First published in the Law Institute of Victoria Journal. June 2026
Twenty years ago this July, Victoria enacted the Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006 (Vic) (Charter). It was only the second human rights charter in Australia and the first enacted by a state. From the beginning, the Charter was designed to strengthen the democratic system by ensuring that human rights are taken seriously in the development, application and interpretation of Victorian laws.
The Charter was also intended to nurture a more engaged civic culture. Its founding vision emphasised the importance of public participation and the need for continual vigilance to maintain a rights-respecting society.1 Central to this vision are the Charter’s protections of the freedom of expression, the right to peaceful assembly, freedom of association and the right to take part in public life. These rights are not only the backbone of Victoria’s civic space – they are also essential to democratic accountability.
The Charter was never meant to stand still. It was designed with the expectation that Victoria’s human rights framework would grow and adapt as new concerns emerged.2 Twenty years on, that expectation is a responsibility.
Strategic litigation against public participation (SLAPP) is increasingly posing a direct challenge to the very freedoms the Charter protects, enabling powerful actors to suppress advocacy, deter scrutiny and silence dissent through litigation. Marking the Charter’s 20th anniversary is not only a moment for reflection, but a call to strengthen and extend the Charter’s legacy so Victoria’s human rights framework can meet the challenges of the next 20 years.
What SLAPPs are and why they matter in Victoria
SLAPP suits are legal actions designed to suppress participation (or journalistic reporting) on matters of public interest.3
SLAPPs can arise in civil, criminal or administrative contexts, and they take many forms. While they often contain an actionable legal claim at their core, their damage comes from their real purpose: to silence, intimidate or exhaust those who speak up. SLAPPs typically share three features:
the plaintiff is an economically or politically powerful actor
the target is engaged in public interest advocacy
the subject matter concerns public participation, meaning speech or activity connected to the exercise of the freedom of expression, or the rights to association or peaceful assembly.4
In practice, these dynamics are not abstract – they play out in very real and uneven ways.
SLAPPs in practice
At the local level, the Bannockburn Yellow Gum Action Group demonstrates how SLAPPs can fall hardest on small community groups with limited resources. Residents opposing Barwon Water’s plans to clear yellow gum woodland relied on modest advocacy, including a bumper sticker criticising Barwon Water’s Chairperson.5
The response was disproportionate: a $14 million defamation claim against seven community leaders. The case placed the group under immense pressure, which ultimately led them to apologise formally and settle the matter for $10,000. The community campaign collapsed, and the trees were subsequently felled.6
SLAPPs can also be deployed at scale. The Gunns 20 litigation,7 arguably Australia’s most infamous SLAPP, involved claims of over $6 million (about $11 million in today’s terms) against 20 environmental defenders.8 The proceedings were sprawling and expensive, with multiple statements of claim struck out as untenable. Although most claims were abandoned or settled, the litigation dragged on for almost five years.9 Several defendants incurred significant expenses, endured deep uncertainty and lived under the threat of financial catastrophe. The case became a national symbol of how large corporations can use the sheer weight of litigation to force advocates into survival mode.
Trade unions are not immune to SLAPP-type tactics. ALDI sued the Transport Workers’ Union (TWU) following their public campaign raising concerns about safety standards in ALDI’s supply chain.10 The campaign used ordinary tools of worker advocacy, including pickets, leafleting and media statements, to highlight pressures placed on truck drivers.11
ALDI responded with a broad suite of legal claims, alleging that the campaign had damaged its business. All but two of those claims were abandoned before trial, leaving only allegations of misleading or deceptive conduct and injurious falsehood.12 The Federal Court rejected both, finding that while some TWU statements were “disingenuous”, they were neither misleading nor made with any intent to injure.13 The Court also accepted that the TWU held genuine concerns about driver safety.14 Even so, the TWU was forced to use its members’ resources to defend the case.
SLAPPs can also target social policy research. In 2006, David Jones sued The Australia Institute after the think tank released a paper examining the sexualisation of children in advertising.15 The retailer alleged that a media release about the research was misleading, claiming it implied David Jones knowingly exploited children for profit.16 The Australia Institute maintained that its statements reflected its research.17 Another retailer mentioned in the paper, Myer, chose not to sue, avoiding the reputational fallout that David Jones ultimately suffered because of its suit. The case was eventually discontinued by agreement between the parties.18
SLAPPs have also been used to silence victim-survivors of gender-based violence, and SLAPPs are not limited to high-profile disputes.19 Many of the most damaging are gendered and far less visible.20 Even as society urges greater reporting of gender-based violence and harassment, what happens after a disclosure is often the opposite: defamation threats are made or strict non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) are weaponised to silence victim-survivors. These mechanisms mirror the hallmarks of SLAPPs, leveraging power imbalances to suppress reporting and compound harm, freezing participation at its most vulnerable point.
Taken together, these examples represent only a fraction of how legal processes can be used to burden and deter public participation. In Victoria, the Charter establishes an important baseline for protecting civic freedoms, but its influence depends on how consistently it is applied in lawmaking and decision making. Without being actively relied upon, the Charter alone cannot prevent the misuse of legal processes to silence advocacy. Where general rights protections have proved insufficient on their own, other jurisdictions have begun developing more targeted responses.
The rise of anti-SLAPP reforms
Across the world, the strongest anti-SLAPP protections tend to be found in jurisdictions that also give robust legal status to human rights, such as Canada, the US and the European Union (EU). Australia is not an outlier.
The ACT, our first jurisdiction to enact a Human Rights Act, was the first to legislate against SLAPPs. This may not be a coincidence. Jurisdictions that treat public participation as an essential democratic value appear to also be the quickest to respond to the threat of abusive litigation.
This trend appears to be gaining momentum. In early 2024, the EU adopted its Anti-SLAPP Directive.21 The directive requires EU Member States to introduce procedural safeguards for people facing SLAPPs in civil matters with cross-border implications, including early dismissal of manifestly unfounded claims, accelerated hearings and the ability for courts to award full costs against claimants who bring abusive proceedings.
A recent global evaluation of anti-SLAPP laws by the Centre for Free Expression shows the strongest frameworks share a common set of safeguards to protect public participation from abusive lawsuits.22 British Columbia’s Protection of Public Participation Act 2001 (BC), New York’s Civil Rights Law, NY CLS § 1, Texas’s Civil Practice and Remedies Code, s27.001, and California’s Code of Civil Procedure, s425.16, take a very broad view as to what is considered to be public participation, ensuring a wide range of conduct is protected.
These safeguards halt proceedings, including discovery, the moment an anti-SLAPP motion is filed and shift the onus to the plaintiff to show the case has genuine merit. Each provides for expedited hearings and robust cost protections. Texas goes further by allowing damages to deter abusive litigation.23 Taken together, these show what best practice looks like: fast, fair and preventive safeguards that can stop SLAPPs before they are able to achieve their intended purpose.
In contrast, weak protections leave SLAPP targets exposed. The Protection of Public Participation Act 2008 (ACT), ranked among the least effective safeguards because it applies too narrowly (notably by excluding defamation actions), does not shift the burden of proof to the plaintiff to defeat an anti-SLAPP motion and offers no automatic stay of proceedings. Its passage reflects the ACT’s strong human rights culture, but its limitations illustrate why more comprehensive safeguards are needed.
Building on the Charter’s foundation
What is needed now is not radical or unprecedented. Victoria is already recognising how legal tools can be used to silence and compound harm. The Restricting Non-disclosure Agreements (Sexual Harassment at Work) Act 2025 (Vic) reflects this shift, acknowledging that coercive NDAs mirror key features of SLAPPs by relying on power imbalances to suppress and silence.
This momentum for change, driven by women’s organisations, unions and specialist legal services needs to continue, with the next logical step being strong anti-SLAPP laws to protect public participation in other areas of civic life.
Building on this momentum, Victoria can draw on lessons from jurisdictions with well-designed anti-SLAPP laws. Research by the Human Rights Law Centre has found that effective anti-SLAPP laws share a set of common principles, in that they:
protect the rights to free expression, association, assembly and participation
allow early and efficient dismissal to reduce the burden on those targeted
give courts the tools to recognise when litigation is being used to suppress rather than resolve a dispute
deter bad faith cases through real consequences such as damages and costs.24
While anti-SLAPP laws are essential, they are only part of the solution. SLAPPs rarely proceed without legal practitioners, yet the profession currently lacks a shared understanding of how these actions work or the harm they cause. Because SLAPPs often involve a genuine legal dispute at their core, advancing them may fall outside conduct rules aimed at preventing meritless or harassing cases. This makes it crucial for lawyers and judicial officers to recognise when litigation may be being used to silence participation and to ensure the profession itself is not used as a vehicle for that harm.
Strengthening training, updating conduct rules and supporting those targeted by SLAPPs through pro bono assistance are just some of the ways the profession can genuinely help safeguard open public participation.
The next 20 years
Two decades on, the Charter remains one of Victoria’s most significant legal reforms, embedding human rights in law and decision making. But it was never intended to be static. As the then-Attorney-General, Rob Hulls, made clear in the Charter’s Second Reading Speech, it was for the Victorian community, over time, to decide how rights should be protected considering our ongoing experience with the Charter.25
Emerging forms of harm, including SLAPPs, now test the freedoms the Charter was enacted to secure. Responding to these threats is not a departure from the Charter, but an opportunity to give fuller effect to the rights it was designed to protect.
The Charter already provides the baseline and guardrails for protecting public participation. What has been missing is people’s consistent willingness to rely on it. Strong anti-SLAPP laws, grounded in the Charter’s protections and supported by a profession alert to the misuse of legal processes, would help translate those protections into everyday practice.
On its 20th anniversary, advancing anti-SLAPP reform offers a constructive and hopeful way to renew the Charter’s promise and strengthen the civic space it was designed to protect.
End notes
Victoria, Parliamentary Debates, Legislative Assembly, 4 May 2006, 1290 (Rob Hulls, Attorney-General).
See Note 1.
Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, The Impact of SLAPPs on Human Rights and How to Respond (Briefer, 29 April 2024), 1.
Note 3, 3; see also Business Human Rights Resource Centre, SLAPPed But Not Silenced: Defending human rights in the face of legal risks (Report, June 2021) 29; and Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, Legal Harassment and Abuse of the Judicial System Against the Media (Special Report, 23 November 2021).
Brian Walters, “Let the People Speak” (2005) 16(3) Current Issues in Criminal Justice 340 at 341.
Note 5 at 342.
Gunns Limited v Marr [2005] VSC 251.
Adam Beeson, “The Gunns 20 Case: A Brief History” (2010) 01 National Environmental Law Review 51.
Note 8 at 53.
ALDI Foods Pty Ltd as General Partner of ALDI Stores (A Ltd Partnership) v Transport Workers’ Union of Australia (2020) 282 FCR 174 (Aldi v TWU).
Aldi v TWU at [1]–[4].
Aldi v TWU at [3]–[5].
Aldi v TWU at [50]–[53].
See note 13.
David Jones Ltd v Australia Institute Ltd [2007] FCA 962 at [2]–[4] (David Jones).
David Jones at [4]–[6].
David Jones at [9]–[10].
Federal Court of Australia, “Notice of Discontinuance” (2 May 2008, NSD2490/2006).
Sarah Ailwood, “Defamation Law Reform in the #MeToo Era” (2024) 18 Court of Conscience 100.
Karageozis atf Bankrupt Estate of Lamb v Sherman [2023] QCA 258 (Karageozis).
Directive (EU) 2024/1069 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 11 April 2024 on protecting persons who engage in public participation from manifestly unfounded claims or abusive court proceedings (“Strategic lawsuits against public participation”) [2024] OJ L 135/1.
Evan Brander and James L Turk, Global Anti-SLAPP Ratings: Assessing the Strength of Anti-SLAPP Laws (Report, 23 March 2023) 5–6.
Note 23, 140. 24. David Mejía-Canales, Stop the SLAPP: Protecting free speech in Australia (Report, 5 December 2024) Human Rights Law Centre. 25. See note 1.
