Some defamation common sense. It was pleasing to see common sense prevail in two quite different defamation cases in two different countries in the last few days. In Adelaide a jury found two child protection advocates not guilty to charges of criminal libel. In London Sir Elton John lost a case brought against The Guardian over a spoof diary written by Marina Hyde. The South Australian case was perhaps the more significant of the two. Criminal libel is a rather draconian way of curbing political debate, even if the comments made are both very hurtful and very wrong.

Barry Standfield, 67, and Wendy Utting, 39, were the first people charged with the offence since the attempt to jail Rohan Rivett, the then editor of the now defunct Adelaide newspaper The News, 48 years ago. The pair were charged with four counts of criminal defamation over the faxing of documents on April 1, 2005, to the media naming two political figures and two senior police officers as alleged pedophiles. The court has suppressed publication of the identities of the men who all gave evidence during the criminal libel trial denying that they engaged in s-x acts with children.

It is surprising to me that the case received so little publicity but there was a comprehensive summary in The Weekend Australian. The Guardian case has more of a humorous touch about it with the spoof diary entry having “A peek at the diary of Sir Elton John”, recording his fictional thoughts about his annual White Tie and Tiara ball, which raises millions of pounds for the Elton John Aids Foundation.

“Naturally, everyone could afford just to hand over the money if they gave that much of a toss about Aids research — as could the sponsors,” Hyde wrote, in the persona of the singer. “But we like to give guests a preposterously lavish evening because they’re the kind of people who wouldn’t turn up for anything less.”

Reporting the decision by Mr Justice Tugendhat, The Guardian said:

The singer, represented by solicitors Carter Ruck and, in court, by William McCormick, claimed that the article suggested that John’s commitment to the charity is so insincere that he hosts the ball knowing that only a small proportion of the money raised will go to the charity, and that he uses the event “as an occasion for meeting celebrities and/or self-promotion”.

It was also suggested that Hyde acted maliciously, as she was aware that the sponsors covered the costs of the ball and all the money raised – between £6.6m and £10m – went to the charity. In Hyde’s “diary” she suggested that “once we’ve subtracted all these costs, the leftovers go to my foundation. I call this care-o-nomics.” The Guardian, represented in court by Gavin Millar QC, denied John’s claims and argued that the article had to be taken in context. It was also argued that no reasonable reader would have believed that the words were meant to be taken at face value. The judge agreed.

Giving Simon a run where real readers don’t turn. For many days now I had been wondering whether the Sydney Daily Telegraph still had Simon Benson as its state political editor as he failed to be the author of any stories I could list on my blog of what the papers say. He missed out on the news pages again this morning as the paper continues to steer away from the outrageously over the top kind of reporting that coincided with a falling circulation. When “Big boobs are not a sickness” is the top of the paper’s most read list, your clients are unlikely to be all that interested in the comings and goings of politicians. But at least political editor Benson was allowed to join the Tele‘s columnist Piers Akerman this morning in serving up the kind of analysis that does no harm on an editorial page that proper Telegraph readers would not turn to in a fit anyway.

A story that lives on. A wonderful example this morning of how stories published on the internet can live on and attract new readers for weeks after someone, somewhere posts a link to them. Back on 9 December the Melbourne Herald Sun ran an item saying discrimination against dominant white males will soon be encouraged in a bid to boost the status of women, the disabled and cultural and religious minorities. This morning it finally made it to the top of the most read list on the paper’s website.

The beginning of a what if nobody agrees strategy? Getting the pictures right is a key component of the Kevin Rudd strategy of staying popular during troubled times. He knows that most of us have only scant understanding of what all that global warming and carbon emissions stuff is all about. So the Prime Minister just looks and sounds serious and earnest as he says the words, as I am sure his National Press Club appearance will show, while concentrating on giving us a vision that will leave us with an impression that he is doing something.

He started the picture thing about global warming yesterday by posing with Queensland Premier Anna Bligh at a solar power farm in Windorah before flying to Canberra to prepare for his NPC appearance to release the white paper on climate change. The hard hats on the political heads, against the background of five 14 metre reflective reflective mirrors, certainly created the impression that this Labor Party lot are actually doing something innovative and new.

While the critics from left and right argue in Canberra whether the White Paper goes too far or not far enough, Mr Rudd will be off to Western Australia to give us another illustration of a government that is doing something and not just talking about it. Last week in Labor’s so-called “nation building package”, $195 million was provided to be spent this financial year to support economic development in the East Kimberley region.

The WA State Government has plans to double the size of the Ord River irrigation scheme from 4,000 to 28,000 hectares and the federal finance will help it speed up the development while providing plenty of happy snaps of a Prime Minister at the largest fresh water dam in the nation. The hope of the image makers is that there will be at least a subliminal message left in some minds that Labor is prudently preparing Australia for the day when global warming means that the irrigators in the Murray-Darling Basin down south are forced out of business. Expect to see lots of lovely melons and mangoes and plans for sugar mills on the television.

At another level, the Rudd visit up north suggests that he is beginning to turn his mind to the real problem this country will face if the nations cannot reach agreement on limiting greenhouse gas emissions and temperatures do rise in the way the scientific experts predict. We should all be thankful for that as the latest round of international talks which finished in Poland last week hardly give cause for optimism that there will be a meaningful cut in emissions anytime soon.