They also used unfair retention practices to keep customers in the policies when they tried to cancel.” …Freedom Insurance used harmful sales practices to sell funeral, accidental death and life insurance policies… Karen Chester …ASIC believes there are thousands of customers that likely remain entitled to a refund but they haven’t come forward to claim it…ĪSIC Deputy Chair Karen Chester says that Freedom Insurance “…used harmful sales practices to sell funeral, accidental death and life insurance policies to vulnerable customers. Currently, over $102 million has been paid, or assessed as due to be paid, to around 83,600 customers adversely affected by the conduct of Freedom Insurance
In January, I called on Governments to release all people arbitrarily detained, whether for exercising their rights or by contravention of their rights, including journalists and human rights defenders jailed for doing their essential work.Įvery threat to a journalist is a direct attack on freedom of information, opinion and expression – fundamental rights that belong to all of us. As we celebrate its 75 th anniversary this year, my Office will devote the month of May to celebrating critical voices and debate, to ensuring the safety of journalists and to protecting the civic space. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights is our guardrail. With better monitoring of threats against journalists, and better legal and psychological support provided to them when harms occur.Īnd, crucially, with systematic investigation and prosecution of crimes against journalists. With stronger national legislation, that puts human rights first. Restrictions on freedom of expression must be the exception. Under the guise of criminal cyber-libel, anti-terrorism, cybersecurity, and “fake news” laws, more than ever, governments can stifle journalists and conceal inconvenient truths. Journalism is not a crime, yet an artillery of new laws and lawsuits tell a different story. In 2022, 87 journalists were killed, the vast majority with impunity. Women journalists, in particular, often work in fear of violence and harassment. Through defamation, censorship, routine media shutdowns, arbitrary arrest, or direct online and physical attacks on them, their friends and their families. ‘Regardless of frontiers’ – this was the promise of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights when it affirmed our right to freedom of expression and access to information.īut as we mark 30 years of World Press Freedom Day, all around the world, we are seeing the forceful closure of those frontiers and an alarming and aggressive trend towards the shutdown of freedom of speech.Īnd although journalists are some of its most critical conduits - equipping the world with information and facts - we see a new normal where they face mounting threats.Ī new normal of outright silencing of the people who work to inform, expose and hold those in power to account.
Without freedom of expression – a great enabler of all our other rights – there is very little freedom at all. We cannot hold those in power to account.
Without freedom of expression, we cannot challenge injustice, spark change or engage in the debates that make us fundamentally human. Freedom of expression is not just a fundamental human right, it is the lifeblood that nourishes healthy and vibrant societies.
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