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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2001 Week 9 Hansard (21 August) . . Page.. 3097 ..

MR KAINE (continuing):

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, the present law of defamation is filled with complexities that have enriched more lawyers than plaintiffs. The media needs clear guidance about how far they may go without defaming somebody. We each in our daily lives need guidelines about the limits on what we may publicly say about other people. We all need to know what our rights are when we read or hear something that we consider damaging to our reputations.

The principles of the bill have been summarised in the Attorney-General's presentation speech and in the explanatory memorandum, and I do not see any need to take the time of the Assembly to restate what the bill provides. Rather, I think we should be looking at the possible consequences once defamation legislation of the kind that we have in front of us falls into the hands of the lawyers. I wonder how long it will take for the lawyers to begin to dismantle its principles, to use precedents derived from the old laws which this bill replaces as arguments to subvert what this bill sets out to do? Our common law system cannot prevent that from happening.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, each jurisdiction in Australia has its own law relating to defamation. The practice is well established that plaintiffs shop around between jurisdictions to seek the one they hope will give them the best deal, and I find that an obscene proposition.

In a world of instant communication, defamation has become a national issue, not a local one. A plaintiff living in Victoria can apply to a court in this territory to sue a defendant resident in Queensland over a claimed defamation published in South Australia by a media organisation in New South Wales. So it is definitely a national issue. Enactment by this Assembly of another defamation law will do nothing to improve that situation. If any matter needs a uniform Australia-wide approach and a law that applies in the same way throughout the country, then that matter is surely defamation.

The action of the government in introducing this bill has served one useful purpose at least: it has put defamation back on the law-makers' table. It is unfortunate that the solutions proposed in this bill do not provide a model for a future uniform Commonwealth defamation law.

The justice committee, of which I am a member, has identified fatal defects in this bill, and that is why I believe it needs more work. I submit that we should not pass it in its present form. What remains is an area of public law that needs a major overhaul at national level.

Mr Temporary Deputy Speaker, rather than pass this defective bill, this Assembly should resolve to direct the government to have defamation listed on the agenda for the Council of Australian Governments. Let us do something practical. A national approach, of course, might take one of two possible paths. The Commonwealth, in consultation with the states, could pass a single national defamation law. I think that is a bit unlikely.

If the Commonwealth considers that the constitution does not empower it to enact a national defamation law or perhaps the states are unwilling to provide a basis for a national law analogous to the offshore constitutional settlement established by the Fraser government, the state and territory Attorneys-General could develop uniform state

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