Duma to be paid K1.3mil

AN Australian court has ordered a Sydney-based media company to pay a Papua New Guinea Cabinet Minister A$A545,000 (about K1.33 million) for publishing defamatory articles of him in February, 2020.
Australia Federal Court judge Anna Katzmann ordered Fairfax Media Publications Pty Ltd to pay damages to former Petroleum and Energy minister William Duma for the series of articles published in the Australia Financial Review newspaper three years ago.
Hagen MP Duma is now the Public Enterprise and State Investment minister. An elated Duma yesterday said: “I beat them (Fairfax) twice in their own federal court.”
In early 2020, the Australian Financial Review, published a series of articles alleging that Duma had engaged in corrupt conduct, accepted a bribe from an oil company, conspired with another lawyer (named) to use a shell company as a vehicle for the payment of bribes for himself, conspired with the lawyer to defraud tribal landowners of compensation, and acted corruptly by trying to move a naval base inland.
Yesterday, Duma pointed out that his position from the beginning was that he did not break any laws.
Duma said the court case demonstrated that journalists in Australia and PNG had an obligation to report fairly and based on facts, not lies and assumptions with ulterior motives.
Judge Katzmann yesterday was scathing of journalist Angus Grigg who wrote the defamatory articles, calling him a poor and evasive witness. He was critical of the standards of journalism. On Feb 20, 2020, Duma told local media in Port Moresby that he was not corrupt and that he did not break any laws.
Duma gave a detailed statement in Parliament on the matter on Feb 19, 2020, before commencing defamation proceedings in the Federal Court of Australia in Sydney seeking damages for the defamation of his reputation. There were two parts to his defamation proceedings.
First, the Federal Court of Australia on Sept 12, 2021, awarded Duma damages for a substantial sum to be kept confidential, plus A$265,901 (about K650,000) in costs against the newspaper. Second, the Federal Court conducted a fully contested trial where witnesses from both sides gave evidence. The trial ended on Nov 11, 2021.
Duma told The National yesterday that he was the first Pacific political leader to begin legal proceedings against one of the biggest Australian newspapers in the Federal Court of Australia, and won twice against the same newspaper. He said his court victory showed that not every PNG politician was corrupt as assumed by the foreign media and the public.