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New South Wales Greens' MP Ian Cohen says he could become bankrupt after being ordered to pay more than $1 million in costs after losing a defamation case in the High Court yesterday.

Property developer Jerry Bennette sued Mr Cohen over comments he made during public meetings on the far north coast in 2001.

Previous court cases heard Mr Cohen defamed Mr Bennette by saying he was a thug and a bully.

Mr Cohen says he while he regrets making the comments, the case shows the difficulties faced by community activists.

"Things get said on the football field, in the pub - how sensitive are we going to be?" he said.

"It's important to recognise that we need a little bit of a buffer otherwise it becomes a situation where anything anyone says can be taken to court.

"I believe that cuts down the ability to actually represent and defend community values and attitudes and stick up for your mates, so there's a lot of downside to this general trend."

On the police warrants... Emerson and Illian were mistakenly identified as members of “International Coroption Word"

Police detectives have named two members of Indonesia Corruption Watch as libel (defamation) suspects. In the process they have unintentionally defamed the entire Police force by getting something as important as the name of ICW wrong -- dreadfully wrong.

Personally, I don't know any Police but as law firm, we work with them quite a bit. The guys that we deal with in Polda are smart, good guys. They certainly know how to spell!

Attorney General Hendarman Supandji has slapped another sanction on the Tangerang prosecutor who charged Prita Mulyasari under the controversial Electronic Information and Transaction Law in a defamation case filed by Omni International Hospital

Too little, too late? The Attorney General has slapped the public prosecutor responsible for the Prita case, Dondy K Soedirman, with a third disciplinary sanction. This time it is a 12-month freeze on his salary and promotion. This might sound lame, but it's actually pretty serious. Prita and the public prosecutors are in the middle of settlement negotiations.

A linguistics expert testified on Thursday that the contents of an e-mail message at the center of Indonesia's controversial internet libel trial could be considered defamatory.

The Prita/Omni case was ridiculous from the outset. It reflects badly on Omni and even worse on the public prosecutors office. Things just got worse, with the public prosecutors calling a linguistics expert (?!) to give evidence as to whether Prita's email was defamatory or not.

Why is this bad? Because defamation is a legal issue. It is a matter of law. A linguistics expert cannot give evidence on a legal issue, any more than I can give advice on a medical issue. Luckily Prita's lawyer was quick off the mark, and in cross-examination the witness admitted that he didn't even know what defamation was. Aduh!

A funny thing happened to my parliamentary evidence…

Aug 27, 2009 FOI in Parliament, Freedom of Information

Readers may recall that on 30th June 2009 I gave evidence to the Committee on Standards in Public Life as part of their inquiry into MPs’ allowances. I gave oral evidence and also submitted an opening statement. I posted this statement on my blog (read it here) and the Committee posted it on their website along with transcripts from the public hearings. The committee’s website states: “The Committee publishes all evidence”.

Well that’s not entirely true. As of yesterday, my submission went missing and I received the following email:

Dear Ms Brooke

Our lawyers have advised us not publish your submission due to the following reason:

“it contains statements about named individuals which are potentially defamatory.”

We are currently seeking their clarification and requesting suitable redaction.

Once we have this, I will forward them to you for your authority, in writing, to the redaction. We will then be able to publish your submission.

Anju Still
Business Manager
Committee on Standards in Public Life

You can read my statement yourself and decide. There’s very little about named politicians and what there is has already been published elsewhere. But more to the point – what sort of public inquiry is it where those giving evidence can’t speak freely and have to worry about being clobbered by the world’s worst libel law? I don’t think the take-down of my statement is necessarily the fault of the Committee and to be fair, lawyers are always risk averse. What is a disgrace is that it should even be a risk to publish evidence given to a committee set up to investigate parliament. There’s also the shameless double standard: That MPs and those giving evidence to MPs are protected from libel by parliamentary privilege, yet those giving evidence to a public inquiry investigating MPs have no such protection. A pretty scandalous state of affairs for a so-called democracy.

It would be very funny indeed if I were to receive a libel writ from an MP for my evidence given to a public inquiry investigating MPs.