You have to ask yourself what is funnier: A mediocre sketch on a national TV show, or the political scandal that this allegedly tasteless satire has triggered? When the Prime Minister deems it necessary to comment on The Chaser and the ABC then demotes its head of arts, you may wonder whether the government or the broadcaster do not have any other problems to contemplate.

Admittedly, most people are not going to find anything funny about a sketch with references to terminally ill children. In fact, many may find this gross, stupid and substandard. However, there is a magic weapon in the hands of TV audiences, and it is called a remote control. It’s very effective, I have tried it myself. In the blink of an eye you can switch channels – or even switch off your TV altogether. Problem solved.

Why do politicians or the ABC bosses not trust us to make our own judgments? Do they seriously believe that they should have a prerogative in setting the moral standards by which the rest of should live? Is it the Prime Minister’s responsibility to determine what is funny and what offensive (apart from saving us from recession and the world from neoliberalism)? If this were the case it would be no laughing matter.

The way a society deals with free speech, especially when this free speech is found offensive by some, reveals a lot about its culture. The famous German-Jewish satirist Kurt Tucholsky once wrote that satire was allowed to do everything. No wonder Tucholsky’s books were among the first the Nazis burned when they came to power. There simply is no room for ridicule in a dictatorship. It doesn’t take much fantasy to imagine where telling a joke about Kim Jong-il’s bad taste in uniforms would take you in North Korea these days.

Liberal societies, on the other hand, should pride themselves in being able to live with satire, black humour and irreverence. Everybody has a right to be made fun of. It shows the strength of a society if it can tolerate this.

What’s the alternative to free speech anyway? Does the Prime Minister think we need him to tell us what we may laugh at? That would definitely not be a fair shake of the sauce bottle, mate.

The ABC will probably introduce new satire health and safety guidelines. ABC managing director Mark Scott said that ‘where staff are concerned about the potential for satirical material to cause harm they should refer the matter to the next level of management’.

Now this is beyond satire, you just couldn’t make it up. Just imagine the script writers for the Hollow Men discussing whether their next programme could offend anyone in government: ‘We better alert the managing director so he can discuss it with Mr Rudd face to face.’

Of course the ABC bosses should be sensitive about the contents of their programmes, but with all due respect this is not how satire works. Satire is bound to offend some people most of the time. Fawlty Towers was a permanent insult to hapless Spanish waiters and rude English hotel owners. The Life of Brian was as provocative to Christians as the Danish Mohammed cartoons to Muslims, so what? If Shakespeare had ensured that no-one was ever offended he couldn’t have written any of his plays. Wasn’t Lady Macbeth an evil example of gender stereotyping? Isn’t Shylock in The Merchant of Venice a crass case of anti-Semitism?

There is a choice we have to make. You can make sure that no offence is ever committed and nobody’s feelings will ever be hurt. Or you can just accept the fact that free speech is bound to make people feel uneasy at times, but society will be richer for the plurality of opinions and the freedom with which they can be expressed.

There is no great value in displaying contempt and claiming the moral high ground. But there is audacity and pride in agreeing with a quote attributed to Voltaire, the great philosopher of the Enlightenment: ‘I disagree with what you have to say but will fight to the death to protect your right to say it.’

An open society does not need a cotton wool culture to ensure that nobody can feel offended. A country in which nobody is ever provoked, no-one ever mocked and nothing ever ridiculed would be the dullest place on earth. It would be even more boring than listening to the Prime Minister’s lectures on public morality.

Dr Oliver Marc Hartwich is a Research Fellow at The Centre for Independent Studies.