Warning On Provisions Of Defamation Bill

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28766, 11 December 1958, Page 17

Warning On Provisions Of Defamation Bill

(Rec. 8 p.m.) SYDNEY, December 10. Things a man said to his wife about a third person in the privacy of their home could be actionable under the proposed New South Wales Defamation Bill, according to Professor W. L. Morison, who is associate professor of law at the University of Sydney.

The bill is now being debated In the New South Wales Legislative Assembly.

In a lecture to the Workers’ Educational Association, Professor Morison said. “If the law were rigorously applied we would all be in gaol for the things we say about our neighbours.”

Professor Morison said that a plan’s conversation with his wife in the privacy of his own home about an outsider was not subject to the old defamation law. “Under this bill it will be.” he said.

Nobody expected an action to arise from such circumstances. But laws which could operate

harshly if rigorously applied should not be written into the Statute Book. Professor Morison said the spouse-to-spouse defamation provision was one of which particularly oppressive use could be made. “We have become familiar with cases in Nazi Germany when wives denounced their husbands to the authorities for defamatory words spoken about German leaders.” he said. "These cases so shocked the consciences of the Germans themselves that, after the war, at least one such wife was criminally prosecuted.”