Laming’s legal vendettas are being funded by guess who? Yup. Us

Has Liberal MP Andrew Laming been using publicly-funded staff to pursue his endless legal vendettas? Short answer, yes.

The Older Women’s Network (OWN) is a not-for-profit organisation which has been around for more than 35 years, advocating on issues like income security, homelessness, ageism, elder abuse and domestic violence. It has become increasingly vocal, as the particular concerns of older women have taken on more prominence.

Recently, OWN took to its Facebook page to post a detailed criticism of Laming, over his public announcement that he was retracting the apology he gave to victims of his social media trolling on the floor of parliament earlier this year.

The nub of OWN’s complaint was that Laming has suffered no real detriment over the exposure of his behaviour. In doing so, it republished some of the already well-publicised allegations made against Laming.

Laming has been an assiduous issuer of defamation concerns notices, the legal threat which precedes a defamation law suit. His lawyer (who he shares with Christian Porter and Peter van Onselen) has sent at least 13 of them to various social media users, demanding retractions, apologies and money. He sued journalist Louise Milligan and got a settlement out of the ABC on her behalf, and is now deep in defamation proceedings against Nine (which are being defended).

The tactic has been effective in that most recipients of these threats have backed down, deleting tweets, sometimes posting apologies and sometimes paying money. It seems that Laming has been so buoyed by the experience of “winning” in this way that he’s decided to fly solo.

OWN received a legal threat from Laming, but not via his usual lawyer. Instead, it came in emails directly from Laming’s own office.

The first email on November 1 was sent to OWN by Stephanie Eaton, Laming’s electoral officer, alleging that the group’s Facebook post was defamatory. It was followed by a demand from Laming’s own parliamentary email address that the post be removed.

The next day a further email came to OWN from Peter Nugent, Laming’s media advisor. It identified the factual errors Laming was claiming were contained in the post, and repeated the demand for its deletion.

OWN voluntarily decided to delete the post, and no further action has been taken on either side. No apology was offered or demanded.

As a federal MP, Laming is entitled to employ publicly-funded staff. The governing legislation is the Members of Parliament (Staff) Act, which gives the prime minister power to approve arrangements for the employment of staff.

The governing rules, made by the then-prime minister in 2016 and still in force, stipulate that an ordinary MP like Laming can employ up to four staff in electorate officer positions. The only guidance on the duties these staff can and can’t perform is that “they are employed to assist the Senator or Member to carry out duties as a member of Parliament and not for party political purposes”.

But what about purely personal business? It’s implicit, because their salaries are paid from the public purse, that the only legitimate use of their services is for work directly related to the MP’s role as an MP. That does not include pursuing private legal action, such as threatening to sue for defamation over allegations that have nothing to do with Laming’s duties as an MP.

Both Eaton and Nugent describe their employer on their LinkedIn profiles as the Australian government. It is a safe assumption that their salaries are taxpayer-funded.

As with everything when it comes to integrity in Canberra, there is no mechanism for testing the proposition that Laming has been misusing the publicly-funded resource of his electoral staff for private purposes. We can be absolutely confident that Scott Morrison will do nothing to call Laming to account and will block any attempt by anyone else to do so.

All we can do is point to it, say yes, if taxpayer-funded staff have been used to pursue private matters, it’s illegal — but no, there will be no consequence. And add it to the ever-growing pile of evidence that this government treats public money as its own and has no ethical standards whatsoever.

Note: Michael Bradley has provided advice to OWN, and represents other individuals who have received defamation threats from Laming.