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Hello, everyone.

My guest this week is Alan Davison.

Alan is the academic lead at the Governance and Public Affairs Centre at the Australian Catholic University in Sydney.

He is also the President of the Australian Free Speech Union.

Alan and I will be talking about some of the most pressing threats to free speech in Australia and elsewhere.

I hope you enjoy my conversation with Alan Davidson.

...about free speech, which I do want to get to later in this podcast.

I'd like to start by talking about some of the Australian

context. First of all, ACO, which stands for the Australian Intelligence and Security Organization. Is

that correct? The S comes first before the I, but yes, that's right.

The Australian Security and Intelligence Organization have recently declared that

anti-Semitism is the greatest threat currently facing Australia, which is quite extraordinary,

given that ACO is usually concerned with the actions of hostile or potentially hostile foreign nations, like China, for example.

And perhaps partially in response to that, there has recently been a new bill proposed for a new hate speech law that will specifically target

anti-Semitic speech. And the background to this is a number of alarming incidents that have

happened here in Australia, particularly since the 7th of October, the Hamas attacks on Israel,

on the 7th of 2023. the Hamas attacks on Israel on the 7th of

2023. It began with an incident in which a crowd in front of the, on the steps of the

...