Peter Dutton’s defamation victory over a refugee advocate’s six-word tweet has been overturned on appeal in the Federal Court.
A judge ordered Shane Bazzi in December to pay $35,000 in damages and some of Mr Dutton’s legal costs after using Twitter in February to label the defence minister “a rape apologist”.
But the Full Court of the Federal Court on Tuesday allowed Mr Bazzi’s appeal, set aside the December order and dismissed the proceeding.
Mr Bazzi’s since-deleted post contained a link to a 2019 news article quoting Mr Dutton saying some refugee women on Nauru who complained of rape were “trying it on” in order to come to Australia.
Justice Richard White determined that an “ordinary reasonable reader” would have understood Mr Bazzi to be asserting that Mr Dutton was a person who excused rape, and that the attached link supported that characterisation.
The judge also rejected the defence of honest opinion and fair comment on a matter of public interest. This finding was not challenged.
The appeal was solely on whether the tweet conveyed the imputation that Mr Dutton excuses rape.
The appeal judges found while the tweet was derogatory about Mr Dutton, an “ordinary reasonable reader” would not gain the impression that it conveyed that he excused rape.
In their reasons for the judgment, Justices Steven Rares and Darryl Rangiah said The Guardian material linked to the tweet centred on allegations of rape.
When read with Mr Bazzi’s six words, the reader would conclude that the tweet suggested Mr Dutton was sceptical about the rape claims and in that way was an apologist.
“But that is very different from imputing that he excuses rape itself,” they said.
“It is not sufficient that the tweet was offensive and derogatory.
“Mr Dutton had the onus to establish, on the balance of probabilities, that the reader reasonably would have understood that the tweet conveyed the imputation that he asserted it conveyed. In our opinion, he failed …”
Delivering his reasons separately, Justice Michael Wigney said the tweet when considered as a whole and in context did not convey the impression that Mr Dutton defended the act of rape.
