Not a matter of national importance

Many years ago I met a cop in a Surry Hills pub and he passed me a photograph. There were, as best I recall, thirteen men in the slightly fuzzy black and white image. They were dressed in combat fatigues and holding guns, but the guns were all topped by strangely bulbous attachments. Paintball hoppers. The men, most of them paid-up members of Australian National Action, had been on a ‘training weekend,’ which is another way of saying that a bunch of Nazis—like, actual Nazis—had spent a couple of hours frantically stroking their murder stiffies in the bush, playing at soldiers.

That photograph, which ran in Rolling Stone with a long essay about National Action, cost the magazine $10,000. That was the price they paid to settle a defamation claim from one guy in the photo who wasn’t a paid up member of the country’s premium cosplay society for frustrated superfans of the long-promised Vegemite Reich.

I got away free, being what lawyers call a ‘man of straw’, which is another way of saying that as a broke-arse freelancer I literally wasn’t worth suing. I had no assets to seize, no income to forfeit.

Still, that was some stressful shit, so I’ve felt Shane Bazzi’s pain these last few months as he was pursued through the courts by Peter Dutton, seeking punitive redress for defamation. We discussed this a few weeks ago, but Dutton’s legal hounding of Bazzi, which recalled for me Oscar Wilde’s fox-hunting quip about the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable (or in this case the simply unviable) has finally resolved itself, and not entirely in favour of old Matey Potaty.

Justice White this week kicked Dutton’s demand for full and punishing costs to the kerb. Perhaps, like you and me, Hizzoner was wondering what the punishing fuck this millionaire businessman and Minister for Total War with Heathen China Defence was doing dragging the impecunious Bazzi into a months-long cage fight in the brutally expensive Federal Court, rather than sorting the matter out like gents in the much cheaper Magistrates Court.

Justice White did not answer this rhetorical WTF, of course. Justice White is a legitimate bawcock, with a heart of gold. A lad of life he is, of parents good and fist most valiant.

Of Dutton’s claim that as a Minister of the Crown and very important fellow indeed, it behooved the maximum ‘tater to seek “the vindication of a nationally recognised court”, Justice White remained determinedly unshook, writing:

“It would not be appropriate for the court to exercise their discretion more favourably to Mr Dutton simply because of the important public and national office of which he holds.

All people are equal before the law irrespective of the positions which they hold.

Just because it involves a national figure doesn’t mean it’s a matter of national importance.”

Ouch, Dutts, that’s gotta hurt.

But it’s the meatybite in the middle that’s really worth chewing over.

All people are equal before the law irrespective of the positions which they hold.

Are they, though? Are they really?

Not if Dutton had his way. Back in October, when the First Law Officer and historical rape allegation haver, Christian Porter, suddenly, inexplicably and “I swear m’lord totally fuckin’ unexpectedly” found himself in possession of a magical mystery trust fund filled to pussy’s bow with a large, unspecified amount of the folding stuff, Dutts suggested creating a legal fighting fund for politicians to pursue defamation claims as a “workplace entitlement”.

He probably wasn’t expecting to get shitcanned for costs in his own deffo case at that point—otherwise I guess he’d have legged it back the magistrates court at a doubleplus waddletrot—but it is reasonable to wonder whether having made an example of Bazzi, he was contemplating the delightfully chilling effect on public discourse of having an effectively bottomless moneypit to pay for future legal cases against anyone who dared look sideways at him and his ilk.

After all, Porter’s disastrous legal battles against the ABC, and now Dutton’s own presumably very expensive failure to execute a financial killing stroke against Bazzi, might give other politicians pause for thought before they instructed their lawyers to start sharpening the fillet knives. With the taxpayers picking up the tab for any legal misadventures, however, the incentive to be a little more circumspect in destroying utterly your tiny, loathsome critics would be gone.

Nothing will come of Dutton’s risible suggestion, of course. I’d lay money on the barrelhead that he was just trolling to draw some attention away from the megaton class what-the-fucksplosion of incredulity at Christian Porter’s breathtaking gall.

But the idea that a government would pay for any politician to sue any citizen as a “workplace entitlement” is of a piece with this particular government’s deep physical love of coercively controlling not just ‘the narrative’ but all speech and all thought about everything touching on its incompetence, corruption and generalised shitfuckery.

From Morrison’s refusal to answer any question he deems as coming from the Canberra Bubble, to his proposed laws to ‘unmask’ online trolls and ‘reign in’ social media platforms—one of the only pieces of legislation he rolled his lazy arse off the banana lounge to actually present to Parliament this year—this government only ever really bestirs itself from sloth and perfidy when it is taking something away from someone it hates. Whole institutions, like universities, or meddlesome newts like Bazzi. It took the freedom of thousands of people to seek asylum from their oppressors, turning us all into oppressors as it did. And it would dearly love to remove the ABC entirely from the world, partly to serve the interests of the Murdoch family, but also because it vexes them that they cannot control an institution which they feel as though they’re paying for.

That will to control, that need to oppress, is almost the defining nature of the Morrison era.

As Yassmin Abdel-Magied, who knows a bit about being trolled and defamed, says, “The worst bullies in Australia are not anonymous trolls but those in power who do not wish to be challenged, using every weapon in their arsenal to maintain the status quo.”