After 18 months of consultation, it is widely expected that today’s meeting of the Council of Attorneys-General (CAG) will reach agreement on a proposed national reform of Australia’s defamation laws.

NSW Attorney General, Mark Speakman SC, who has led the reform process, will today ask his state and territory counterparts to agree to the Draft Amendments to the Model Defamation Provisions.

While responsibility for defamation law falls to individual states and territories, Mr Speakman has pushed for a national approach to reform that will “build a defamation regime fit for purpose and fit for our times”.

In an Opinion Editorial he penned for this month’s issue of the LSJ, Mr Speakman said he hopes the reforms will “bring spiralling defamation payouts under control, unclog the courts from trivial cases, encourage plaintiffs to resolve cases without resorting to costly and stressful litigation, and start the limitation clock at the first publication of a matter, rather than the potentially indefinite last click on a story.”

The Law Society made a lengthy submission on the Draft Amendments and, if all goes well at today’s CAG meeting, the Society is looking forward to working with our state’s Attorney General to implement the reforms here in NSW.

On another issue, it is important that we acknowledge the dedication and commitment of members of the profession who make significant and personal contributions to the betterment of law and justice in our community.  The Law Society does this each year when it awards the President’s Medal to a NSW solicitor who has demonstrated achievements in one or more of the following areas:

• improvement in community access to justice
• improvement in NSW or national legal policy or legislation which delivers significant benefits to the NSW community
• significant service or support to NSW solicitors
• promotion or defence of the rule of law
• improvements in the administration of justice in NSW.

Nominations for the 2020 President’s Medal will be opening this Friday 31 July. NSW solicitors can self-nominate or be nominated by someone else.

And finally, a reminder to our members that we have an outstanding selection of recent events now available as on-demand webcasts, including our Working Smarter with Microsoft sessions and “FLIP Buzzwords” webcasts on Strategy and Design Thinking. Head to our events page on the Law Society website for the full range.

Richard Harvey, President, Law Society of NSW

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