Australia : conflict not competition

This chapter analyses the events around the Australian atheist bus campaign run by the Australian Foundation for Atheists (afa). They are one of Australia’s most well-known atheist groups and are responsible for both this campaign and the Global Atheist Conventions (2010; 2012) that brought many popular New Atheist speakers to Australia. Australia’s ‘secular neutrality’ will be discussed in light of the refusals of free speech by state regulated and owned advertising companies. Adding to this will be Gary Bouma’s (2012) idea that atheists have been experiencing conflict, not fair competition, in Australia. The religiously shy culture of Australia, combined with limited protections for religion/free speech and the ambiguity of Australia’s secularism, has allowed atheists to have their freedom of speech and rights curtailed in the name of secular neutrality.