Defamation Amendment Bill 2024 (No 42)

Thursday 29 May 2025

[11.22 a.m.]

Ms ARMITAGE (Launceston) - Mr President, I thank the Acting Leader for bringing the bill forward. I will just make a few brief remarks.

Defamation law is an area of law that, like many others, struggles to keep pace with rapidly evolving technology and the ability for people to make a publication that could be defamatory in nature. At the same time, the evolution of law is slow as it needs to be considered very carefully before it is developed, enacted, and enforced. Consequently, as mentioned by the Acting Leader, defamation law has struggled to keep pace with the emergence and the pervasiveness of digital and online communications. Anyone with a smartphone and a social media account can defame another person. It should be acknowledged that publication simply means the communication of defamatory material to a third party, but the ease of accessibility to social media has expanded the ability for this to occur significantly. You do not need to be a public figure, celebrity, politician or any person of notoriety to be defamed. Any person can be defamed by another. This has the potential to be extremely volatile.

At one time or another, we have all seen defamatory material in our social media feeds. Local community pages, chitchat pages, and other similar groups are ripe for this sort of material to be published, screenshotted and, potentially, shared or kept in perpetuity. No evidence is needed to write a post or comment, or to post a picture and, as we know, some posts or material can go viral within minutes or hours.

It is therefore important that we can at law establish some way of determining who is responsible for material that is published in this manner. A person who has been defamed should have the right to pursue damages if it can be established who is responsible for that material being published and made publicly accessible in the first place.

I note that this bill is the result of an extensive review process undertaken with the objective of maintaining uniformity of defamation law with other Australian jurisdictions and updating laws relating to digital publications.

I further note the impact of the case of Fairfax Media Publications and Others v Voller heard in the High Court, where it was held that several media companies were publishers of comments posted on their public Facebook pages by third‑party users responding to news stories they posted. As the Acting Leader pointed out, this has had significant effect on a number of pages which I have seen, and I am sure many others have as well. Many news outlets, companies, public departments or agencies simply now turn off commenting on some of their posts because they know that, due to the Voller decision, they could be held liable for public comments, even if it was not a comment made by them. The relevant consideration is that they are considered to have published it. This, combined with the bill we have before us, helps to provide certainty in these sorts of circumstances and is a necessary step forward for defamation law in Tasmania.

Additionally, the bill provides a number of technical and substantial reforms, including an exemption from defamation liability where caching and storage is concerned, updates mandatory requirements for an offer to make amends for online publications, provides a specific power to courts to make non‑party orders against digital intermediaries to prevent access to defamatory material online and expands electronic means by which notices can be delivered.

The Acting Leader provided a thorough overview of these reforms, which I will not go over again but believe provide a reasonable, proportionate update to Tasmanian defamation law. I know this is an area of law which is constantly evolving and that further reviews by eminent jurists, lawyers, academics and members of the public will be taking place. For now, this is an excellent place to start, and I indicate my full support for this bill to move into the Committee stage. Thank you.