- (b) Mr Greenwich's quote made clear the political context ("people who are considering voting for One Nation need to realise they are voting…");
- (c) in that context, the primary tweet was about homosexual men generally, not the applicant — that is, its meaning was a retort, "if you say I'm disgusting, what about the sort of sexual conduct which gay men engage in?";
- (d) some readers might have thought it was referring to Mr Greenwich personally, but that is not the more obvious reading in context; and
- (e) further, Mr Greenwich was said to have "cast his imputation at too high a level of generality – it wasn't about 'disgusting sexual activities' generally (which would extend to lack of consent etc) but to homosexual sex, which was said to be disgusting.
127 In his closing submissions, Mr Smark submitted that the ordinary reasonable reader would therefore understand the meaning of the primary tweet as follows:
Mr Latham is challenging the notion that he has engaged in disgusting conduct, and he's pointing to something else that he thinks is disgusting, and what he's saying he thinks is disgusting is the conduct of homosexual men having sex, and more specifically anal sex. He is not, in the context, saying that about Mr Greenwich personally.
128 I do not agree.
129 As Dr Collins put it in his closing address:
It's a very short publication comprising only a few words with a meaning which is crystal clear, and it's not the meaning that our learned friend has submitted to your Honour. It is plainly not a tweet about homosexual sex. It's a tweet about a particular unhygienic sex act. It has got nothing to do with gender; nothing to do with sexuality. It's about–forgive me–sticking a dick up a person's arse so as to cover it with shit, and to suggest that that is to be equated to homosexual sex is something one would not expect to hear in one of His Majesty's courts in the third decade of the 21st century.
130 It seems to me that the primary tweet self-evidently refers to Mr Greenwich in particular, and that the first pleaded imputation is, as was submitted, its unambiguous and literal meaning.
131 In my view, the ordinary reasonable person would interpret the meaning of the primary tweet to be that Mr Greenwich — not homosexual men generally — engages in disgusting sexual activities.
132 Mr Latham's reference to "your dick" would be understood by the ordinary reasonable person to be a reference to Mr Greenwich's penis, not to homosexual men generally, because the primary tweet is a response to the Metcalfe tweet, which reproduced what Mr Greenwich was
