For sheer futility of litigation, it is hard to go past South Australia's Hindmarsh Island bridge affair and its clash of development, environment and Aboriginal heritage interests. Such conflicts may not be polite but the best way to settle them is through vigorous, unfettered debate. Yet in the Hindmarsh Bridge affair, multiple law suits, however legally justified, were allowed to take precedence over the vital exchange of contrary opinion.

The news from the courts this week is no exception. It is a libel judgement partly arising , fittingly enough, from one of the combatants in the bridge affair having suggested that earlier litigation was being misused. In 1994, a company associated with Tom and Wendy Chapman, and their Hindmarsh developments sought court injunctions against the Conservation Council of South Australia. In the Council's Journal, President David Shearman wrote that: 'the legal mechanisms used to silence community groups from expressing valid concerns on the Hindmarsh Bridge issue have profound implications for free speech in Australia". And later: "We believe that this legal process is being used simply to silence us...". This article was one reason why Supreme Court Justice Horton Williams has ordered the Council, Professor Shearman and others to pay the Chapmans a total of $130,000 in damages for libel (costs are yet to be decided).

Yet, remarking upon the effect of the Chapman Federal Court action, the Judge says: "For a time some antibridgers were unwilling to persist with their active participation in demonstrations and protests by reason of anticipated legal consequences." But the Judge dismissed as irrelevant the defence that the Chapman action did indeed have the effect of "silencing" Professor Shearman and others at the Council. Under the arcane rules of defamation, the Judge held that Professor Shearman had to prove that the Chapman litigation aim was to silence the conservation critics. Unable to prove this, Professor Shearman could not rely on a fair comment defence.

In emphasising the seriousness of the libel, the Judge made much of the "authority" and "prestige" of Professor Shearman's council. But surely Australians were familiar enough with the Hindmarsh Bridge affair to weigh the arguments of jostling lobby groups. This case may reflect the law, but it is difficult to see what public purpose is served by its infringement on free speech. One person claims a second person is using the legal system to shut him up - Who cares? Why on earth should that provide grounds for the second person to sue the first, again using our high-cost legal system? What's the point of this chilling of public debate on the use and abuse of the legal system? Why are citizens engaging in reasonable debate so exposed to fine points of defamation law? Why can't citizens be trusted to detect self-interest and separate unlikely fact from probable opinion. Put this one down as exhibit A in the case for deregulating free speech.