("people who are considering voting for One Nation need to realise they are voting for an extremely hateful and dangerous individual…"). A hateful and dangerous individual, axiomatically, is not a fit person to sit in a seat of democracy in this country.
The Primary Tweet took Mr Greenwich's language ("Mark Latham [is] a disgusting human being…") and threw it back at him ("Disgusting? How does that compare…"). In so doing, Mr Latham will have been understood as questioning Mr Greenwich's own fitness for office.
The Primary Tweet was a retort: "if you say I'm disgusting, what about the disgusting sexual activities that you engage in?"
(Citations omitted).
138 The expression "true innuendo" means that an imputation is said to arise in circumstances where the words would have been read in conjunction with certain extrinsic facts. As Mason and Jacobs JJ explained in Mirror Newspapers Ltd v World Hosts Pty Ltd (1979) 141 CLR 632 at 641:
When read in conjunction with extrinsic facts, words may, in the law of defamation, have some special or secondary meaning additional to, or different from, their natural and ordinary meaning. This special or secondary meaning is not one which the words, viewed in isolation, are capable of sustaining. It is one which a reader acquainted with the extrinsic facts will ascribe to the matter complained of by reason of his knowledge of those facts because he will understand the words in the light of those facts.
139 In my view, the second pleaded imputation is not conveyed. Even if the tweet is read in conjunction with the relevant extrinsic facts, it would not occur to the ordinary reasonable person, especially in circumstances where the words are contained in a tweet – which, the cases remind us, are assumed to be read by such a person in an impressionistic way. The process of interpretation sought to be attributed to the ordinary reasonable person by counsel for Mr Greenwich seems to me to be overly elaborate. As Mr Smark submitted, and I agree, the link upon which the true innuendo is sought to be founded is too tangential:
[The second pleaded imputation] goes well beyond the context of the primary tweet, notwithstanding the references we've made to the political context. It may be the case that Mr Greenwich is saying don't vote for Mark Latham. It seems to be what he's saying. But it doesn't follow that when Mr Latham defends himself, he's saying that … Mr Greenwich is unfit to be a politician.
It's probably not irrelevant that the tweet is after the election, but it's not the main point. The main point is that the connexion between the two topics is just tangential. What Mr Latham is saying is how dare you attack me? But that doesn't mean that he's imputing unfitness on the part of Mr Greenwich to serve. He's saying … you shouldn't be making these very strong attacks on me.
IS THE FIRST IMPUTATION IN THE PRIMARY TWEET DEFAMATORY?
140 The leading Australian case on the question of defamatory meaning is Radio 2UE Sydney Pty Ltd v Chesterton (2009) 238 CLR 460.
