Right to question remains a great privilege

Saudi blogger Raif Badawai was sentenced to 600 lashes and seven years' jail for liking an Arab Christian Facebook page, and there are currently 36 bloggers in Vietnamese jails. China is well-known for its harsh laws regarding speaking out against the government. Lebanese law also forbids the publication of material that "undermines the dignity of the president of the republic," and Venezuelan and Turkish law also criminialises offending their countries' leaders.

It surprised me to discover that Poland has similar laws resulting in up to three years' prison if someone insults the Polish president - or indeed any foreign head of state - while on Polish soil, and Dutch laws also prohibits a person from intentionally insulting the country's monarch with a penalty of up to five years' imprisonment or a fine.

It seems the right to question what is happening and to seek answers is accepted in many countries like ours.

But we forget the privilege that we have in exercising that right.

Recently, I have discussed people's rights to question our government with my social network, specifically with regards to the COVIDSafe app. I have found it curious to see the clear camps that appear along the fracture lines of this issue: one camp seems firmly against the app due to concerns about data security, misuse, function creeping and technological bugs and issues.

The second camp seems to believe that because this is a pandemic, it is time to toe the line, put your head down and do as you are told without question. The chasm of difference between these two positions has left plenty of room for argument.

On the Victorian-NSW border, Wodonga mayor Anna Speedie came forward last week, along with Albury councillor and GP Amanda Cohn to share that they had questions about the app. This seemed to provide plenty of fodder for the debate, largely over the question of whether or not a local government official should be questioning a federal government position, or whether they should be putting their toe to the line and parroting the talking points like they belonged to the party in power for the "greater good" (presumably that means lifting restrictions or perhaps, altruistically, stamping out COVID-19 altogether).

I could possibly understand this position if we hadn't seen the federal health minister launching such a public attack at the Victorian premier for refusing to lift the restrictions, despite there being a sudden rise in positive cases in the state.

Or perhaps, if we didn't see Liberal state parliamentary members like the member for Kew use Twitter as a tool for inflammatory tweets about "Chairman Dan" Andrews for the same reason. The problem with this is that it doesn't model the right way to ask questions - it reduces the level of debate to a schoolyard bust up. You can question policy without name-calling.

If you've read any of my op-eds, you'll know that I have regularly criticised government policy when warranted, regarding social justice issues.

I am not blind to the privilege that I hold in being able to do so. But this is not to be confused with a guileless gratitude for being allowed to speak. This freedom, this right, is an important one, not just for the people, but also for the government.

Through raising questions, through spotlighting damaging policy decisions, we are holding the government to account. Indeed, the recommendations by Department of Health's privacy impact assessment into the COVIDSafe app acknowledged questions regarding the speed with which the government was forced to go to market, the fact that the app's release happened before the legislation was in place to protect the data or the efficacy of its use by health officials and the need for further community consultation to better understand how to safeguard it. The questions being raised by camp one, it seems, were valid.

I'm quietly appreciative of the fact that we live in a society where it's OK to voice dissent, to question, to hold others in power to account.

We shouldn't forget how privileged we are to have the right to raise questions - don't debase this right by resorting to schoolyard bullying.

Zoë Wundenberg is a careers consultant and un/employment advocate at impressability.com.au