A leading defamation judge in Sydney has backed criticisms by legal experts of the Morrison government’s proposed anti-troll laws and suggested they may be a “recipe for disaster”.earlier this month that are said to help ordinary people “unmask” anonymous commenters defaming them online, enabling them to sue those commenters for defamation.
However, the platforms could only delete a comment or identify the anonymous author if the commenter gave their consent. “Are we really the sort of country where we want to be the libel centre of the world?” she said. “Is it attractive that we hear more defamation cases in this country than the UK and the US combined? Is this what we want to be? Why are we so sensitive about our reputations?”
Justice Lee added that “it does concern me that ... the ability to commence a [defamation] proceeding in order to obtain vindication is out of reach to most even relatively wealthy individuals”. Federal Court Justice Richard White appeared to make a similar observation on Wednesday when he said Defence Minister Peter Dutton’s defamation case over a tweet by refugee advocate Shane Bazzi could have been brought in the lower-level Queensland Magistrates Court, where costs would be lower.“Just because [a case] involves a national figure does not mean it is of national importance,” Justice White said.
NSW Supreme Court Justice John Sackar, also a seasoned defamation lawyer, told the CAMLA event that “deeming provisions are very interesting, but they tend to be a little restrictive”.
MWhitbourn These laws are only aimed at the rich definately no use whatsoever to ordinary people.
MWhitbourn It’s not about protecting women; its about protecting the LNP. Luckily they dont have enough time to get it through parliament before they lose government