The Full Court — comprising Justices Steven Rares, Darryl Rangiah and Michael Wigney – overturned the decision of now-retired Judge Richard White, who had found that Mr Bazzi had defamed Mr Dutton in a now-deleted tweet in February 2021.

The tweet, which included a link to an article from The Guardian, that quoted Mr Dutton when he alleged that refugee women in Nauru detention centres were using false rape claims as a ploy to get to Australia, labelled Mr Dutton a “rape apologist”.

Following the decision, Lawyers Weekly explored the lessons learned from the appeal.

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Earlier today, the Full Court “stamped orders that finalised the proceedings”, O’Brien Criminal and Civil Solicitors said in a statement.

The matter had been listed to argue whether Mr Dutton should have to pay Mr Bazzi’s legal costs, given that those costs were crowdfunded. However, in the interim, the parties reached a resolution, and as such, no further argument was deemed necessary.

‘A long and tough campaign against a powerful adversary’

Speaking about the outcome, Mr Bazzi said that he is “very relieved” the matter has been resolved.

“Fighting a defamation claim brought by one of the most powerful men in the country has been a harrowing ordeal for me and my family. It has caused me immense distress,” he said.

“I am proud that I fought this case and was vindicated by the Full Court of the Federal Court. Citizens should have the freedom to reasonably criticise politicians without fear of being sued.”

“I am so grateful to the thousands of people who donated to the crowd funders and supported me. I would not have been able to fight this matter without their solidarity,” Mr Bazzi continued.

“All amounts raised went to my legal team, who I am also grateful for. I would also like to thank Senator David Shoebridge, Nina Funnell, Prashan Paramanathan, Chuffed, and Behrouz Boochani for their support, as well as my family and friends.”

O’Brien Criminal and Civil Solicitors added that the proceedings have entailed a “long and tough campaign against a powerful adversary”.

“Shane and his family have shown great courage to defend it as far as they have. It is very welcome news for them and us that the matter is now at an end,” the firm said.

“We accept that there should be some boundaries to things you can say about people, even politicians, but we never for a moment believed that Mr Bazzi had crossed that line and, in the end, neither did the Court.”

Full Court findings

As reported by Lawyers Weekly in May, Bazzi argued, in the earlier proceedings, that he was exercising fair comment and honest opinion, but Judge White determined that the tweet conveyed the defamatory imputation that Mr Dutton “excuses rape”. Mr Bazzi was ordered to pay $35,000 in damages.

On appeal, judges Rares, Rangiah, and Wigney held — in light of the notion that “Twitter involves conversations where participants ordinarily correspond without using carefully chosen expressions”, as O’Brien Criminal and Civil Solicitors noted at the time — that it is the general impression created in the mind of the ordinary reasonable reader that is important, and not the individual dictionary meaning of the words used.

The firm explained that Mr Dutton had attempted to argue that the tweet should be separated into two parts, consisting of the statement from Mr Bazzi and the preview of the link to the article from The Guardian. Mr Dutton had submitted that the statement from Mr Bazzi gave rise to an imputation that he excuses rape.

However, the Full Court concluded that the tweet must be read as a whole.

The judges noted that the words used in the preview of the link to the article from The Guardian “did not convey that Mr Dutton had any view about the crime of rape or about rapists; rather it was focused on his sceptical response to women’s claims of rape” and that “The Guardian material centres on allegations of rape, not the actual commission of it”.

Moreover, the three judges found that Judge White had erred in “downplaying the balance of the significance of the tweet” and that His Honour was “overly influenced by dictionary definitions” of individual words, as opposed to considering the impression created in the mind of the reader by the tweet as a whole.

“A publication either conveys a meaning or it does not. The answer to that question cannot be, like beauty, in the eyes of the beholder,” the Full Court deduced.

“The ordinary reasonable reader would understand that the point that the tweet was conveying was that a ‘rape apologist’ behaves in a way that Mr Dutton had in expressing scepticism about the claims of rape. That is a far cry from conveying the meaning that he excuses the rape itself”.