Let’s not forget that whatever has happened to Nova Peris since she entered politics, it is in the end down to her cynical exploitation by the Labor Party. As to recent events, there are two issues with the insulting messages left on Nova Peris’s Facebook page-

1) They may not have been left by the person who has been charged with the offence and,

2) Should the Police be running around arresting citizens for offending other citizens?

The guy who is alleged to have sent the messages has already suffered serious social penalties for the alleged act. He runs a chiropractic service in Woy Woy and no doubt this will suffer extremely negatively effects from his alleged actions. The professional association he belongs to is investigating his expulsion.

The local Rotary club he belong to for 20 years has disowned him. He has been stripped of his membership of the NSW Liberal Party. On top of this he has suffered serious social opprobrium and claims he has even received death threats.

So the social penalties have been fairly severe and are probably far more damaging to him than any fine and conviction he may endure.

However, he claims he did not leave the messages and that his account was hacked. This is not entirely unbelievable. People get hacked all the time. Secondly, it would be extremely politically expedient for Nova Peris to attract public sympathy right now after she received so much criticism from all quarters for quitting her gifted Senate position recently. The motivation for the hacking is evident, and it could be driven from any angle.

What happens re all the public vilification and stripping of associations and commercial punishment if in fact he was hacked?

To me though the real issue here is should offending people be a police matter. Check the wording of the charge against the alleged offender- “using a telecommunications service to cause offence”.

Really, what the hell is a civilised society doing using such vaguely worded terms to prosecute citizens? The ABC offend me almost every time they broadcast more than a few words. Should I ask the police to prosecute them?

Nova Peris could have deleted the message from her Facebook page as soon as she had seen it. She chose to leave it up. Does this not make her at least to some extent party to her own offense?

There is no doubt the message was vile, but I reckon there is more to this than meets the eye, and I also deeply regret that the law being used to prosecute here is on the statute books. Its existence is just one of the reasons why I’m not supporting any mainstream political party any more.