MARK Parton is well wide of the mark in his column “Really, George, that’s just not on” (CN, April 3), and I am surprised that a thoughtful commentator should get it so wrong.

Brandis is observing that free peoples in a free country have the right to think anything they please. However, we have both social and legal conventions, a framework if you will, within which the expression of those thoughts can be managed to the agreed expectations of our society.

Thus one can think racist thoughts and even express them privately, but to publicly incite hatred on the basis of those ideas can be dealt with at law.

Brandis is not condoning bigotry, rather he is defending the very platform on which we enjoy the freedoms of this great country. The suggestion that the state should control thoughts and private beliefs is to be decried at every turn.

 Graeme McElligott, Isabella Plains

 Defining a bigot

COLUMNIST Mark Parton attacks Senator George Brandis for saying people have the right to be a bigot, which Parton defines, without giving his source, as “a person who strongly and unfairly dislikes other people, ideas etcetera….a person who hates or refuses to accept the members of a particular group (such as a racial or religious group)” (CN, April 3).

This unsupported definition may suit Parton’s argument but my “Concise Oxford Dictionary” defines bigot as “a person who is prejudiced in their views and intolerant of the opinions of others” and my Webster’s “New Collegiate” says “one obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his own church, party, belief or opinion”.

Very different to Parton’s version. At least allow your opponent’s words their normal accepted meaning if you presume to criticise him.

Hugh Dakin, Griffith

 Permission to think?

WHAT country did I wake up in this morning? North Korea or inside George Orwell’s “1984” perhaps?

In Robert Macklin’s column “Go home, you’re giving us a bad name” (CN, April 10), how can you suggest that it’s a good thing for laws to control what people think?

Australia enjoys a myriad of protections from hate speech and unreasonable things people may say within laws such as defamation, and racial vilification laws already. We have adequate protection for unacceptable behaviour and suggesting that we need laws to control our free thoughts belongs in North Korea, not a free society.

Unless we allow people free thought, the ability to openly challenge, and create new ideas, then everything will be second-hand knowledge, previously approved as “non-offensive”.

In history, someone challenged those who believed in a flat earth and dare I say, some challenge climate change and defend their rights with free speech. Offensive or not, I will not be willing to live in a thought-controlled society where I need permission to think.

 Scott Abela, via email

 A lesson from Gandhi

NO cone of cannabis silence for Mark Parton (“Grow up, legalise the weed”, CN March 20). I have had 30 years’ experience in drug policy including four attendances at national drug conferences. However, let’s put my experience aside, and call on an historical figure who was certainly an adult.

Many years ago I was nearly conned into thinking that legalisation of drugs was the way to go. But then I recalled a story about Gandhi, who was studying law, and one of his university lecturers.

Having been out thought brilliantly several times by Gandhi, the lecturer decided to take revenge at the next test. He said: “Mr Gandhi, if you were walking down the street and found a package, and within it there was a bag of wisdom, and another bag filled with money, which one would you take?”

Without hesitating, Gandhi replied: “The one with the money, of course.” Smiling smugly, the lecturer said: “I, in your place, would have taken the wisdom, don’t you think?”

“Each one takes what one doesn’t have,” responded Gandhi indifferently.

Filled with anger, the lecturer wrote on Gandhi’s exam sheet the word “idiot” and gave it to him. Gandhi sat down. A few minutes later he approached the lecturer and said: “Sir, you have signed the paper, but you did not give me the grade.”

The lesson? Drug legalisation masquerades as a lecture, but is easily countered and out thought.

 Colliss Parrett, Barton