HERE WE GO . . . THE EXTENSION OF DEFAMATION LAW TO SOCIAL MEDIA IN AUSTRALIA
Social Media (Anti-Trolling) Bill
A NEW BILL IN AUSTRALIA may affect the operation of this and thousands of other citizen journalist platforms.
Note: some civil law tribunals in Australia have been busy punishing social media commentators who are alleged to have hurt the feelings or damaged the reputations of some but not all complainants.
The punishments, in the form of fines of up to $100,000 but normally $2,500 minimum to $25,000, are ordered by the tribunal to be paid by the respondent (e.g., the citizen journalist) to the complainant (e.g., an LGBT activist) to ostensibly mitigate the complainant's grievance.
The law applied is mostly anti-discrimination law, where the complainant has protected characteristics or attributes such as homosexuality, HIV/AIDS, being a drag queen, or other psychosexual disorders such as claiming to have a gender unrelated to biological sex, and so on & so forth.
However, in the Australian Capital Territory, the legislators have introduced criminal defamation law into the civil law tribunals. This is an onerous move, because that tribunal (ACAT), due to a technicality in the Australian Constutution, has granted itself jurisdiction over all 25 million Australians.
An example such civil law defamation case happened in 2017 where a woman respondent was ordered by the ACT Civil & Administrative Tribunal to pay David Bottrill, a leader of a satanic LGBT cult called Ordo Templi Orientis, $20,000. Her mistake? She posted a PUBLIC YouTube video link on her Facebook page. That'a all! (The actual public link she posted is published in a comment below. Theoretically, the litigious David Bottrill could complain to the same tribunal about the publication of this same public hyperlink and have Hereward Fenton - the owner and operator of this platform - ordered to pay Bottrill $20,000, based on the this case law i.e., this legal precedent.
Summary of the new bill
"Establishes a framework relating to potentially defamatory content posted on social media by: deeming a person who administers or maintains a social media page not to be a publisher of third-party material; deeming a social media service provider to be the publisher of material that is published on their service if it is posted in Australia; creating a conditional defence for social media service providers in defamation proceedings relating to material on their service that is posted in Australia if the provider meets certain conditions; empowering courts to issue end-user information disclosure orders to require providers of social media services to give the applicant relevant contact details and country location data in certain circumstances; requiring social media companies to have a nominated entity incorporated in Australia able to discharge certain key obligations; and enabling the Attorney-General to intervene in defamation proceedings on behalf of the Commonwealth and authorise a grant of legal assistance."
Read more from the Australian Federal government website in the link below.
Here is the link, referred above, that cost Mrs Bailey $20,000 as a result of posting it on her Facebook page.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6L3jx4KbM0
JAIL David Bottrill, Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO, Australia) Part 1
JAIL David Bottrill, ACAT Louise Donohoe, & BuzzfeedNews journalist Lane Sainty (refer Part 2 video). Public Education FREE SPEECH Video, in the Public Domain. The former National Treasurer, now confessed 'Life Member", of the Satanic group, Ordo Templi Orientis (OTO) - Grand Lodge of Australia, Mr David Bottrill, had taken govt action against 6 of us Christians, in the ACT Civil & Administrative Tribunal; Michael Borusiewicz Teresa van Lieshout Amber Pryor Gwen Butler Arthur & Fiona Cristian I was one of 11 administrators in the facebook group, Lukes Army, and Mr Bottrill picked my name out of the list, along with 3 other admins, based on posts made by Mr Borusiewicz. Mr Borusiewicz's 2 year old son Luke, was killed by the Australian govt, & this resulted in the creation of Lukes Army, for Australian parental rights, Bottrill sued a woman doctor, Raina Michaelson (correction; PHD, not a medical doctor), and CSAAP, in 2005, the case was reported by the Herald Sun. Bottrill works …
Teresa van LieshoutThe link below provides the case law that makes a citizen journalist who posts a public domain hyperlink onto their social media platform, responsible for the content of that hyperlink if it contains alleged defamatory imputations.
The case law is under the Australian Capital Territory's Civil Law (Wrongs) Act (2002)
BOTTRILL v BAILEY (Civil Dispute) [2018] ACAT 45 (20 April 2018)
Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII), a joint facility of UTS and UNSW Faculties of Law.
AustLIIAnd here is the historic case law wherein the Australian Capital Territory Civil & Administrative Tribunal gave itself Australia-wide jurisdiction over what can and cannot be said on social media under their Discrimination Act (1991) and Civil Law (Wrongs) Act (2002)
Their Discrimination Act has been amended to protect a person from offence by social media comments in relation to homosexuality etc. and also religious conviction.
David Bottrill, the Australian public face of the secretive Masonic Ordo Templi Orientis cult, was - not surprisingly - the applicant in this legally radical case. It went against the letter and spirit of an earlier New South Wales Supreme Court case that ruled State tribunals do not have inter-State jurisdiction over residents in neighbouring States. Bottrill, the complainant, used the religious conviction amendment in the Discrimination Act to sue Mr Sunol. He claimed Ordo Templi Orientis was a religion and therefore protected from contemptuous comments from Christian believers who called it an LGBT satanic cult.
And the respondent in this milestone case? It was the hapless, bankrupt and unemployed John Christopher Sunol who suffers from acquired brain injury. He could not afford a lawyer to defend himself, let alone mount the kind of arguments that could only be mounted by an expert on Australian constitutional law. The case was joined, on the side of David Bottrill, by none other than the Attorney General of the Australian Capital Territory. The outcome of the dispute was a no-brainer. We see a satanic cult leader backed up by the organs of state versus an interstate brain-damaged ex-taxi driver without legal representation, trying to deal with a complex dispute about constitutional law. It was a cynical game of law perpetrated by the bureaucrats to increase their power. It's the kind of thing Franz Kafka or George Orwell could understand and write about.
The link below provides the case law. You can read it for yourself but, not being acquainted with abstract constitutional jurisprudence, it is probably beyond the comprehension of an ordinary reasonable person.
BOTTRILL v SUNOL & ANOR (Discrimination) [2017] ACAT 81 (9 October 2017)
Australasian Legal Information Institute (AustLII), a joint facility of UTS and UNSW Faculties of Law.
AustLII