Pauline Hanson has had a legal victory after overturning $250,000 in defamation damages awarded after she made claims about the conduct of a former New South Wales senator in her One Nation party.
Hanson was ordered to pay damages in October after the federal court said her comments on Nine’s Today program in March 2019 were “seriously damaging” to Brian Burston’s reputation.
As well as stating that Burston had sexually abused a female colleague, Hanson also made statements that were understood to mean he had assaulted One Nation chief of staff James Ashby without provocation in Parliament House, Justice Robert Bromwich said at the time.
But the findings and damages were thrown out by the full court on Wednesday after a successful appeal by Hanson.
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Justices Michael Wigney, Michael Wheelahan and Wendy Abraham found that the imputation that Burston had “physically assaulted” Ashby in parliament “without provocation” was not conveyed.
Hanson had said “the aggression came from Brian Burston to James Ashby … James Ashby never laid a hand [on him]”.
The judges said the phrase “never laid a hand on” would be understood to mean that Ashby had not physically touched Burston, not that Ashby had not “done anything at all” to provoke him.
The judges agreed with Bromwich that the imputation Burston had sexually abused a female staffer in his parliamentary office was conveyed.
Hanson submitted Bromwich “erred in finding that multiple instances of unwanted physical touching” of one staffer “including kissing her on the cheeks and lips, putting or attempting to put money down her top, and kissing her forcibly did not amount to proof of substantial truth of the allegation of sexual abuse”.
The judges agreed that Hanson had proved this defence, finding that Burston had engaged in “degrading and humiliating” conduct towards his staffer.
That included “repeated and ongoing sexualised comments on her body and appearance”, “comments on and intrusive questions about her private sex life”, sexual propositions, and repeated sexual contact “that was non-consensual, unwanted, and unwelcome”.
They said the primary judge “did not consider the power imbalance” including Burston’s “abuse” of his position as her employer and “the repeated and ongoing unwanted conduct and physical contact”.
During the original defamation trial Burston denied all the allegations about his conduct as entirely fabricated.
Burston was ordered to pay the One Nation leader’s legal costs for the defamation case and appeal.
In his earlier judgment, Bromwich was scathing towards Burston’s general behaviour, calling it “objectively wrong and inappropriate”.
Hanson filed a counter-suit in the federal court in November 2020 claiming Burston’s defamation case and sexual harassment allegations against her amounted to discrimination.
That case is still…
2023-08-15 22:30:43
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