And, to this point, I STILL haven’t suggested, hinted, or stated, explicitly or implicitly, that Hanson doesn’t deserve the same legal protections as anyone else.

You both wish I had said these things, and are now even attributing (and quoting!) other people’s comments to me!

My comment is at 31, and I did NOT support the previous comment! I said it was “a good point”, as in, “interesting”, or “a different way to look at it, I then when on to explicitly DISAGREE that the point had any validity at all.

So what? Hanson is entitled to the same legal protections as everyone else. Surely you are able to comprehend basic legal principles. How many times must we make this point before it sinks in, Caz?

Correct me if I am wrong, I believe to defame some one you must be proved to have lowered the public perception of someone’s reputation of to have made them an object of ridicule. This is Pauline Hanson for a deities sake. She has made her career spouting the most abhorent, purile, populist rubbish.

Sorry Caz, this is not a good point at all. If it were there would be different sets of legal rights for people based on their political beliefs. The day we do that is the day we kiss goodbye to the rule of law in Australia (or in any other country that tries it on).

Remember when some Aborigines had a go at Nicole Kidman for using a didgeridoo on the grounds that women who use them become sterile? That’s quite possibly stupider than anything that Hanson has said, but if the Aborigines who said it were ever charged with an offence in a court of law, or were plaintiffs in a civil matter, the essence of the rule of law is that their case is assessed on its merits, not the merits they may have as human beings, or what they believe in their spare time.

The paper has now formally apologised, both in an article and in a major editorial. This would have been done after legal advice, and is undertaken in order to mitigate the damage. Unfortunately for the paper, the pics were up for the best part of a week and Hanson can make a pretty strong case that her electoral chances were harmed in what is a very socially conservative seat (I used to teach in Beaudesert). The papers — obviously enough — only reported comments from those electors in Beaudesert who didn’t think publishing the photographs would have any effect on their vote. If those voters constitute the majority in a seat like Beaudesert, I’ll eat my wig.

If the point was to damage her high moral standing, it missed the mark, since Hanson has never claimed to be more ethical or moral than anyone else.

I have no idea what that adds up to in legal terms, but I’m still betting that the paper will settle out of court, so we won’t see any legal boundaries tested, nor any intriguing defence arguments over whether or not anything could possibly damage a woman who is her own worst walking, talking headline.

I am on the public record as being one of the very few – educated – Pauline supporters right from the get-go.

I’m not. But I think she got a raw deal from the media especially RupertCorp. Methinks he doesn’t wanna upset the Chinese.

She has a right to speak her piece and run for office. In fact it’s the best thing. One Nation have one brain cell between them and they always leave it at home.

However, on terra australia, it took me about three days to work out that in fact the whole hate-fest was a white bourgeois-left cult against real working class people. The depth and passion of their fury towards those who could not give a tinker’s cuss about Keating’s Luvvies was a real shock.

The years since have done nothing other than confirm just how truly rancid these self-annointed saints of progressivism are. Thank god, their cultural influence has long turned flaccid.

After all, it was Sparrow and his repellant ilk who have spent so much energy demonising the woman that led to this treatment.