Opinion

High Court's Comcare v Banerji ruling blurs the line of acceptable political expression

By Kieran Pender
Updated August 13 2019 - 9:38am, first published August 7 2019 - 5:00pm

Perhaps it should come as no surprise that, on Wednesday, the High Court of Australia confirmed the federal government's power to silence its public servants. Even in the United States, that bastion of free speech with its robust First Amendment, the ability of government employees to engage in political debate is limited. American judge Oliver Wendell Holmes once quipped: "The petitioner may have a constitutional right to talk politics, but he has no constitutional right to be a policeman." That just about sums up the High Court's judgment in Comcare v Banerji.

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