Hicks gag affects our liberties

Nor has Hicks been charged with an offence that did not exist when he committed it. The US legislation specifically states that it does not establish new offences but merely codifies existing ones. The US is one country that, more than most, operates under a strict rule of law: if the offence is novel, as the Hicks industry claims, it is an open invitation to a vast army of lawyers ready to have the case thrown out by an ever-vigilant appeals court.

It is not the detention nor the process that is wrong, it is the gag. It is not so much that the gag will serve little purpose and could easily be circumvented. It is that it offends the basic right to freedom of speech that all free men should enjoy.

This is not there just for Hicks's benefit, indeed it is to be hoped that any profit he or his family glean from his crime is allocated first to repaying the taxpayers of this country for the vast sums spent not only on his defence, but also the visits by consular officials and relatives and the funding of an SBS film apparently advancing his cause.

Hicks's freedom to speak is also our freedom to hear. We may learn something of vital public interest. We may also learn a lot of rubbish. But in seeing him, in hearing him, and in reading him, we, and not just the government, Australian or American, will be able to make the judgment we are entitled to make as free citizens as to whether he is still a danger, whether he is genuinely contrite, and whether he was fairly detained.

In any democratic country, freedom of speech is the cornerstone on which other freedoms are based. To the extent that Hicks, when free, is denied that freedom, our freedom too is diminished.