its depiction of the children's television character Bluey in politically violent situations. The ABC has demanded the removal of cartoons featuring the character, with managing director Hugh Marks suggesting that the unauthorised use of Bluey infringes intellectual property rights. Communications Minister Anika Wells has defended the ABC's concerns, while One Nation representatives have argued that the cartoons constitute legitimate political satire.
There is a genuine legal question here. Bluey is intellectual property owned by Ludo Studio, and Australian copyright law does not provide unlimited freedom to appropriate protected characters. The Copyright Act contains fair-dealing provisions concerning parody and satire, but whether a particular use qualifies depends upon the circumstances. It would therefore be incorrect to assume that every attempt to enforce copyright necessarily amounts to political censorship.
Nevertheless, the political atmosphere surrounding the controversy is revealing. When government ministers and publicly funded broadcasters become involved in condemning political satire, legitimate questions arise about the boundary between protecting intellectual property and discouraging criticism. The legal merits should be determined according to law, not according to whether politicians approve of the humour.
The larger concern is Labor's proposed Digital Duty of Care legislation. As John Humphreys argued in The Spectator Australia on October 29, the legislation passed the House of Representatives but had not yet passed the Senate. It was referred to a Senate committee scheduled to report on November 20. The proposal is presented as a means of protecting young people from online harm, including bullying, exploitation and dangerous material. Such objectives are not inherently objectionable. Parents have legitimate concerns about what children encounter online, and digital platforms should not be exempt from reasonable legal obligations.
The difficulty arises when government protection extends into the regulation of ideas and opinions. The proposed framework has attracted criticism because of its treatment of material considered harmful to young people, including content involving hostile ideas about women and gender equality. Such terminology raises obvious questions. What constitutes a hostile idea? Would criticism of a particular feminist theory qualify? Could a traditional religious understanding of marriage or family life be treated as harmful? Would a satirical attack upon government policy be regarded as unacceptable if it caused emotional distress?
The answers depend upon the final legislative language and its implementation. But the danger of vague categories is that platforms facing substantial financial penalties may suppress lawful material rather than risk regulatory punishment. Censorship need not involve police officers arriving at a newspaper office and confiscating printing presses. It can operate through financial incentives, algorithmic suppression, administrative uncertainty and the quiet disappearance of controversial opinions from public view.
This is the modern form of censorship that deserves particular scrutiny. A government need not explicitly prohibit an unpopular political argument if it can create conditions under which private companies decide that publishing the argument is commercially dangerous. The result may be a system of anticipatory conformity in which speakers silence themselves before any formal prohibition is imposed.
The irony is that the Western civilisation which made Australia's parliamentary democracy possible developed through centuries of argument, religious conflict, philosophical controversy and political dissent. Its achievements were not produced by universal agreement. They emerged from the recognition that human beings are fallible, that governments make mistakes and that no political faction possesses a monopoly upon truth.
John Milton's Areopagitica, published in 1644, remains one of the foundational defences of intellectual liberty. Milton argued against systems of prior licensing that prevented the publication of books without official permission. His position was not identical to modern liberal theories of free expression, but his central insight remains important. Truth is not strengthened by preventing people from encountering error. Intellectual life requires the opportunity to examine, challenge and reject competing claims.
John Stuart Mill developed this argument in On Liberty in 1859. Even an opinion believed to be false may contain some neglected element of truth. Suppressing disagreement deprives society of the opportunity to correct its errors and can transform accepted beliefs into lifeless dogmas. A civilisation that prohibits dissent may preserve the outward appearance of intellectual agreement while destroying the processes through which genuine understanding develops.
The principle applies to conservatives as much as progressives. No political movement should possess the authority to silence its opponents merely because it finds their opinions offensive. A government that suppresses criticism today creates powers that its political enemies may exercise tomorrow. Freedom of expression is therefore not a privilege granted to approved speakers. It is a restraint upon political authority itself.
But consider the more disturbing possibility. What happens if the advocates of censorship achieve a decisive victory, not merely in Australia but throughout the Western world?
Imagine a society in which public debate is increasingly confined to opinions approved by government agencies, major corporations, universities and regulatory authorities. Political satire survives only when its targets are officially acceptable. Journalists learn to avoid subjects that might threaten their careers. Academics abandon controversial research questions. Religious organisations modify their teachings to accommodate changing administrative expectations. Ordinary citizens become cautious about expressing opinions that might damage their employment prospects or digital reputations.
Such a society might initially appear peaceful. Public controversies would diminish because fewer people would dare to express disagreement. Official reports would celebrate declining levels of harmful speech. Politicians could congratulate themselves upon creating a safer and more inclusive public environment.
Yet beneath this appearance of harmony, the intellectual foundations of society would be deteriorating. Problems would remain unresolved because those who understood them would have little incentive to speak. Corruption would become harder to expose. Bad policies would survive because criticism carried personal risks. Institutions would increasingly reward obedience rather than competence.
The process would be particularly destructive in science and scholarship. Scientific knowledge advances through the criticism of existing theories, the identification of anomalies and the willingness to challenge established assumptions. Many ideas now regarded as obvious were once considered mistaken, dangerous or absurd. A society that confuses consensus with truth risks converting science into a system of institutional orthodoxy.
The same applies to literature, art and humour. Satire has traditionally exposed hypocrisy by presenting familiar institutions in unfamiliar and often ridiculous forms. From Aristophanes to Jonathan Swift and George Orwell, the satirical tradition has depended upon the freedom to ridicule authority, convention and human pretension. Remove that freedom and satire becomes little more than officially sanctioned entertainment.
The consequences would extend beyond intellectual life. Economic prosperity also depends upon the ability to identify mistakes and challenge established practices. Businesses need employees who can report problems without fear. Engineers must be able to question unsafe designs. Administrators require accurate information rather than reassuring propaganda. When institutions punish unwelcome truths, they become increasingly vulnerable to catastrophic errors.
Here lies the paradox of the censor's ambition. Those who seek a society free from disturbing opinions may eventually produce a society incapable of recognising disturbing realities.
The history of authoritarian political systems offers numerous warnings. The Soviet Union demonstrated how ideological control could corrupt scientific research, most notoriously through the influence of Trofim Lysenko upon Soviet biology. Political approval displaced scientific evidence, with destructive consequences for agricultural research and intellectual independence. The broader lesson is not that every modern speech regulation leads to totalitarianism. It is that institutional power becomes dangerous when ideological conformity is allowed to override independent criticism.
George Orwell explored this problem in Nineteen Eighty-Four. The ultimate ambition of the totalitarian state was not simply to prevent citizens from expressing forbidden opinions. It was to control the intellectual categories through which they understood reality. Language itself became an instrument of political domination. Once independent thought had been sufficiently weakened, the distinction between truth and official assertion could be made to disappear.
Western democracies seemingly remain far removed from Orwell's fictional dictatorship. Elections continue, opposition parties operate and governments can be criticised. Yet Orwell's warning concerns a tendency rather than merely a particular institutional arrangement. Whenever political authorities seek to regulate the boundaries of acceptable thought, they move towards a principle that is fundamentally hostile to intellectual freedom.
The Australian situation is especially troubling because the country lacks an explicit constitutional guarantee of general freedom of speech comparable to the American First Amendment. The High Court recognises an implied freedom of political communication, but this is a limitation upon legislative and executive power connected to representative government, not an unrestricted individual right to say whatever one wishes. Australians therefore depend heavily upon parliamentary restraint, judicial interpretation and a political culture that values disagreement.
What happens when that culture weakens?
There is an additional irony concerning the political Left. Much of the modern progressive movement presents itself as the historical champion of liberation, emancipation and resistance to oppressive authority. Yet elements of contemporary progressivism have become increasingly comfortable with restrictions upon expression when the opinions concerned are regarded as harmful or reactionary. The language of liberation can thus become the language of administrative control.
This is not an argument that every Labor voter or progressive intellectual supports censorship. Some on the Left remain vigorous defenders of civil liberties. Nor is the conservative movement immune from the temptation to suppress opinions it dislikes. The danger is more general. Political movements that become convinced of their own moral superiority may cease to recognise the legitimacy of disagreement.
And so we return to the central question. Suppose the project succeeds. Suppose political conformity becomes the organising principle of Western public life. Suppose dissent is gradually marginalised, satire domesticated, religious criticism restricted and independent intellectual inquiry subordinated to officially approved social objectives. What exactly will the victors have won?
Will they enjoy living in a society where public institutions are filled with cautious conformists rather than independent thinkers? Will they celebrate universities that produce obedient graduates rather than questioning minds? Will they be satisfied with newspapers that repeat approved narratives, comedians who avoid controversial jokes and artists who fear offending political authorities?
More importantly, will they enjoy the economic and cultural consequences of such a transformation? Western civilisation's material prosperity did not emerge independently of its intellectual freedoms. Commercial enterprise, scientific experimentation, legal accountability and political competition developed within historical conditions that increasingly permitted individuals to challenge inherited authority. These freedoms were never complete, and Western history contains many examples of persecution and repression. Nevertheless, the gradual expansion of intellectual and political liberty was central to the development of modern democratic society.
Destroy those freedoms and the consequences may extend far beyond the immediate satisfaction of silencing political opponents. Innovation may decline, institutions may become more rigid, public trust may deteriorate and the capacity for peaceful reform may weaken. A society unable to correct its mistakes becomes progressively less capable of managing the challenges confronting it.
There is a further possibility that the advocates of censorship rarely consider. Suppressed grievances do not necessarily disappear. They may accumulate beneath the surface, becoming more intense precisely because peaceful expression has been restricted. A political system that prevents citizens from expressing dissatisfaction can eventually discover that it has weakened the very mechanisms through which social conflict might have been resolved.
Freedom of speech is therefore not merely a moral luxury enjoyed by prosperous societies. It is one of the practical conditions of political stability. People who can criticise governments, expose abuses and organise peaceful opposition have alternatives to despair, withdrawal and confrontation.
The ultimate danger is that a political class obsessed with eliminating offensive expression may mistake silence for consent. It may congratulate itself upon achieving social harmony while the foundations of legitimacy steadily erode.
There is a distinctly Christian dimension to this problem. Christianity, at its best, recognises the fallibility of human authority and the obligation of conscience before God. The Christian tradition has itself been implicated in episodes of censorship and persecution, and its history therefore provides warnings as well as ideals. But the principle that temporal power is not absolute remains a powerful restraint upon political arrogance. No government, party or bureaucracy can claim an unlimited right to determine what citizens must believe.
A civilisation that forgets the limitations of political authority risks elevating the state into a substitute for moral and intellectual judgment. The result is not genuine freedom from error, but the institutionalisation of error under the protection of power.
Labor's current approach to online regulation should be judged against these larger principles. Protecting children from exploitation, genuine abuse and dangerous conduct is a legitimate objective. But protecting people from every disturbing opinion is neither achievable nor desirable. The difference between preventing concrete harm and suppressing ideological disagreement must remain clear.
The Bluey controversy may appear trivial when compared with the great struggles over liberty in Western history. After all, it concerns animated political satire involving a cartoon dog. Yet seemingly minor controversies often reveal deeper assumptions about the relationship between government, citizens and permissible expression. If political authorities cannot tolerate ridicule in the form of crude animation, one is entitled to wonder how they will respond to more serious and effective criticism.
The central issue is not whether Pauline Hanson's cartoons are tasteful, clever or persuasive. Many people will find them objectionable. The issue is whether a free society can distinguish between criticism of offensive expression and the use of institutional power to suppress it.
Australia should resist the temptation to replace that distinction with an ever-expanding system of administrative control. Once governments acquire broad powers over public expression, there is little reason to assume that those powers will always be exercised wisely or impartially.
And if the advocates of censorship ultimately succeed, they may discover that victory carries an unexpected price. They may silence their critics only to inherit a society less creative, less prosperous, less intellectually capable and less politically stable than the one they sought to transform.
The ruins of Western civilisation would not necessarily consist of burned buildings and deserted cities. They might instead consist of functioning institutions emptied of independence, universities emptied of intellectual courage, public debate emptied of genuine disagreement and citizens who have forgotten how to think without official permission.
The lights might remain on, the trains might continue running and the politicians might still deliver their carefully prepared speeches. Yet something essential would have disappeared.
Would the censors enjoy living in such a world? Perhaps, for a while, they would celebrate their triumph. But eventually they too would have to live with the consequences of institutions that could no longer tell them uncomfortable truths.
That would be the final irony. In their determination to defeat their political opponents, they might destroy the civilisation upon which their own privileges depend.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2026/10/oh-no-not-bluey-labor-has-started-a-war-against-speech-and-satire-s3-ep-26/