Terry Sarten: Free speech can be quite expensive

FREE SPEECH: ... sometimes it comes at a high price.

AVERAGE J.Bloggs (AJB): "I have come to get some of that free speech I hear you talking about. Is there some fresh in that I can use straight away?

I don't want one of those 'recorded on a dictaphone pretend it never happened, vaguely sorry if it turns out to be true' type of thing. I'm looking for real Free Speech that is meant to be available in a democracy near you".

Government Official (GO): "I'm afraid you will need a formal Official Information Act request.

"This will need to be sent in, sent out again with lines through everything then set back with a request for the redacted bits to be redacted back into the text before appearing on your desk a few years after the minister involved has left Parliament to go sailing on Auckland harbour."

AJB: "But this is urgent. People are living in cars. Something must be done, surely that is obvious?

GO: "Everything is urgent. The need for me to be somewhere else for one. The need for the minister to save a political career, salary, perks and pension that goes with it.

There is a need to find someone to blame - a minion with no idea of their impending doom."

AJB: "Doom. What doom? I just want to know how many houses in Auckland are owned by MPs - is that too much to ask?"

GO: "The Register of Pecuniary Interests is want you want. It even lists gifts received by MPs - mostly tickets to All Blacks games and prezzies from the liquor industry."

AJB: "So we are still a nation of rugby and beer. Is that why MPs are always clamouring for a pay rise - 'cos they can't afford tickets to All Black games and have to save up like everybody else?"

GO: "Such cynicism. No - MPs get freebies in the hope it might influence policy but all parties like to pretend that it's just a game of two halves.

"Being photographed with the All Blacks is a bonus provided you can stand on a chair so you don't look like a midget beside them."

AJB: "Does that work like freebie speech? Can you help me with that? When a bigot spouts off in an abusive way about others - say refugees, gay men, working women or disabled people, it troubles me to think that this is the cost of our free speech. It seems a very high price for something free."

GO: "Hah but you do get all the benefits of being able to denounce the bigot at no cost to humanity. In some countries politicians like Winston Peters would be accused of bigotry and shot at dawn. Here we just humour him. He's just looking after himself. He loves the attention and the baubles of office."

AJB: "Yes, he is so transparent you can see right through his fearmongering. Speaking of mongering - I still would like some of that Free Speech if the open government is still open to such things."

GO: "Sorry but its all commercially sensitive. Free Speech is being sold to a major international corporation. You may not LIKE them but that's the price of free market economics.

Muffling free speech will cut emissions of actual dialogue and facts but what's the alternative?

AJB: "Alternative Facts I guess."

-Terry Sarten is a writer, social worker and musician who has been described as being extremely cynical by people who don't know him - and people who do. Feedback: tgs@inspire.net.nz