Click here to listen to the TC Beirne School of Law's very own Professor James Allen as a guest host on Radio National examining the topic of free speech.

There are separate episodes on free speech in the UK, Australia and Canada.

Here's how the late Christopher Hitchens summarised the topic:

It's not just the right of the person who speaks to be heard, it is the right of everyone in the audience to listen, and to hear. And every time you silence someone you make yourself a prisoner of your own action because you deny yourself the right to hear something. In other words, your own right to hear and be exposed is as much involved in all these cases as is the right of the other to voice his or her view.