David Norris (Independent)

They were the ones I remember him giving. Perhaps it was, as I suspected, a malign fantasy as a result of my eating cheese. I made the point at that stage that both of those were dealt with by other laws, for example, those pertaining to conduct likely to provoke a breach of the peace, public disorder or similar. Thus, they are already covered.

In other jurisdictions, of course, blasphemy is much more of a live concept. Quite recently the Pakistani Supreme Court upheld a judgment that only death was the appropriate punishment for blasphemy. The journalist Sayed Pervis Kambaksh received such a sentence last year. He distributed a pamphlet commenting in a critical way on the status of women within Islam. In Sudan a British teacher who was in charge of a school allowed a child to call a teddy bear Mohammed. She got into severe trouble and had to be recused by diplomatic intervention. This is where blasphemy can lead if we are not careful.

Senator Mullen and others raised, at some length and very interestingly, the question of freedom of speech and I wish to talk about it while my secretary is answering her telephone.