New South Wales Premier Chris Minns has once again suggested that freedom of speech is incompatible with multiculturalism.
During a press conference announcing proposed expanded police powers, Minns openly acknowledged Australia’s limits on freedom compared to the United States.
“I completely acknowledge we don’t have the same free speech and inverted commas laws that they had in the United States. They’re different,” Minns said.
“The rules on the safeguards that were put in to stop vilification, humiliation, [and] racist abuse are a direct response to a multicultural community that we built in this country — and the public’s desire to protect it. It is not something that we should automatically assume is free from those kinds of divisive, hate-filled public debates.”
This is not the first time the Premier has linked restrictions on speech to the preservation of multicultural harmony. In March, he made similar remarks that went viral on social media, with many users expressing shock at what they saw as a “quiet part out loud” admission, namely, that multicultural communities are too fragile to withstand unrestricted freedoms.
Minns’ comments suggest Australia’s multicultural model cannot coexist with the traditional Western commitment to free speech.
If multiculturalism is incompatible with free expression, then it is incompatible with democracy itself. A democratic society depends on the unrestricted exchange of ideas—without fear of reprisal or prosecution. Multiculturalism, then, can only be preserved at the cost of freedom, and by extension, democracy. As such, it should be rejected as a harmful ideology.
Australians never voted to trade their liberties for multiculturalism. It was imposed upon them, and now they’re being told that to sustain what they never asked for, they must surrender the freedoms that have underpinned Western civilisation for centuries.
The Premier’s admission should mark the end of Australia’s multicultural experiment. If multiculturalism cannot coexist with free expression, it cannot coexist with democracy—and therefore, it cannot coexist with Australia. Persisting with it amounts to a direct assault on the nation and its people.
The Premier has framed the issue as a choice: Australians must pick between free speech or multiculturalism. We can’t have both. And in their view, the choice has already been made—multiculturalism wins, and free speech must go.
But this false dichotomy ignores the broader consequences. Free speech is not a negotiable privilege—it is the foundation of democratic life. Without it, the democratic process collapses.
What chilling effect will such restrictions have on public discussions about multiculturalism itself, immigration, foreign interference, religious violence, or even moral and biblical issues?
So long as citizens can be punished for “wrong-speak,” ideas cannot be freely debated. Even unenforced laws breed fear, creating an invisible restraint that stifles honest discourse. This isn’t merely an attack on free speech, it’s an attack on democracy.
To regulate speech is to regulate democracy. A state that dictates which ideas may or may not be expressed ceases to be democratic. If multiculturalism survives only through the suppression of free expression, it does so by undermining the very system that allows a pluralistic society to function freely.
In short, sacrificing free speech to preserve multiculturalism is to abandon democracy itself. Without freedom of speech, there is no freedom of thought, no diversity of opinion, and ultimately, no government by the people—for the people—in any meaningful sense.
