New limits on the right to freedom of expression from Hamzy v Commissioner of Corrective Services

Abstract

This article examines a 2020 NSW Supreme Court judgment upholding the legality of English-only rules for communications by ‘extreme high risk restricted’ prison inmates. The article focuses on the reasoning regarding claims to human rights to freedom of expression and from racial discrimination. It explains that the decision provides a rare insight into problematic Australian judicial thinking about language choice in expression, the intersection of racial and linguistic discrimination and the characterisation of English as Australia’s ‘official’ or ‘de facto’ national language.