The political career of Christian Porter has been destroyed by the ABC. This is someone who was the Commonwealth Attorney-General – which perhaps tells us something about where power lies in Australia.

But the whole affair also provides a warning for public figures about the treacherous waters of defamation litigation. It has always been true that it is relatively easy for a plaintiff to initiate defamation proceedings but much harder to bring them to an end if he or she has a change of mind at some later stage.