As the UK moves to end sedition laws, the Rudd Government continues to drag its feet on the same issue. Three years after an inquiry, two years after an election pledge, and more than half a year after a firm commitment from the Attorney-General, nothing has happened.

Cartoon from Laughing with Knives collection - by Lindsay [click to enlarge]

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UK to scrap sedition law: when will Rudd Govt deliver on promise?

Sedition laws that can jail people for speaking out against people in power – and which date from the time of the Star Chamber – are to be abolished in Britain.

Which poses the question: why hasn’t the Rudd Government lived up to a 2007 election promise to abolish Australia’s sedition laws? Sedition is one of the most hated and abused laws in the lexicon. Dating from about 500 years ago in England, the offence was designed as a moat around kingship, but in recent centuries it has been abused to silence – and imprison – outspoken critics of governments.

The latest version of Australia’s sedition laws was brewed by that terror Bill double act, then Liberal Prime Minister John Howard and Attorney-General Philip Ruddock, who resurrected the offence from near-death, unused in half a century.

They tacked it on to repressive anti-terror laws in late-2005 when the mood of a fearful country permitted legislative excess. But even in those arch-conservative days, there was such a public outcry that A-G Ruddock promised to hold an inquiry into the laws immediately after Parliament passed them.

In early 2006 he gave the Australian Law Reform Commission three months for a thorough review when normally it would take a minimum of six-to-nine months. The ALRC worked a consultative and analytical miracle, and reported in just five, recommending virtually total abolition of Australia’s most anachronistic laws.

But A-G Ruddock did nothing to get rid of sedition in the 15 months left of his term, which was why the Labor Party promised in the lead-up to the 2007 election that it would abolish sedition on coming to power.

Confirming that promise 12 months later, on 23 December 2008, Attorney-General Robert McClelland said in a media release:

The Government will honour its election commitment to implement the recommendations of the ALRC in July 2006 on federal sedition laws. These include changing the title of the offence from “sedition’ to “urging violence’, clarifying and modernising the elements of the offence, and repealing obsolete and never-used provisions enacted in the 1920s for the proscription of “unlawful associations’.

But still, three years after the ALRC’s report, two years after the Labor Party promise, and more than half a year after its clear confirmation by the Attorney-General, no draft legislation has been forthcoming.

Perhaps the Rudd Government has confused ‘sedentary’ with ‘sedition’.

Meanwhile in the UK, change is coming after a campaign by writers and actors, lawyers and politicians, and civil liberties groups. Lord Bach, the British Justice Minister, has said publicly that the offence of sedition is “outdated” and should be abolished. “Sedition (is an) arcane offence from a bygone era when freedom of expression wasn’t seen as the right it is today,” he said.

– Bill Rowlings, CEO, Civil Liberties Australia, 18 July 09