Do you read anything but RT? If you think Australia is not a free country try living somewhere else. Could I suggest The Russian Federation?

There is no such thing as a free country.
Each country tolerates certain cultural freedoms concomitant with tradition and expediency for as long as it is expedient to do so, when it is no longer expedient "freedom to" is transposed with the need for "freedom from" until a new status quo is established.
Most freedoms are allowed in order to facilitate fear in the general populous, division in the political system and the desire in the people to be oppressed for their own perceived good.
Oppression by common consent has been the accepted tool of the right since the end of WW2, you don't need a totalitarian government if you can persuade the electorate TO demand and vote for laws against their own interests.
"Woke" society is the latest example of this, when every thing you say can be made to seem offensive, the only freedom left to you is the right to remain silent (and even exercising that right is a bit suspect, because who knows what you are NOT saying).

Yes and let's acknowledge that the gutless, principle-less, ideology vacant, and mostly worthless right-wing union dominated Australian Labor Party has done nothing to redress any of this, spinelessly going along with all right wing policies in fear of being wedged by the Right on policies that it doesn't have in the first place. The ALP now stands for nothing, least of all the rights and freedoms of Australians, at home and abroad.