DEFAMATION CASE SIGNALS GROWING CRACKDOWN ON ORDINARY CITIZENS

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA» Australia’s defense minister on Wednesday won a defamation case over a sixword tweet that called him a “rape apologist.”

Critics and experts said the court case exemplified the conservative government’s heavy-handed approach toward regulating commentary on social media. The case also represented a shift as politicians bring more lawsuits against ordinary citizens, they said.

The dispute began when Shane Bazzi, an advocate for refugees who has 13,000 Twitter followers, wrote a Twitter post in February about Peter Dutton, then the country’s home affairs minister and now the defense minister.

“Peter Dutton is a rape apologist,” the tweet said, and linked to an article about comments Dutton had made that women seeking asylum in Australia used rape claims as an excuse to enter the country.

The post was published on the same day that Dutton also used the phrase “she said, he said” in reference to explosive accusations by Brittany Higgins, a former government staff member, who said she had been sexually assaulted in Australia’s Parliament House.

Dutton began defamation proceedings soon after, saying that the post had “deeply offended” him and had wrongly suggested he condoned and excused rape. Bazzi’s blue Twitter check mark, Dutton also argued, implied recognition by the social media giant and had led the minister to believe that the post was not just the “rant of somebody randomly on Twitter.”

A spokesperson for Twitter did not respond to an email Wednesday seeking comment.

Justice Richard White ruled in a judgment handed down Wednesday that the tweet had, indeed, been defamatory.

White also rejected Bazzi’s defense that he had expressed his honest opinion, saying that neither the article about Dutton nor the “she said, he said” statement supported the conclusion that Dutton excused rape.

The court ordered Bazzi to pay Dutton about $25,000 damages.

Bazzi said on Twitter that he was “very disappointed” with the ruling and was considering his options. Dutton did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment, nor did Bazzi’s attorney.

The case’s outcome was not unheard-of in a country with notoriously strict defamation laws, but it was unusual that the defendant was not another politician or a high-profile journalist, said Michael Douglas, a senior lecturer in private law at the University of Western Australia.