How Australia's new privacy tort lets media off the hook
Australia now has a statutory tort of privacy — but with broad exemptions for journalists, the media is unlikely to ever be caught in its net.
There is one feature of the new statutory tort for serious invasions of privacy that sets it apart from other common law countries: an exemption for the media.
Unless it’s a Naomi Campbell-esque atrocity, the “news rule” means there is next to no chance of any mainstream publisher being held liable for a breach of privacy.
Two of Australia’s leading media and privacy law experts — Emerita Professor Barbara McDonald and Professor David Rolph of the University of Sydney — say this exemption explains the muted response to the new law, which came into effect on 10 June.
“Why would the media want to draw attention to the fact that they will not be subject to liability for serious, wilful and unjustifiable invasions of privacy where the matter concerns ‘news’ or ‘current affairs’?” the pair wrote in an article for the May edition of the Australian Law Journal.
