Below is the article as published:
Last year the Federal election was the big political news, so does that mean there isn’t anything other political news this year? Absolutely not! The last few weeks have been especially busy in the world of politics so here is your whistle stop tour!
Mark McGowan Resignation:
On 19 May Mark McGowan resigned as Premier of Western Australia. Given he is one of the most popular premiers in Australian history – with his popularity reaching record highs of 91% due to his approach to COVID-19 policies – he was widely tipped to continue in his role until the next election: one he was believed to be almost guaranteed to win. However, McGowan decided to put himself in a position where he resigned on a high, a move that is typically unpopular in the world of politics.
This resignation triggered a process through which the Labor Party had to choose a new leader, due to the fact that their current popularity would be put at risk if the process took too long. Three obvious contenders emerged: Roger Cook (Deputy-Premier), Rita Saffioti (Transport Minister), and Amber-Jade Sanderson (Health Minister). Unlike the Liberal Party, in the Labor party there exists factions, which are mini groups of people with views often strongly aligned . In the Labor party there are generally two large factions: the Left Faction and the Right Faction with views that align with either belief system, although one can also be unaligned.
Both Cook and Sanderson belong to the powerful Left Faction, which means that this faction would have to select a single candidate to support (Saffioti is unaligned and, therefore, considered different for this purpose). Here we saw a splitting of the Left Faction with the United Workers Union backing Sanderson, and the Australian Manufacturing Workers Union (AMWU) backing Cook. However, following the AMWU’s support of Cook, Sanderson pulled out of the race, and Saffioti, who struggled to gather support as a member of neither faction, agreed to be Cook’s Deputy. This means that Cook is now our Premier and Saffioti is our Deputy Premier.
Ben Roberts-Smith VC Defamation Trial:
If someone were to spread an untruth about you, there are numerous actions you could take to attempt to correct the record. One possible course that one might take involves suing the offending party for defamation which means that you can then collect monetary remedies to essentially nullify any damages caused by the false imputation (a legal word for allegation). Of course, that is how it works if the imputations are false. There are multiple arguments against defamation:
The Public Interest Defence: this defence only works for news media, and essentially argues that the imputations are something that the public should know about, even if not completely true.
Honest Opinion: this is your honest opinion that you created from some level of reliable sources (so you didn’t just decide one day that your neighbour is a criminal).
Truth Defence: this appears to be the simplest defence but is actually one of the most complicated. Essentially you argue that your imputation is true on the balance of probabilities. An add on to this defence is contextual truth, where, if you have proven some imputations, then if the extra unproven imputations would not serve to further damage the suing parties reputation, then no damages are required to be paid.
Whilst not an actual defence, it is also possible to argue that you never made the imputations alleged.
(Other forms of defence do exist, however, they are much less common).
Now here we have the case of Ben-Roberts Smith VC – a former SAS soldier accused of multiple war crimes as well as domestic violence. Theses crimes were reported in news articles published by the Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) and The Age. Roberts-Smith alleged that these articles committed various reputational harming imputations (murder of unarmed civilians, “was a war criminal”, “disgraced Australia” etc.) and that these imputations were false.
The Age and SMH, decided to defend the case arguing that these imputations were indeed substantially true (if you are asking why a public interest defence wasn’t launched, simply it was because this method of defence did not exist at the time Roberts-Smith sued The Age and SMH). Following a multi-year legal trial that was non-typical given the amount of former SAS Soldiers who gave evidence at the trial, providing a public insight into some of the goings on behind the SAS, some of this evidence was very damaging, serving to continue to damage Roberts-Smith’s reputation. The initial articles were published in 2017, and Roberts-Smith sued in 2018- meaning this trial has gone on for nearly five years (pending any appeals).
However, it was only on 1 June this year that the decision in the case was handed down. Justice Anthony Besanko found on the balance of probabilities that Smith committed four of the six murders of which he was accused and numerous other incidents. However allegations of domestic violence were found not to be proven but due of the seriousness of the proven allegations the remainder of the imputations had successfully argued contextual truth, meaning the decision was well and truly not in the favour of Roberts-Smith.
A light-hearted approach to government bureaucracy: Utopia
Whilst not a political story of the week, Utopia has returned recently to the ABC. This is a show that highlights government bureaucracy through the made-up Nation Building Authority. This is one of the best comedies present on the ABC, which is making its return after a multi-year hiatus (previous seasons can be found on Netflix), with the new season able to be streamed for free on ABC iView (new episodes Wednesday), or on live TV at 8.00pm each Wednesday.
The latest episodes can be accessed here: https://iview.abc.net.au/show/utopia