Mr Dutton is seeking damages,including aggravated damages,and costs. He is the second federal Liberal minister to launch defamation proceedings this year,following Christian Porter’s highly-publicised case against the ABC.
In the tweet,Mr Bazzi posted a link to aGuardian Australia article reporting Mr Dutton’s assertion on Sky News in 2019 that some women on Nauru “have claimed that they’ve been raped and came to Australia to seek an abortion because they couldn’t get an abortion on Nauru”. Mr Dutton suggested they were “trying it on” in order to secure a medical transfer to Australia.
Mr Bazzi wrote above the link:“Peter Dutton is a rape apologist.”
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The tweet was published in the wider context of reporting on allegations made by former Liberal staffer Brittany Higgins,who has said she was raped by another former staffer in Parliament House in March 2019.
Greens Senator Larissa Watersissued an apology last month for a February 25 tweet in which she accused the former home affairs minister of being an “inhuman,sexist rape apologist” after he said he hadn’t been “provided with the ‘she said,he said’ details of the allegation” involving Ms Higgins.
“I accept that there was no basis for those allegations and that they were false,” Senator Waters said. “I unreservedly apologise to Minister Dutton for the hurt,distress and damage to his reputation I have caused him.”