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ABC News
13-08-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Former Liberal MP Andrew Laming wins a High Court appeal over fines for three Facebook posts
Former Queensland Liberal MP Andrew Laming has won his High Court appeal against a $40,000 fine over three Facebook posts. He was accused of not properly identifying himself as a political candidate upon posting in the lead-up to the 2019 federal election. Andrew Laming was the LNP member for Bowman when he made the Facebook posts on a page he administered titled "Redland Hospital: Let's fight for fair funding". The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) went after Mr Laming for failing to provide the correct authorisation required of political candidates in political communication. Under Australian electoral laws, MPs are required to give details, including their name and location, on any material that is aimed at influencing votes. Mr Laming admitted the posts lacked the required authorisation, but contested whether some of them fell into the category of political communication. The original Federal Court judgment found some of the posts were clearly written by Mr Laming, having been signed by him, including a letter to a journalist, but others did not identify him as the writer or publisher. The judgment noted it was evident from the post "that Mr Laming was pretending it was posted by someone else", even referring to himself in the third person. In the end, the case was narrowed down to three posts and Mr Laming was fined $20,000. But the AEC appealed and the fine was doubled to $40,000. That was to reflect the fact that the posts had been viewed 28 times. Mr Laming took it to the High Court, describing the reasoning as counterintuitive, saying he only made the omission once on each post. The AEC said the purpose of the law was to deter breaches and protect the rights of voters to make an informed choice. The commission told the High Court that on Mr Laming's reasoning, any anonymous political publication would only result in a single contravention, no matter how harmful or wide-reaching it may be. But today the High Court ruled a line in the sand, saying there was a contravention each time the posts were published, not each time they were viewed. Mr Laming quit politics before the 2022 election after a series of unrelated controversies.


New York Times
13-05-2025
- New York Times
The Pope's Florida Brother, a MAGA Disciple, Plans to ‘Tone It Down'
You can often find the eldest brother of the Successor of the Prince of the Apostles down at the Twisted Fork restaurant in Port Charlotte, Fla., where, on Honky-Tonk Thursdays, he is most likely boot-scooting along with the rest of the line dancers. His ringtone plays the opening riffs of Led Zeppelin's 'Immigrant Song.' He incurred $20,000 in roof damage from Hurricane Ian. And until recently, anyone could read his Facebook posts, which included vulgar potshots at Nancy Pelosi and her husband and a pronouncement that supporters of Joseph R. Biden Jr. suffered from a 'mental affliction.' Nearly a week after the Chicago-born Robert Francis Prevost became Pope Leo XIV, the world is still adjusting to the fact that he has an American family that does typically American things. The Borgias, for all their many sins, never posted crude or spicy memes to the socials. And indeed, for Louis Prevost, 73, it is the Facebook posts, which he shared online before his brother was made pope, that have earned him the most attention in the last few days. By Tuesday, the posts were no longer publicly viewable. Among other things, he reposted an old video of Ms. Pelosi, under which the author of the original post referred to her with a vulgar sexist epithet. The original post also insinuated that Ms. Pelosi's husband, Paul, was gay, echoing a misinformation campaign that spread among those on the right after Mr. Pelosi was brutally attacked by a man who broke into his home in October 2022.