Comment on Greens leader threatens legal action against attorney-general over 'defamatory' comments
zero_gravitas@aussie.zone 4 weeks agoShortly after, Mr Dreyfus spoke on the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing where he directed his anger about the issue towards the Greens leader.
“I think that the Greens political party and particularly the leader of the Greens political party have got something to answer for here in the way that they have been encouraging criminal damage of MPs electorate offices, encouraging really riotous behaviour, sometimes violent behaviour, that has been occurring outside electorate offices,” Mr Dreyfus said on the program.
Yeah, that does seem pretty defamatory. Maybe the meaning of ‘encourage’ could be weaseled about by the defence if it does go to court, but “they have been encouraging criminal damage” doesn’t seem very ambiguous. If he’d said ‘they have been encouraging protests resulting in criminal damage’ he might have more of a leg to stand on.
BadlyDrawnRhino@aussie.zone 4 weeks ago
Doubt it’ll go to court, he’ll probably just make a public pseudo-apology and that’ll be that. But if it did go to court, I imagine the defence will argue that by not explicitly condoning, and in some instances fully supporting the protests, they were “encouraging” any criminal damage that may have occurred. I would hope that argument wouldn’t work, but a lot has happened in the last six months that I previously would have hoped would never happen so who knows at this point.