Page 15 - Week 01 - Tuesday, 14 February 2006
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I would like to echo the words and sentiments of my colleague in the New South Wales Legislative Assembly, Ms Lee Rhiannon, who put on the record the reservations expressed by Tom Molomby, senior counsel, regarding the provisions of subsection (138) (1). These concerns are echoed in part on page 17 of the ACT Scrutiny of Bills report. Section 138 (1) states:
It is a defence to the publication of defamatory matter if the defendant proves that the matters were contained in—
a public document or a fair copy of a public document; or
a fair summary of, or a fair extract from a public document.
A public document is defined in this bill to include:
any document issued by the government (including a local government) of a country, or by an officer, employee or agency of the government for the information of the public.
The definition of a public document would seem to include a wide range of material, such as press releases, which could be used on occasions in a partisan and damaging way. I urge the government to provides some explanatory material to clarify this matter. This might perhaps take the form of an explanatory note in the bill itself or some explanatory material in the Attorney-General’s reply to the debate on this bill.
On a similar note, at the last federal election we saw in Victoria Liberal Party officials spreading lies about the Greens’ drugs policies to the media and then quoting the media reports in their media releases, that is, quoting the media’s quotations from their media releases in subsequent media releases. Since the electoral commission has chosen not to pursue and punish these political criminals, I fear that we will see similar behaviour in coming elections. It should be put beyond doubt that such behaviour is a serious criminal offence that strikes at the heart of a democratic system. It is intended to prejudice the voters as they go to an election; never mind that what they have been given is misinformation—in fact, untruths.
This bill, or similar bills, should be amended to prevent similar politically motivated attacks being made on individuals. I await with interest the outcome of Mamdouh Habib’s defamation action. Perhaps during the inquiry into my anti-SLAPP bill we can formulate provisions that serve this purpose.
As I said before, these laws do not solve more systemic problems with the laws of free speech and the abuse of these laws by our partisan and politicised mass media. I acknowledge that there are exceptions to this, but on the whole I think that that generalisation does hold. These laws will not necessarily protect an individual who has been defamed from suffering immense personal loss. In a letter to my New South Wales Greens colleague Ian Cohen, the solicitor John Marsden wrote how he went through the experiences of people spitting at him in the streets, throwing bricks at him, putting excreta on his doorstep and other absolutely humiliating, insulting and unfair behaviour. During this time he contemplated suicide. This behaviour was a result of defamation by Channel 7, and his legal fees and personal loss far exceeded any damages that he was awarded in court.
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