Freedom of speech can be a very good thing and I will be one of the first to defend it to the death, or at least send it a card when it is diagnosed with lupus.

The very fact free expression is encouraged in this country means not only that the inestimable Julian Morrow is invited to lecture Australia's media after once being described as 'tasteless and completely inappropriate', but also I am able to pen a wildly opinionated variety of paragraphs each week and pass it off as highbrow for the sole reason that it is connected to the ABC and Jonathan Holmes is a colleague.

There is, of course, a limit to exactly how far free speech can go - particularly when the concept itself is not yet legally enforceable by the Australian courts - so as a nation we are wholly diligent about letting people know when we think they've taken a step in the wrong direction. We do this through a variety of methods, such as writing to editors/management, publicly demanding resignation/suspension, and/or lunging at the culprits in public with sharpened knives and blood-curdling screams. Are we really that morally proficient, however, at fitting the correct punishment to its relevant crime?

You might remember a 'free speech'-related incident earlier this year when Age columnist Catherine Deveny's corpse was set alight and floated down the Yarra, intermittently pissed on from a great height (Southgate Footbridge, Hoddle street overpass etc.) by talkback radio hosts and a crowd of bloodthirsty onlookers*. Sure, it was a cheery party and everybody went home with a piece of cake and a sense of warm self-righteousness, but was the reaction truly deserved?

Senator Steve Fielding jumped on board the free speech train when last week he gamely suggested that women of a certain value system (he used the terms 'drug addicts and welfare cheats', though I think we all know he meant 'scum of the earth low-income types who like pushing prams around shopping malls and making nice middle-class men like me feel uncomfortable') would very likely make it their life's work to mock the paid parental leave scheme through wilfully getting pregnant and enjoying a cheeky abortion or 12, the scamps. To be honest, I find pretty much every idiotic bon mot that ejaculates from Steve Fielding's mouth more deeply offensive than anything Catherine Deveny has said ever, though last I checked he hadn't been fired or hounded by Today Tonight reporters or sworn at by Shane Warne. He has been reprimanded by Barnaby Joyce for 'going too far', which is essentially the moral equivalent of being kicked out of an orgy by the Marquis de Sade for spunking on the cat.

Fielding of course has defended his inane, small-minded rantings - 'All I was trying to do was to close that loophole and I think that's more than fair and reasonable' - and outside of a few annoyed columnists politely suggesting that he probably should have kept his thoughts to himself, he's free to go about his business of saving souls and making Tony Abbott look comparatively sane. If I wasn't such a kindly and beatific type I'd suggest Fielding ram a rusty nail up his sanctimonious butthole and rotate, though obviously that sort of crass talk isn't going to help anyone. Fielding has control of the talking stick and is allowed to speak his mind without fear of reprisal, apparently. Remind me again when we're supposed to light our torches?

In the past week we've also seen Andrew Johns refer to Queensland centre Greg Inglis as a 'black c**t', Mal Brown suggest that Indigenous Australians are 'cannibals', and Dimmey's and Forges whipping boy Robert 'Dipper' DiPierdomenico helpfully describe Brownlow medallist Gavin Wanganeen as 'not too bad for an Abo'. Outside of Johns, who has lost two coaching positions and his weekly newspaper column (yet has been kept in employment by the clearly very supportive Channel 9 and Triple M), the fallout has been relatively minimal. Dipper has been suspended 'indefinitely' as an ambassador for the AFL's Auskick program, though I'll bet good money he'll be quietly welcomed back within a matter of months. An unrepentant Brown - who further helped his cause by insisting 'I most probably said that sort of comment 5,000 times in the last five years' - has not only escaped completely unscathed, but cannily used his time in the public eye to make a political statement, suggesting that he also thinks the country is currently being led by a 'dickhead of a Prime Minister'. I'd like to imagine Brown created the cannibal comment as a clever diversion in order to slip a salient political point under the radar, but you'd need more than seven brain cells to do that and at last count Mal was punchin' on four.

We ferociously defend the right of our fellow Australians to 'speak their minds', but we also have the power to express strong disapproval or disappointment when said minds are full of poisonous, hateful detritus. We are far too erratic with this power. We crucify the satirists and turn a blind eye to the sportsmen and the politicians. We rap some over the knuckles with wry chuckles, and camp outside the houses of others screaming abuse and threatening to set fire to their dogs. Our judgement is random. We love hearing what the outspoken have to say, but until we learn how to react in a vaguely sane fashion we probably don't deserve free speech.

* It was something like that. My memory of the time is a little hazy.

Marieke Hardy is a writer and regular panelist on the ABC's First Tuesday Book Club.