Charlie challenges the Coalition

Charlie Hebdo changes everything and nothing.

The cover of the latest edition of the magazine features a caricature of Muhammad.  That cover has been reproduced thousands of times around the world.  A week ago it would have been unthinkable.

The murder of cartoonists who poked fun at religion demonstrated the threat to our values posed by Islamic fundamentalism in a way that sadly no number of atrocities in Syria, Iraq, or Afghanistan ever could.

In Australia, Charlie Hebdo re-opened the debate about whether there should be laws prohibiting offensive and insulting speech.  It started to dawn on people that the murderers of Paris used terrorism to enforce the censorship of free speech, while in this country censorship of free speech is enforced by law.  Regardless of whether censorship is the outcome of terrorist ideology or the product of well-meaning democratically elected politicians who have a heart-felt desire to promote community harmony, the end result is the same — censorship.

At the same time Charlie Hebdo has changed nothing.  The Labor Party, and Muslim and Jewish community groups continue to defend the existence of section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Actwhich bans offensive speech.

And the Greens are as as sanctimonious as ever.

Greens senator Richard Di Natale claimed "What is really disappointing here is that we are seeing crass opportunism from those people who support changes to the law that would allow individuals to vilify other people on the basis of race, and using a human tragedy to advance their argument."  He's wrong.  What's crass opportunism is Australian politicians talking about the importance of freedom of speech while at the same time supporting legislation which would have much of the material published in Charlie Hebdo declared unlawful.

Something else that hasn't changed is the Abbott government's attitude to freedom of speech.  In August last year the government reneged on its election promise to repeal section 18C.  On Wednesday the PM refused to change his position saying he wouldn't attempt to change the current law because argument over it continued to generate "a lot of division in the community".

Warren Mundine, the former national president of the ALP and now the head of the Coalition's government's Indigenous Advisory Council, said this week changes to section 18C were "dead as a dodo".  "This government doesn't need another thing out there to stir the pot, because they've got enough problems," he said.  "Just look at the polls."

Mundine's half right.  The government does have more than enough problems.  That's obvious from the polls which have the Coalition behind Labor, 46 percent to 54 percent.

But the cause of the Coalition's problems is not because the government is stirring the pot too much.  On the contrary, the government is struggling because it's not stirring the pot enough.  And one the few occasions when it does try to stir the pot, it does so for the wrong reasons.  The government is more than willing to stir the pot to expand middle-class welfare through its Paid Parental Leave scheme.  And if the PM wanted to avoid creating disunity he wouldn't proceed with his plan to enshrine permanent racial division in Australia through indigenous "recognition" in the Constitution.

Coalition MPs, Coalition supporters, and the community are waiting for the government to do something beyond stopping the boats and repealing the carbon and mining taxes.  They're good achievements, but an entire first term in office can't rest on them, and they're not an agenda for a potential second term.

The government says it wants to debate "tax reform".  But if it really wanted to stir the pot on tax the Coalition would declare that the objective of tax reform must be to reduce the tax burden to give people more choice about how they spend their own money.  So far the only stirring of the pot on taxes the government has done is to raise taxes and introduce the deficit levy.  When it comes to industrial relations there's no stirring of the pot whatsoever.

Maybe this year the Coalition will stir the pot to achieve something worthwhile.  It is a pity, though, that one of the things the Coalition won't be achieving in 2015 is the securing of freedom of speech in this country.