The News International scandal, or ‘Hackgate’, set the Australian public imagination alight this week. For proof, we need only be reminded that every single television network, other than SBS, beamed the appearance of Rupert and James Murdoch before a parliamentary inquiry live into our living rooms late Tuesday night. Other than royal weddings and the 9/11 attack, there are few precedents for this kind…

Two intriguing stories this week have triggered a renewal of the debate about free speech. It was feared Dr Yang Hengjun (known to friends as Henry), a Chinese-Australian crime novelist and prominent blogger on contemporary China, was being held captive by Chinese authorities after disappearing from an airport in Guangzhou. The writer, whom Greens Senator Scott Ludlam described as one of the most influential…