The final piece of the national defamation reform jigsaw is about to drop into place with the introduction of Western Australia’s Civil Liability Legislation Amendment (Defamation) Bill 2026 (WA) (the WA Bill).
This long overdue development sees Western Australia playing catch-up on reforms dating back to 2021, when most jurisdictions enacted the transformative Stage 1 reforms including mandatory concerns notices, the single publication rule for electronic publications, the serious harm threshold, the public interest defence and other significant changes. In September 2023, a majority of jurisdictions committed to enact the Stage 2 reforms, centred on issues affecting digital publications that are unrestrained by state boundaries, by 1 July 2024. It is only with today’s development that every State and Territory has committed to implementing the one model reforms.
Complete uniformity, however, remains elusive. South Australia’s amendments did not adopt the model exceptions and defences for digital intermediaries and search engines, while the WA Bill does not include the amendments extending the defence of absolute privilege to reports to police and statutory bodies.
Below, we set out where each jurisdiction now stands, how the model defamation reforms have reshaped defamation law since 2021, and where the remaining gaps lie.
The model defamation reforms have had real impact
With their introduction in most Australian jurisdictions, the model defamation reforms, particularly the mandatory concerns notice and serious harm threshold, have already transformed Australian defamation law.
With the introduction of the serious harm threshold reputational harm is no longer presumed once a defamatory publication is established. Instead, the plaintiff must establish that publication “has caused, or is likely to cause, serious harm” to reputation, with the issue determined by the judge rather than the jury and open to determination at an early stage.
Drawing on UK precedent, Australian authorities have established that the legislative change requires the court to examine the actual or probable consequences of the publication, including the gravity of the imputations, the extent and circumstances of publication, the identity and relationship of recipients to the plaintiff, evidence of their reaction, any “grapevine” dissemination and, where appropriate, the plaintiff's existing reputation. Emotional distress or offence is not enough.
The change has set up a gatekeeping mechanism, particularly for claims arising from limited publications, interpersonal disputes and relatively ephemeral online communications. This does not mean that a small-scale publication is incapable of causing serious harm: a grave allegation communicated to only a few people may satisfy the threshold where those people are important to the plaintiff's professional or personal reputation. But a plaintiff needs to confront that issue with evidence and reasonable inferences rather than rely simply upon the defamatory character of the words.
This has important procedural and strategic consequences. A defendant can seek an early determination of serious harm and potentially dispose of a claim without litigating justification, contextual truth, public interest or other substantive defences. Plaintiffs have to front-load their pleadings and assemble evidence about dissemination and reputational consequences. The reform has had a discernible impact as a line-up of strata body nemesis, Facebook comment warriors, and affronted 1-star dog salon operators are wiped from lower court defamation lists.
Ten years ago, a person attacked in a morning paper might have their defamation lawyer, armed with a stapler and a grab bag of imputations filing a statement of claim before the Registry closed that afternoon. The mandatory notice process forces both sides to pause before litigation acquires that momentum.
The mandatory concerns notice regime introduced what is, in practical terms, a 28-day cooling-off period during which defamation proceedings can be commenced. Practitioners are seeing a real difference in the claim-response life cycle as a result. A publisher who receives a properly particularised complaint has time to investigate the circumstances, speak to journalists and sources, preserve and review material, obtain advice and decide whether they have a problem. If so, the dispute can often be taken out the back and resolved through a correction, apology, undertaking or negotiated settlement before proceedings are issued. If the publisher intends to stand behind the publication, the same period provides an opportunity to make that position equally clear by challenging the imputations and/or serious harm, identifying any substantial truth, public interest or other defences and exposing factual or evidentiary weaknesses in the complaint. A firm response can also give the complainant a sense of the factual scrutiny, discovery, evidence, delay and cost that will be part of any contested proceeding.
There is also a less obvious economic discipline built into the process. A concerns notice is no longer simply an angry letter demanding an apology. To do its job properly it is a formal document that ordinarily requires careful identification of the publications, the defamatory imputations said to arise from them and the serious harm caused. In a substantial matter this will often involve solicitors and counsel, because the imputations may have to be carried into any subsequent pleading and trial. This often requires the prospective plaintiff to incur meaningful legal expense before proceedings have even begun. The first bill for preparing that expensive letter may arrive around the same time as the complainant has to decide whether vindication is sufficiently important to justify continuing to pay lawyers for what may become another two years of interlocutory disputes, evidence, discovery and trial. Anecdotally, the combination of time to cool off, an informed response from the publisher and an early encounter with the economics of defamation litigation is causing at least some prospective plaintiffs to take stock before turning a grievance into a proceeding.
Until now, WA plaintiffs have avoided both hurdles, with some continuing to file proceedings in Western Australia to attempt to avoid the need for the mandatory concerns notice process. When enacted, the WA Bill’s adoption of Stage 1 should close that gap and remove one of the more obvious incentives encouraging forum shopping.
In other reforms, the public interest test has taken longer to find its feet, but has had meaningful judicial consideration with mixed outcomes and real success in Al Muderis v Nine Network. The digital intermediary reforms are yet to face a significant test.
Do all the jigsaw pieces fit?
Having signalled at the September 2023 meeting of the Standing Council of Attorney-General (SCAG) that it supported only "aspects" of the Stage 2, Part A reforms, South Australia adopted the procedural and remedial provisions of the model amendments, together with the Part B extension of absolute privilege.
The gap in Western Australia’s proposed reforms sits at the other end of Stage 2. The WA Bill does not include the Part B amendments extending absolute privilege to reports to police and statutory bodies, and the WA Attorney-General, Tony Buti, indicated in October 2026 that work on those reforms had not yet commenced.
The table below shows where each jurisdiction stands on its implementation of the model reforms as of 11 November 2026:
| Jurisdiction | Status |
| NSW | Stage 2 model amendments enacted and commenced 1 July 2024. |
| ACT | Stage 2 model amendments enacted and commenced 1 July 2024. |
| VIC | Stage 2 model amendments enacted and commenced 11 September 2024. |
| TAS | Stage 2 model amendments enacted and commenced 16 June 2025. |
| NT | Stage 1 and Stage 2 model amendments enacted and commenced 11 August 2025. |
| QLD | Stage 1 and Stage 2 model amendments enacted and commenced 26 December 2025. |
| SA | South Australia has enacted amendments that depart significantly from the national model reforms. The Defamation (Miscellaneous) Amendment Act 2025 (SA), which commenced on 15 December 2025, does not include the exemptions or defences for digital intermediaries and search engine providers. |
| WA | Western Australia is in the process of enacting the Stage 1 and Stage 2A reforms.
The Stage 1 and Stage 2A reforms were introduced on 11 November 2026 under the Civil Liability Legislation Amendment (Defamation) Bill 2026 (WA). The provisions implementing the Stage 1 and 2A reforms align with the Revised Model Amendments. Work to implement the Stage 2B reforms has not yet commenced. |
Conclusion
The Stage 2 reforms, that are part of the WA bill, date back to work undertaken in 2020, an eon in tech development. The provisions predate the rise of generative AI, with no consideration of how liability or defences might apply to developments in publication that are testing so many areas of established law.
With the WA Bill, every Australian jurisdiction has now committed to the core of the model reforms, and the Stage 1 changes which have reshaped defamation practice elsewhere will finally apply in what had become defamation’s wild west.