A university student falsely smeared as a probable racist and perjurer on the ABC’s Q&A has decided that a Labor parliamentarian’s apology yesterday is misleading and insincere, meaning that Terri Butler faces a defamation trial.
Ms Butler has backflipped in a bid to undo damage from her comments about Queensland University of Technology student Calum Thwaites, telling him in a written apology: “There should be no suggestion that you are racist, or bigoted.”
“I offer you my unreserved apology for enabling those meanings about you to be conveyed, and for the distress and damage to your reputation caused as a consequence,’’ Ms Butler, the federal member for the Brisbane seat of Griffith, told Mr Thwaites in the letter he received yesterday.
“In the course of the debate on Q&A, I made comments which, although not intended to do so, were capable of being understood as a meaning that you had been responsible for that Facebook post, making you a racist bigot, and that when you denied using those words in court proceedings, you were being dishonest or disingenuous.
“There should be no suggestion that you were responsible for the Facebook post, or that your denial was anything other than the truth.”
But in a lengthy reply drafted by his lawyer, Tony Morris QC, Mr Thwaites described the apology as self-serving political spin and a sham. He said it “did not offer any expression of regret, atonement or amends”, and it “falsely pretended that your words had been construed otherwise than you intended”.
He told Ms Butler that she had defamed him “purposefully and deliberately” on national television and in subsequent media interviews, and he believed that her intention at all times was “the premeditated traducing of my reputation”.
“There was no reason why you had to pick on me as the subject of your absurd and outrageous comments,” he said.
Mr Thwaites also told Ms Butler that the publication on her website of a statement she had made about him in parliament gave him the impression “that your apology is only offered when you know that you can be sued”.
“I am sure we will have an opportunity to meet at the trial of the defamation action, which I hope will be set down for trial early next year,’’ the letter from Mr Thwaites, a law student, concluded.
Ms Butler, formerly a lawyer for class action firm Maurice Blackburn, had told the ABC’s program last Monday: “I know how the law works. I know how the (Human Rights) Commission works. I’m sick of the fact-free zone in this debate.”
She questioned the innocence of Mr Thwaites despite the dismissal by the Federal Circuit Court of racism claims against him and other students.
Ms Butler implied that Mr Thwaites had written a Facebook post which included the word “niggers”, and she said it was still a live question as the allegation was “not determined”. When told by The Australian’s Foreign Editor, Greg Sheridan, during Q&A of the strenuous and consistent denials by Mr Thwaites, Ms Butler said: “He would say that, wouldn’t he?”
Her claims were contrary to the November 4 a ruling by Judge Michael Jarrett who found that Mr Thwaites had not written the post, which came from a Facebook account set up in his name by an unidentified person. Judge Jarrett ruled that there was no evidence he had written it.
The Australian reported last week on her smearing of Mr Thwaites as a racist and a perjurer despite the judge’s findings. After a defamation case against her was filed in the Brisbane Magistrates Court last Wednesday, Ms Butler told journalists it was hypocritical that she could be sued by a student at the centre of a debate about free speech and section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act.
Ms Butler said in her apology: “You have given evidence accepted by the court that you were not the author. Your legal representative, Mr (Tony) Morris QC, has described you as a victim of malicious identity theft or a prank, which I accept.
“You should feel most welcome to publish this letter, or not to do so, as you see fit. If you are prepared to agree to my doing so, I would prefer to supplement this letter by also giving my apology to you in person, or over the phone.”