Tim Wilson's appointment to Human Rights Commission has nothing to do with 'rebalancing' 'Wilson is singularly under-credentialled when it comes to what's really going on in the free-speech marketplace.' Chris Berg must be livid. He's the man who's done the heavy lifting on free speech at the Institute of Public Affairs and authored the official text, In Defence of Freedom of Speech (subtitle: From Ancient Greece to Andrew Bolt). Instead, Attorney-General George Brandis appoints Tim Wilson, the institute's policy director, to the Human Rights Commission with particular focus on free speech and everyone's right to hold opinions. Well, here's my opinion. Wilson is singularly under-credentialled when it comes to what's really going on in the free-speech marketplace. His utterances since his appointment was announced show a slender grasp of the issues at stake and his outpourings beforehand are a collection of corporate-inspired outrages about government trying to protect the health and welfare of society. He decries restrictions on cigarette advertising and the plain packaging legislation (a free-speech issue for the tobacco industry), attempted regulations on poker machines, taxes on alcohol, moves to control the intake of fatty and sugary foods, and banning tanning beds. All of this, in Wilson's view, is paternalistic nonsense, along with global warming and the tax on carbon. Let the market rip and allow people to gamble, smoke, drink, get fat and artificially tanned until frizzled. No doubt these views are genuinely and passionately held and, entirely coincidentally, they are held by the corporate sponsors of the Institute of Public Affairs. We don't know for sure, because the institute is so keen on free speech that it won't share with us who is paying the piper, but it seems to run along the lines of a massive cash-for-comment machine. According to his own bio, Wilson, as the institute's policy director, has concentrated on "international trade, health, intellectual property and climate-change policy." Nothing much there about freedom of expression. Hence the early stumbles. He made a bold claim on this page on Thursday that defamation law and protection of reputation were "essentially a property right." This is an exciting, fresh concept and maybe indicates his thinking that what needs to happen with defamation reform is that the right of all companies to sue for their hurt reputation should be restored. Where do we draw the line on language-fuelled abuse? He's all for abolishing the dreaded s.18C of the Racial Discrimination Act (language that offends, insults, humiliates or intimidates), and thinks the line should be drawn at "language that explicitly incites violence and directly threatens another individual's safety." That must be a huge relief to racial and ethnic minorities. I was also struck by a confusion inherent in one of his tweets: "Free speech and a free media are interchangeable and essential for a free society." Are they interchangeable? For me, free speech is an individual interest, but a free media is very much a corporate interest. Individual and corporate interests are not "interchangeable," and it's a massive leap of faith to say they are "essential for a free society." We saw this eliding of quite different interests at the time of the overindulged outrage and misinformation about press standards and how they might best be self-regulated. Media law guru Associate Professor David Rolph pointed out recently the real work to be done on freedom of expression is not with s.18C of the Racial Discrimination Act, but with its defences and with the Defamation Act. Australia's largely uniform defamation acts are an affront to a civilised society, but that has gone largely unremarked by the institute and the new commissioner. Britain has recently overhauled and modernised its libel legislation to such an extent that ours looks like a 19th-century relic. There is a new serious-harm test, a single-publication rule and a new defence for websites that contain defamatory comments from readers. Wilson welcomed the High Court's application of the implied constitutional right of free speech as a way of opening the spigot for corporate and union interests to buy elections in NSW. But there has been silence about the failure of that implied constitutional right to protect the media. Here, we should be debating whether to embrace an overarching public-interest defence for reporters and newspapers trying to defend their articles. Sometimes there is a clash of the public interest with the national interest. For instance, there are those who have criticised the publication of Edward Snowden's leaks as hurtful to the national interest. Yet protectors of the national interest are not necessarily protecting the public interest. Possibly that's why those who have wrapped themselves in the flag of freedom have ignored the spate of court-imposed suppression orders and the failure to adequately protect sources and whistleblowers. I suspect Wilson's appointment to the Human Rights Commission is nothing to do with "rebalancing." It's a two-finger salute from the Abbott government to the commission and its do-gooder agenda.