New article on privacy rights and privacy law in the University of New South Wales Law Journal

 I have a new article in the University of New South Wales Law Journal, entitled "Liberal Principles and the Right to a Private Life: Why Australia's Institutional Media Should Face a Privacy Tort." Here's the abstract:

A new statutory tort of serious invasion of privacy was introduced into the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) by the Privacy and Other Legislation Amendment Act 2024 (Cth), and came into operation in June 2025. In itself, this is welcome. However, the new statutory scheme has two faults. First, it includes as an element of the tort that the public interest in protecting the plaintiff’s privacy outweighs the public interest considerations justifying the privacy invasion. This places an inappropriate legal burden on the plaintiff. Second, and more importantly, there are sweeping exemptions for invasions of privacy by the institutional press. It is submitted that there is no principled basis to grant an exemption specifically to professional journalism, which can be just as harmful as other speech and activity that intrudes on seclusion or discloses personal information. A tort of serious invasion of privacy, properly understood and administered, and without any such exemptions, is consistent with liberal principles and an ethos of liberal tolerance. The policy choice to build in these exemptions was a serious mistake.

Needless to say, I make a large philosophical claim when I say that such a tort is consistent with liberal principles, because there is often believed to be a conflict between a right to privacy in the relevant sense and (in particular) freedom of speech. I think the conflict is exaggerated and that in a very large proportion of cases the two are actually complementary. Where there are some limited areas of conflict, I think they can be managed. Much of the article is devoted to examining the foundations of these two important ideas and how they fit together within a package of principles suitable for a society with a liberal ethos. However, you'll need to click on the article to see how I develop the full argument.