Defence Minister Peter Dutton on Wednesday.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
Mr Dutton is the second federal Liberal minister to launch defamation proceedings this year,following Christian Porter’s highly-publicised case against the ABC.
Mr Porteris expected to discontinue those proceedings,although this has not yet been done officially.A court fight is continuing over public access to a written defence filed by the national broadcaster in the Porter case earlier this year.
In his 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”. 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.”
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.
At a preliminary hearing of Mr Dutton’s case on Wednesday,Federal Court Justice Richard White said “without meaning any disrespect to anyone ... this would not be amongst the biggest defamation cases that have come before the court”.
“I would have thought that this is a matter that should be able to be settled,” Justice White said,although he added that as a judge he was not aware of any matters going on in the background.