US ideals of free speech are not required for a functional democracy and misunderstandings about the universality of US laws leads to misunderstandings online and does need to be corrected unfortunately.

IMO Australia desperately needs better protections of political speech but that has been debated for years and some people have the view that political speech is best protected at the ballot box.

Only a small minority of Australians would believe freedom of political speech should be extended to protect sexual abusers.

Australia is not close to being authoritarian. It is a liberal democracy with very fair elections. There is an unhealthy media concentration and our lopsided economy creates an environment where certain industries have too much political influence but that isn't unusual amongst our peers either and something we need to work on.