Australia remains one of the freest countries in the world, according to the latest report from global watchdog Freedom House.
According to the US government-backed NGO, Australia scored 97/100 on its survey of global political rights and civil liberties.
Only seven countries, including Canada (98), Norway, Sweden and Finland (100 — it’s always Scandinavia!) beat us. Australia and New Zealand (also 97) are the freest countries in our region, according to the report, well ahead of neighbours like Indonesia (61), Papua New Guinea (62) and Fiji (60).
The United Kingdom is slightly behind us (94), while the United States, land of the free, is way back on 86.
But for anyone who paid attention to Australian politics in 2019, our rating might seem strangely high. While Australia’s rating dropped from 98 to 97, that decrease is small for a year when the erosion of press freedom became stark, headline news.
Our rosy report card is also inconsistent with other recent studies. Late last year, global civil society monitor CIVICUS downgraded Australia’s civic rating from “open” to “narrowed”. Speaking to Crikey at the time, CIVICUS research officer Joseph Benedict noted the “number of regressive steps” taken by the government.
CIVICUS were particularly concerned with the Australian Federal Police’s (AFP) raids on the ABC, and on News Corp journalist Annika Smethurst, over reporting on national security matters. While those incidents outraged many in the media, who saw an unprecedented assault on press freedom, they were met by a shrug of indifference from the Morrison government.
Meanwhile, we saw the expansion and abuse of police powers in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria. And in Senate estimates this week, the Australian Signals Directorate (ASD) admitted it had been spying on Australians for the past year due to “rare circumstances”.
Ironically, it was Smethurst’s 2018 report that the ASD would soon have powers to spy on Australians which led the AFP to raid her home last year.
So, while political rights and civil liberties in Australia might be strong compared to the worst offenders (China gets a 10, Syria a 0), it’s hard to deny we have plenty of work to do.
Freedom House’s full narrative report for Australia will be available next week.
‘Freedumb House’, eh?
Coupla grabs from its ‘pedia page;
“However, the organization has been criticized for bias in favor of US-backed and/or right-wing regimes (see #criticism). For instance, it labeled both apartheid in South Africa and most military dictatorships in Latin America (e.g. Somoza in Nicaragua, Pinochet in Chile, the Revolutionary Government Junta of El Salvador and all Guatemalan juntas except that of Efraín Ríos Montt) as “partly free”.[32] Alternative, non-partial classifications have produced significantly different results from those of the FH for Latin American countries.[33]….
Members of the organization’s board of directors include Kenneth Adelman, Farooq Kathwari, Azar Nafisi, Mark Palmer, P.J. O’Rourke and Lawrence Lessig,[3] while past board-members have included Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Samuel Huntington, Mara Liasson, Otto Reich, Donald Rumsfeld, Whitney North Seymour, Paul Wolfowitz, Steve Forbes and Bayard Rustin…..”
Nah, thanks all the same………..
The moment I read the headline, I smelled a rat!
Thanks David, you’ve done something the writer of this article failed to do – check the source – and aren’t the right wing members of that source and its bias revealing!
While the author seems to think our high “freedom” rating is curious, and provides a link to the report, there is no explanation of HOW this organisation has concluded we rate highly as a “Freedom” country.
Ask a refugee, an indigenous spokesperson, a victim of wage theft, any of our 1.4Mill unemployed or underemployed, our journalists, Bernard Collaery and witness K who both face gaol terms, Julian Assange and David Hicks, Mohammed Haneef, the ATO whistle blower Robert Boyle who faces 175 years gaol or thereabouts, the Toowoomba parent who won the High Court challenge to place chaplains in our schools, only to have the LNP Govt bypass the High Court ruling and spend $250Mill per year ongoing of taxpayers money on Christian chaplains.
Ask any journalist or academic, who has analysed other countries media, if we are not one of the most monopolised media countries in the world.
I understand from various journalists that our defamation laws are the most restrictive in the world. Well, at least the rich have considerable freedom from being accused of untoward or corrupt actions and behaviour in mainstream media. The wealthy would endorse that we are FREEDOM country.
But ultimately, ask our ex Human Rights Commissioner, Gillian Triggs, who still strongly advocates for a charter of (individual) rights, a Bill of Rights, to be legislated federally. Her book, Speaking Up, chronicles the numerous human rights breaches of our Federal governments.