Michael Byrnes quot­ed in arti­cle Hitler par­o­dy sack­ing sparks new free speech debate” fea­tured in the Aus­tralian Finan­cial Review today. Arti­cle by David Marin-Guzman.

Michael Byrnes quot­ed as say­ing I don’t want in any way to down­play or triv­i­alise how offen­sive it is to com­pare some­one to Hitler or oth­ers involved to Nazi Ger­many,” Mr Byrnes said.

But [the Down­fall meme] is often not nec­es­sar­i­ly equat­ing the par­tic­u­lar peo­ple [it satiris­es] with Hitler or Nazi Ger­many. It’s real­ly lever­ag­ing off the very hys­ter­i­cal, over-the-top reac­tion that is por­trayed in that par­tic­u­lar scene.”

He said it appeared nei­ther the sacked employ­ee nor the com­mis­sion con­sid­ered how this broad­er cul­tur­al con­text might dis­tin­guish the video from oth­er instances where Nazi or Hitler ref­er­ences were involved.

With the rise of social media and memes in employ­ment cas­es, Mr Byrnes said it was more impor­tant than ever that lawyers and the com­mis­sion under­stood cul­tur­al context.

Things that might seem offen­sive to some­one unaware on first blush might be mod­i­fied when they have a deep­er under­stand­ing of the cul­tur­al con­text of how they’re used or deployed.”

Read full arti­cle here.

If you would like to repub­lish this arti­cle, it is gen­er­al­ly approved, but pri­or to doing so please con­tact the Mar­ket­ing team at marketing@​swaab.​com.​au. This arti­cle is not legal advice and the views and com­ments are of a gen­er­al nature only. This arti­cle is not to be relied upon in sub­sti­tu­tion for detailed legal advice.

Publications

The risk of builder insol­ven­cy mid way through a con­struc­tion project is real (and will prob­a­bly be expensive)

Intro­duc­tionThis arti­cle pro­vides guid­ance to those under­tak­ing con­struc­tion works and iden­ti­fies a num­ber of con­tract pro­vi­sions which, if includ­ed in the…

Cross-Com­pa­ny Secu­ri­ty and Liq­uida­tor Chal­lenges: Full Fed­er­al Court Restores Cer­tain­ty in CEG Direct Secu­ri­ties v Coop­er [2025] FCAFC 47

A sig­nif­i­cant deci­sion from the Full Fed­er­al Court has clar­i­fied the lim­its of liq­uida­tors’ pow­ers to unwind cross-com­pa­ny secu­ri­ty grant­ed…

Copy­right and Gen­er­a­tive AI: what Aus­tralia can learn from the Meta and Anthrop­ic Rulings

In 2025, two U.S. court deci­sions, Kadrey v. Meta and Bartz v. Anthrop­ic, have pro­vid­ed the first real judi­cial answers…

In the News

Michael Byrnes is quot­ed in the arti­cle, The reac­tion to Char­lie Kirk’s assas­si­na­tion and its impli­ca­tions for employ­ment law”, pub­lished in Lawyers Week­ly on 26 Sep­tem­ber 2025

Michael Byrnes is quot­ed in the arti­cle, ​“The reac­tion to Char­lie Kirk’s assas­si­na­tion and its impli­ca­tions for employ­ment law”, pub­lished…

Sarah Heuv­el pro­vides insight into get­ting Rent Roll Trans­ac­tions Com­pli­ance Compliant

Sarah Heuv­el in an inter­view with Matthew Cial­lel­la of MC Broking & Advi­so­ry, dis­cuss rent roll trans­ac­tions and the three key…

Michael Byrnes appeared on Mon­ey News with Evan Lucas on 2GB on 8 Sep­tem­ber 2025 to dis­cuss the recent Fed­er­al Court deci­sion relat­ing to salary arrange­ments, set-off claus­es and award compliance

Michael Byrnes appeared on Mon­ey News with Evan Lucas on 2GB on 8 Sep­tem­ber 2025 to dis­cuss the recent Fed­er­al Court…

Sign up for our Newsletter

*Mandatory information