Peter Dutton, who is now the Minister for Defence, will almost certainly end up making a substantial financial loss from his defamation “win” against Twitter user Shane Bazzi after the judge in effect ruled Dutton and his lawyers had abused the law. The judge found Dutton should have instituted the proceedings in a lower court where costs are cheaper, and he should have made an offer to settle earlier than four days before the hearing was about to start when a lot of the legal costs had already been spent in preparation for the hearing.
A number of Federal MP’s and State MP’s, which includes Christian Porter, John Barilaro and Peter Dutton, have sued for defamation this year with the strategy backfiring and costing them money. Andrew Laming did have a win against the ABC as they settled the matter but he has also sued Nine Entertainment and they are fighting the claim so it might end up backfiring for him as well.
The Guardian reported (8/12/21):
Peter Dutton will not receive his full legal costs from refugee activist Shane Bazzi, who he successfully sued for defamation, because it would have been more appropriate to pursue the case in a lower court, the federal court has decided.
Justice Richard White on Wednesday agreed with a bid by Bazzi’s lawyers to trim the costs down, ordering him to pay them as if the case had been run in the Queensland Magistrates Court.
In November, the defence minister won his defamation case, with damages of $35,000, over a tweet labelling him a “rape apologist” which the court agreed did convey the defamatory imputation he “excuses rape”. (Click here to read more)
It is hard to tell whether it was incompetence by Peter Dutton’s lawyers and or whether Dutton ignored his lawyer’s advice and he personally made stupid decisions which were always going to be exposed in court by Bazzi’s lawyers. Given Dutton has form on the board for ignoring legal advice when he was Home Affairs Minister, and on one occasion Dutton was threatened with contempt by a Federal Court judge, there has to be a fair chance the poor legal decisions were made by Dutton in an attempt to run up Shane Bazzi’s legal costs.
Peter Dutton won the defamation case on the 24th of November 2021 and I published an article titled “Peter Dutton perjures himself to win a $35,000 defamation payout but refuses to sue regarding numerous allegations of corruption” which starts off:
Peter Dutton, who is the Minister for Defence and has a long history of blatant corrupt conduct, has won a defamation claim over one message published on Twitter which said he was a “rapist apologist” and has been awarded $35,000.
The problem is that Peter Dutton has said worse about QLD Premier Palaszczuk in 2020, accusing her of “siding with and protecting paedophiles and sex offenders”, which was broadcast to tens of thousands, and he has not apologised or retracted the comments. Yet Dutton claimed on the witness stand under oath that he was “offended and distressed by the Tweet” that Shane Bazzi posted calling Dutton a “rapist apologist”. Does Dutton have one rule for himself and one rule for others?
When looking at all the evidence the only conclusion that can be drawn is that Peter Dutton perjured himself. And by his lack of defamation action for more serious allegations, which includes but is not limited to protecting paedophiles, fraud, benefiting from election fraud and lying about why he left the QLD Police Force, Dutton has confirmed those allegations as being true and correct. I’ve made those allegations on this website, and they are well documented and referenced with evidence as per the below quotes and links, and he has never even sent a threatening letter to me and other media have made some of those allegations as well and to my knowledge he has not threatened them either.
What Peter Dutton did was to sue one person, with limited funds, over one tweet as he wanted to keep it narrow because if it expanded to other allegations against Dutton he would be in trouble and have to walk a minefield of allegations which his political career wouldn’t survive. (Click here to read more)
The below video has Peter Dutton making the allegations against QLD Premier Anna Palaszczuk and my commentary on the matter.
The defamation judgment was on the 24th of November with Dutton being awarded $35,825 and the costs hearing was on the 8th of December which resulted in the below court orders.
With Peter Dutton having to pay his own costs and 50% Bazzi’s costs, as per above, for the hearing on the 8th of December then he won’t get much change out the $35,825 he received in damages. And then for Shane Bazzi only having to pay costs for the Federal Court of Australia hearing as if they were heard in the Queensland Magistrates Court, as per above orders, it will see Peter Dutton being out of pocket tens of thousands of dollars for his defamation hearing and as well as looking like a fool of instituting such a frivolous claim in the first place.
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