Suing for defamation is not something that ordinary citizens should ordinarily contemplate. It is a financially risky business and an emotionally stressful one. The cost of failure can be huge, especially when the opponent has unlimited financial resources to string out the legal process.

Government ministers are normally in that category of having unlimited financial resources with which to defend themselves. Taxpayers are called on to foot the bills on the basis that what the minister said was part and parcel of carrying out the job of being a government politician. The politicians don’t have to care and there is no responsibility.

We saw an example of the gay abandon with which politicians can defame yesterday when Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Joe Hockey and Treasurer Peter Costello disparaged a report by Sydney University academics into Australian Workplace Agreements. The academic study showed low-skilled employees, like childcare workers or shop assistants, are earning less on AWAs than those on collective arrangements. On average those on AWAs, according to the report, are earning $100 a week less.

Hockey dismissed the findings, because as well as being funded by the Australian Research Council (ARC), the study was partly funded by the union movement. “I’ll note that it was commissioned only recently and it was meant to be four-year research, but these former trade union officials who are parading as academics suddenly release it just before the election,” Mr Hockey said. “So you have to look at their motives, and sure enough you can identify what their real intentions are.” He criticised the University of Sydney’s Workplace Research Centre as “not being known for academic rigour”.

Treasurer Peter Costello also bucketed the centre on ABC Local Radio in Sydney, saying the funding it received from Unions NSW had skewed the study’s findings.

These comments left the academics involved somewhat bewildered. The report’s lead researcher, Dr Brigid van Wanrooy, said she had never been employed by a trade union. “Joe Hockey’s comment that we’re union officials parading as academics – I take offence to that,” she said. “I’ve worked really hard to get a position as an academic at the University of Sydney. And I’ve had a lot of experience in social research, working for the Federal Government, as well as private consulting firms, and I’ve never worked for a union.”

The Centre’s director, Dr John Buchanan, said the centre has a vast range of clients including unions, business, employer associations, governments, and government institutions. “I think it’s a very sad day when academics have got to turn to the common law for their protection from a government that’s half funded their studies.”

The academics are now contemplating legal action against the ministers for sullying their reputations.

The person who could do most to help them at least receive a fair dinkum apology rather than the token one offered late yesterday by Hockey is the Opposition Leader Kevin Rudd. All Rudd need make clear is that if there is a Labor Government after the next election the practice of indemnifying past and present ministers from defamation actions will be discontinued. In future MPs can pay their own legal costs and any damages awarded against them.

Democracy would be all the better for it.