Dr WOODRUFF (Franklin – Leader of the Greens) – Honourable Speaker, the Greens will be supporting the bill before us today. I thank the Attorney‑General for bringing it on and also the many people who have worked on this legislation before us around the country. As other members have said, this is a collaborative work. It is good to see that there has been, from what I have read, quite a degree of good will and serious intent across all jurisdictions in the Standing Council of Attorneys‑General.
The original defamation bill work that was done was in 2005. When the work was done by the Victorian and New South Wales governments’ justice bodies on the two parts of this bill, Part A and Part B, that work was done in the context of an understanding that we had gone a very long way from 2005 to 2025 when it comes to the rapid changes in the digital environment that we all live and breathe every single day. It was obvious there was a desperate need to update this work.
In so doing, the Greens have always been staunch defenders of people’s right to protect their reputation, to protect their self and personhood from defaming comments made against them, as well as staunch defenders of people’s right to freedom of expression and, essentially, to be able to speak out against the misuse or abuse of power. In that instance, we could see the abuse of power by bosses in workplaces, by organisations exerting power and trying to silence people and have a chilling effect over people speaking out against acts of injustice, acts of harm that are caused to people in social life and in workplaces standing up to protect wild places in defence of future generations, and all the other manners in which people speak out.
It is an important balance to strike carefully because a push too far in either direction would be a gross injustice, not just for individuals but for all of us as a social body in being able to collectively protect ourselves from organisations and individuals behaving badly.
What I see here is a history of people working in Victoria and New South Wales to make some very careful adjustments to defamation law we have in Tasmania and other states, based on the federal model guidelines. They have come up with some responses to the significant developments we now see in the technological and digital environments. These are in response particularly to bodies that hold potentially damaging material that could be considered to be defamatory, but using it in a different way than has been traditionally, historically used. This includes the movement and storage of information we have talked about via caching, cloud storage, through emails or with intermediary bodies who employ and manage search engines. They ought not to be held responsible for information that has been sought by another person when they are just providing what we would all probably agree is an essential service. These are some of the situations that have been attended to in this legislation.
It also clarifies when digital intermediaries, including social media platforms, are liable for defamatory material and when they are not. In that way, it seeks to strike this balance between protecting a person’s individual reputation without unreasonably limiting our freedom of expression online.
It also contains protections for victim/survivors. I would like the Attorney‑General – is the Attorney‑General here? The Attorney‑General has just ducked out. I will save that question.
There are whole range of defences against defamation contained in our Defamation Act 2005, amended substantially in 2021, that provide defences to an allegation of defamation. They are important defences to enable courts to make sure that we are able to strike the balance between protecting people’s reputation and not having a chilling effect on people’s reasonable right to voice concern, outrage, dismay, disgust at matters of injustice, personal abuse or maltreatment.
These defences in our Tasmanian legislation include the defence of contextual truth, of absolute privilege for the publication of public documents, for the fair reporting of proceedings of public concern, for the publication of matters of public interest, for the provision of certain information for scientific or academic peer review, a defence of honest opinion and one of innocent dissemination of materials. Regarding that last one, many of the things that are in the amendment bill before us are about the dissemination of material, but in a new form, in a digital form, in addition to the way the dissemination of material is treated under our existing act, as it stands.
The question I had for the Attorney-General is, since the amendments were made to the Victorian and New South Wales laws following the work that they did on the amendments that we have before us, has there been any comment that you are aware of about deficiencies, the gaps in what we have before us today? As you said before sitting here today, we do not know what the landscape is going to look like digitally in a year’s time, let alone in five years’ time, and it was 20 years since the first defamation act came through this place in Tasmania. It is a long time, but I believe everyone is grappling with what truth means in an artificial intelligence world and who has the responsibility for dealing with AI-generated material. Obviously, the person who generates it is responsible for it, but is consideration being given to the role of artificial intelligence and how that might play into any of the amendments that we have within this bill?
It is not a matter that is relevant to the bill before us today, but I am interested if you would be able to tell us where legal minds are putting their thoughts for the near future on these sorts of issues. I know that there is a huge concern in the community to have an early legislative response to the rapidly changing digital landscape, to make sure that disinformation, false images and the transfer of that of those images is curtailed. What we have before us will make a really big difference and we strongly support the amendments that are here today, but anything else in that landscape I would be interested to hear if the Attorney-General is aware of anything.
Thank you and thank your staff, Attorney-General for the work they have done on this. We will be looking forward to having more clarity in this space than we have had before.
