> there should be a legal way to prove a person is lying if they directly make accusations about you.
"about you"? Her article did not name or provide identifying information about any individual employee of Centrelink.
"about you"? Her article did not name or provide identifying information about any individual employee of Centrelink.
Is there some meaningful distinction here that means false allegations about an organization of humans should go unrefuted, but false allegations about a single human should be refuted?
To me, false allegations against individuals are more serious than false allegations against organizations for a few reasons. First, I care about the well-being of organizations only to the extent they positively impact the well-being of humans (or, to a lesser extent, animals). Second, a single false allegation against an individual human seems to be able to have a much more damaging effect than one against an organization.
I suspect this is a well-worn topic and that I would consider many of the other objections to corporate personhood to be "meaningful distinctions".
Even if it were a private organization, such allegations could directly result in harm to the human owners. For example, false allegations about bad food at a restaurant would mean the human owners and employees lose money. In much the same way, false allegations about a human might result in them losing their job.
I don't think we're going to be able to settle this argument here, so I'll just leave it at that.
The relevant section: http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/consol_act/da200599/s... (This is the New South Wales legislation but it's almost perfectly uniform in all states and territories.)