A restriction on secondary boycotts is a restriction on free speech

The federal government's proposal to further limit secondary boycotts would be a restriction on freedom of speech, but environmental activists are also wrong to ask for special treatment.

Secondary boycotts are campaigns directed at consumers and suppliers of a company.  They differ from primary boycotts, where an organisation campaigns directly to convince consumers not to buy from the targeted company.  For example, if a group of customers decide they don't like the privacy policies of a particular telecommunications company, they might lobby banks that fund the company to stop providing credit as a way of exerting pressure for change.

Australia's competition laws already restrict secondary boycotts.  Section 45D of the competition and consumer act 2010 is the legal provision used to take activist groups to court, but exemptions apply to campaigns run by environmental and consumer groups.

The rationale for the introduction of this law was to stop militant unions from threatening suppliers of companies with whom they were negotiating.  That's a very real and serious problem, but restricting secondary boycotts doesn't put an end to belligerent unions:  the real disease is the extensive range of legislative privileges given to unions under industrial relations law.  These protections should be removed.  The problem of entrenched unions should be tackled at the source so that businesses can operate on an even playing field.  Not everyone agrees.

Yesterday, parliamentary secretary for agriculture Richard Colbeck said secondary boycott laws should be changed to ensure environmental campaigns were "accurate".  Certainly, the change is needed — but not the kind Colbeck is proposing.  Secondary boycott restrictions should be abandoned wholesale.

There is no doubt that the exemption made available to environmental and consumer organisations is outrageous.  The legislation specifically identifies this category of activist groups for special treatment.  It grants a legally enshrined privilege to particular groups and denies it to others.  It's arbitrary and illiberal.

Freedom of speech is vitally important for a properly functioning economy.  Liberal democracies should never be in the game of clamping down on an individual's freedom to express their values in the choices they make through the market.  Advocating for or against a particular company's practices is an important part of that equation.  This advocacy is at the heart of the intersection of political and economic freedoms.  Secondary boycotts are merely the legitimate extension of this important idea.  And as such, a restriction on secondary boycotts is a restriction on free speech.

One objection raised by industry groups is that some secondary boycotts are based on misleading information and outright lies.  There's no doubt this does happen.  But individual consumers and suppliers can decide for themselves whether a campaign is truthful or not.  And there's no suggestion that companies subjected to dishonest campaigns should sit idly by and watch their brand suffer.

Companies spend a lot of money marketing their products.  In 2012, Australian companies spent well over $10bn on advertising alone.  Some of this ad spend is aimed directly at the competition.  The Duracell and Energizer bunnies have been at it for decades now.

An attempt to convince consumers not to buy a product for reasons of your own market share is just as legitimate as doing so for any other reason.  If a company knows a campaign is based on a lie they can point this out, discredit the organisation running the campaign — even turn a crisis into a success story.

In a case now studied in MBA and PR courses worldwide, PepsiCo turned a crisis around in 1993 after an alleged case of can tampering.  A woman complained that she discovered a syringe in a can of diet Pepsi.  CCTV footage showing the woman who made the original complain inserting the syringe into the can she had just purchased was enough to exonerate the company.  But PepsiCo also went aggressively on the offensive, releasing a series of videos explaining the company's canning process, and using media appearances to reassure consumers about the safety of the product.  Within weeks, sales didn't just recover — they increased.

Proposed changes to restrict secondary boycotts run counter to the Abbott government's stated "freedom agenda".  Restoring freedom of speech is a worthy goal.  But if the government is serious about this agenda it should remove restrictions on boycotts that clamp down on our right to freedom of speech.