This brief discussion is based on our empirical research on the institutional suppression of speech on Palestine in Australia. Read the full report here.

The headlines have been an avalanche for the last two years: Antoinette Lattouf sacked by the ABC, Nick Riemer, John Keane and Randa Abdel-Fattah targeted in the academy, Ren Wyld stripped of a literary award, Khaled Sabsabi dropped from the Venice Biennale.

These cases have dominated the news cycle, serving as public lightning rods for the debate on free speech. Yet, these are more than just culture war skirmishes. They are the visible gears of a mechanism designed to remove friction from the political machinery of war — transforming opposition into a bureaucratic “safety” issue to be managed. Alongside them, we have seen fleeting headlines about “ordinary” Australians caught in the crossfire: teachers called into principal’s offices for wearing a keffiyeh, doctors investigated by the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA) for social media posts, public servants reminded of “Codes of Conduct” after signing petitions.

But while we are well-informed about the battles facing those with platform and profile, and occasionally glimpse the struggles of those who make the news, we remain largely in the dark about the true lay of the land for everyone else.

What is the reality for the suburban teacher, the junior doctor, the public service graduate who never makes the headlines? How deep does the silence go at the systemic, everyday level? This reality is often further obscured by the use of confidentiality clauses imposed on those who are sanctioned, legally binding them to silence and effectively erasing their stories from the public record.

Valuable qualitative reports, such as the Special Envoy to Combat Islamophobia’s Report, the People’s Inquiry into Campus Free Speech on Palestine and APAN’s Anti-Palestinian Racism in Australian Schools Report, have begun to document these experiences. Similarly, there is a raft of reports from overseas — including findings from the CCR and Palestine Legal in the US, the European Legal Support Center in Europe, and civil liberties groups in the UK — which have documented a systemic “Palestine exception” to free speech across Western liberal democracies. Yet, without quantitative data, critics can too easily dismiss such testimonies as anecdotal — framing them as a collection of isolated bad days rather than proof of a failing system.

To better understand the breadth of this phenomenon, we sought to complement this valuable anecdotal evidence with numbers. Academics for Palestine WA, in partnership with Academics for Palestine SA, launched a quantitative and qualitative survey to measure the frequency and perception of silencing amongst a cohort vocal on Palestine. The results are now out in a new report: A Climate of Fear: An Empirical Report on the Suppression of Speech on Palestine in Australia.

Based on data from a survey of 527 respondents across Australia, the findings reveal a systemic, measurable collapse of free expression — a “Palestine exception” that has effectively become a “genocide exception” within Australian democracy.

The chilling effect gap

The primary contribution of this inquiry is quantitative. We asked respondents to rate their freedom to express their views on general political topics versus their freedom to express views on Palestine.

The data reveals a two-stage collapse. While respondents typically feel comfortable expressing political views (average score 5.33/7), this freedom has dipped generally over the last year (4.67) — a general “chilling effect”.

However, regarding Palestine, it collapses further to 3.1. This specific 34 per cent drop from the general baseline is what we identify as the “Palestine exception” — a distinct penalty for this topic relative to respondents’ sense of freedom regarding general political expression in the last 12 months.  

Cumulatively, this results in a massive 42 per cent “freedom deficit” between the respondents’ usual political disposition and their current reality when speaking about Palestine. This confirms that for ordinary Australian workers and students, Palestine is not “just another political issue”; it activates a distinctive set of regulatory mechanisms relative to political discussion more broadly.

Efficient silencing: pre-empting the threat

Critics may dismiss the current climate as “self-censorship” or “cancel culture gone mad”, implying either a lack of courage or a cultural phenomenon rather than a hierarchically enforced lack of freedom. Our data refutes this. The silence we are witnessing is a rational response to a widespread campaign of active institutional suppression, not paranoia.

A staggering 35 per cent of all respondents (180 individuals) reported being “actually silenced in the last 12 months” — meaning they were explicitly told not to speak, disciplined, told not to wear or hold symbols associated with Palestine, or prevented from accessing a platform.

The “fear of direct professional consequences” was the single most-cited driver of this silence (49 per cent of the cohort). When combined with fears of disciplinary measures and legal consequences, 62 per cent of the cohort is framed as the cause of harm — creates an Orwellian dynamic where students and professionals are silenced by the very institutions they believe should be “publicly making statements and calling it out themselves”.

Taken together, this shows that the chilling effect is not driven by social awkwardness, but by a well-founded rational fear of economic and professional reprisal. This widespread punishment creates a panoptic effect — a state where the possibility of surveillance compels individuals to internalise the censorship, policing their own speech to align with institutional norms. While 180 people were punished, a further 207 (40 per cent) reported that they “self-silenced”.

Effectively, institutions do not need to punish everyone; they simply need to make a few visible examples to induce a state of self-regulation across the entire workforce. The public disciplining of one teacher, or the investigation of one doctor, sends a signal that silences a multitude of others.

The geography of silence

This institutional stranglehold is further evidenced by a striking geographic hierarchy found in the data. The suppression of speech is not uniform across the continent; there is a clear sliding scale.

Victoria emerged as the epicentre of suppression, recording the lowest average “freedom score” (2.55 out of 7) and the highest rate of “actual silencing” (63 per cent). New South Wales followed closely behind. In contrast, South Australia was an outlier, recording the highest freedom score (4.09) and the lowest rate of actual silencing.

Crucially, this geographic disparity creates a “control group” that exposes the root cause of the fear. In the most silenced states (Victoria and NSW), the “fear of professional consequences” overwhelmingly dominates. In Victoria, nearly 84 per cent of those self-censoring cited institutional fears (jobs, discipline), compared to only 41 per cent citing social fears.

However, as the “freedom score” rises, that dynamic flips. In South Australia — the “freest” state in our sample (4.09) — the fear of social repercussions (losing friends) actually ranked higher than the fear of professional consequences. This correlation demonstrates that where the silence is deepest, it is being driven from the top down. It is not the fear of a neighbour’s disapproval that is chilling speech in Melbourne and Sydney; it is the fear of the HR department. The silence is mostly systemic, not cultural.

The burden of identity

The burden of this silence is deeply intersectional. Respondents identifying as Palestinian, Arab, or Muslim reported significantly lower feelings of freedom and significantly higher rates of actual silencing. For Palestinians specifically, 62 per cent reported being “actually silenced,” compared to 38 per cent of the general cohort.

For these respondents, the suppression is existential. One respondent noted, “Being Arab means the world inherently views me as political”. A Palestinian public servant whose family was killed in Gaza was told by a colleague, “I guess you are more affected by this because you have a connection there,” a dismissal that frames grief as bias. Another noted that even sharing personal grief is policed: “I was asked… to keep it personal and not political,” as if mourning family in Gaza could be anything else.

This denial of empathy and displacement of grief, especially for those suffering immense personal loss, compounds the psychological harm and constitutes a form of political violence and trauma in itself. For this group, “silence” is a form of active discrimination that denies their right to identify, grieve, or exist publicly without being seen as a threat.

Simultaneously, Jewish respondents supportive of Palestine described a unique “double bind”. They face ostracisation from their own communities while being silenced by non-Jewish managers who invoke a monolithic idea of “Jewish safety” to shut down their speech. The starkest example comes from a Jewish public servant who was disciplined for a poster about Palestine because it might “offend Jewish members of staff.” Their response? “To my knowledge, I am the only Jewish member of staff!”

The real cost

It is important to state clearly: the primary victims of this silencing are not the Australian workers losing their jobs, but the Palestinians in Gaza losing their lives.

Every act of censorship in Australia — every cancelled event, every redacted statement, every silenced worker — serves a function. It removes the friction from the political machinery of war. By treating the discussion of genocide as a “workplace safety issue” or a “political controversy” to be managed, our institutions effectively sanitise the public square. They turn the roar of opposition required to stop a genocide into a polite, manageable whisper.

The story of this report is truly alarming, and yet it is secondary. The main story remains, as it has been for over two years, the destruction of Palestine and its people. The “Palestine exception” matters because it is the mechanism that allows Australian complicity in that destruction to continue undisturbed.

Conclusion

The implications extend far beyond the immediate harm to the individuals silenced. When a democratic society effectively bans discussion on the most significant moral issue of our time — a genocide acknowledged by NGOs, UN experts and deemed plausible by the International Court of Justice — it erodes the foundation of its democracy.

The warning “First they came for …” has never been more relevant. The mechanisms of suppression refined on Palestine — the weaponisation of “safety”, the doxxing-to-HR pipeline, and the pre-emptive banning of symbols — will not stay contained to this issue.

By forcing this conversation into the shadows, our institutions are not keeping us “safe”. They are keeping us quiet. This climate of fear mutes the democratic dissent required to hold our government accountable for its own complicity in international war crimes, including genocide.

If we cannot speak on this, then freedom of speech is no longer a right, but a revocable privilege.

You can read or download the report in full here.