Defamation is still the main civil route for a false allegation that is doing real reputational work in Australia. It is not a delete button. The 2021 Model Defamation Amendment Provisions, adopted into the uniform State and Territory Acts, added a serious harm element, made a concerns notice the usual gate to court, and replaced the multiple-publication rule that once restarted the clock on every download.
If you remember one distinction from this guide, make it this one: a publisher you can name and serve is a different job from an intermediary that cached, indexed or hosted someone else’s words. The 2023 digital-intermediary amendments were built to shrink the second job. The rest of the Australian law hub maps the other statutes.
Nothing here is legal advice. The Act that applies is the one in the jurisdiction of publication. Brief a solicitor who has read the current reprint before you put a letter on someone else’s desk.
What the 2021 package changed
The Stage 1 amendments commenced in most jurisdictions from 1 July 2021.
Serious harm became an element of the cause of action. The publication must have caused, or be likely to cause, serious harm to reputation — not merely words that would make an ordinary reader think less of you. For excluded corporations still allowed to sue (typically not-for-profits or companies with fewer than ten employees), the harm must be serious financial loss. Judges can decide the point early, including on the pleadings.
A concerns notice became the usual ticket to court. You generally cannot commence until you have given the publisher a written notice that does a defined job, and until the 28-day waiting period has run, unless a court grants leave.
A single-publication rule now runs the ordinary one-year limitation from the first upload to the public, not from each later hit. Courts can extend time, usually up to three years from first publication, if it was not reasonable to have started sooner. That is a discretion, not a second year you can count on.
A public-interest defence joined honest opinion and justification. A newsroom that published reasonably on a matter of public interest is in a different position from a forum poster repeating a rumour. That is why the news-archive route and the defamation route are related, and why they are not the same letter.
Stage 2, agreed in 2023 and enacted across most of the country by 2025–26 — Queensland’s 2025 Act is the late adopter — then carved out the intermediaries. South Australia sat out the first digital-intermediary vote. Check the Act that applies.
Serious harm is not hurt feelings
Serious harm is reputational, and it is serious. Distress and a week of bad sleep are not, by themselves, the element. A closed Facebook group of twelve or a Reddit slight that never left the thread will often die at the threshold. A false allegation of dishonesty that has reached clients, a regulator or a recruiter is a different file.
What the court looks at: the gravity of the imputation, the extent of publication, the audience that matters, and whether you can point to a consequence beyond embarrassment. A cancelled contract or a professional complaint that cites the post are particulars. Screenshots of strangers being rude are colour. Do not invent the particulars. If you cannot write the harm in a paragraph a judge would recognise, you do not yet have a defamation job.
The concerns notice, done properly
The model section 12A tells you what the notice must do. It must be in writing. It must specify where the matter can be accessed — a URL, not “the internet”. It must inform the publisher of the imputations you say the matter carries, and of the serious harm you say has been caused or is likely. An excluded corporation must also speak to serious financial loss. If practicable, attach a copy of the matter.
A publisher who thinks the notice is thin can serve a further-particulars notice. You then have to answer it. The originating process is not a concerns notice; you cannot file first and pretend the statement of claim was the letter.
Serve it in a way you can prove. Email to a published complaints address is common; a random Instagram inbox is not. Keep the PDF, the headers and the URL as it stood that day. The 28-day window exists so the publisher can offer to make amends. A reasonable offer, rejected, becomes a defence. A notice sent in fury, with imputations you cannot later plead, is worse than silence.
When not to send a notice
Do not send a concerns notice to pick a fight you cannot finish. If you have no solicitor, no budget and no appetite for a defence of truth, you have handed the publisher a document that particularises your case.
Do not send one when the words are substantially true, or are honest opinion on proper material. Justification remains a complete defence. Demanding deletion of an accurate report of a finding is how a plaintiff becomes the story.
Do not send one to a newsroom when a corrections editor would have done. A wrong age or a wrong suburb is a news-archive job. A concerns notice puts the masthead’s lawyers in the chair.
Do not send one about an intimate image, a child, or a campaign of menaces. That is the Online Safety Act. Read what the eSafety Commissioner can actually order.
Do not send one to a mere conduit, cache or search index in a jurisdiction that has enacted the 2023 exemptions, unless a solicitor has told you why the exemption fails. A host with an accessible complaints process who acted reasonably after notice may have a defence you will spend a year losing to.
Do not send one to “the internet”. Name the publisher. If the speaker is a handle, start with the Reddit and forums guide.
Do not send one for sport. A notice can be reported. It can revive a dying post.
Single publication, mirrors and the year
The single-publication rule does not make a defamatory post legal after twelve months. It times the limitation period for that matter, in that form, from first publication to the public. A new site that copies the text is often a new publication. What the rule killed is the trick of treating every hit on a 2014 blog as a new cause of action. If the URL has sat there since 2019 and you found it last Tuesday, you are in extension-of-time territory. Diary the first-publication date. Wayback snapshots help.
Internet intermediaries after Stage 2
The 2023 digital-intermediary amendments change the letter.
A caching, conduit or storage provider is not liable if its role was limited to that service and it did not initiate, select recipients, encourage, edit or promote the matter. Knowledge is not the test.
A search engine is not liable for organic results that merely index third-party matter. That is why a legal-removal request to Google still wants a court order, not a concerns notice dressed as one.
A digital intermediary outside those exemptions may still have a defence if it had an accessible complaints mechanism and took reasonable steps after a complaint. The defence is lost if the intermediary was the poster, or stepped into an editorial role beyond ordinary moderation.
The exemptions can be determined early. If your real target is the person who typed the words, say so. Absolute privilege was also widened in Stage 2 Part B, so reports to police and some complaints bodies are protected. That is not a licence to republish the complaint on Facebook.
A working sequence we recommend
- Capture the URL, the date, an incognito screenshot and a PDF of the page before you write to anyone.
- Decide whether the harm is reputational and serious, or whether it is abuse or an intimate image. If it is the latter, stop and use eSafety.
- Write to the publisher’s ordinary complaints channel if a correction would do.
- If you are going to a solicitor, take them the dossier. Ask whether a concerns notice is the next step or a mistake.
- If a notice goes, particularise the imputations and the harm, attach the matter, serve it so you can prove it, and diary the 28 days.
- If the publisher takes the page down, treat that as a result, then do the search work.
- If you proceed, name the right defendant. Do not add the host and the search engine for atmosphere.
Agencies that offer to “send a defamation notice today” are selling the cheapest step in an expensive statute. Some of those letters start a proceeding the client cannot fund.
If you want the desk to look at a general question about the process, use contact. Do not send the post, the concerns notice, or a zip of the thread. We publish method. We do not run your case.